Tenderly Healing Edmonton — Titilope Sonuga

Nigerian-Canadian Titilope Sonuga is a brilliant spoken word performer, poet and playwright

Tenderly Healing Edmonton

Edmonton Poet Laureate Titilope Sonuga Makes Her Debut at the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra

igerian-Canadian Titilope Sonuga is a brilliant spoken word performer, poet and playwright. She is a University of Alberta educated civil engineer who quickly became Edmonton’s leading poet with her mastery of human emotions and her ability to communicate to people. She is the author of several poetry collections including Down to Earth, Abscess, and This Is How We Disappear. She has released two spoken word albums: Mother Tongue and Swim. Sonuga was the writer and producer of Open, an interdisciplinary spoken word production which was performed to sold-out audiences in Edmonton, Calgary, London, Johannesburg, Abuja and Lagos. She has spoken extensively about her plans to bring tenderness and healing back into Edmonton. In 2015, she was the first Nigerian poet that was invited to the Presidential Inauguration. In 2021, she was named to serve as Edmonton’s ninth Poet Laureate by former mayor Don Iverson. She made her debut with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra on the 19th of November in an all female composer cast. She told LCCMedia: “I’ve experimented with all kinds of music over the span of my career. This has been a big bucket list item of mine and so it feels really special. I can’t wait”.

She said: I’m inspired by love at the core of it. Our running toward or away from it. I want to be remembered as a poet who made room. Who made

Npeople feel less alone. Who reminded artists and non artists of the connective tissue that binds us”. “It’s an honour to represent the city where my poetry career began. It feels even more important in the wake of a really difficult last few years” she replied when we asked her what it meant to her to represent the city of Edmonton. “I began my career as a civil engineer before pivoting into the arts. I have always written, but I began experimenting with my voice and performance in high school and university. It was a hobby then, while I pursued engineering, but it quickly eclipsed my life and became the central thing. Page poetry and readings were well established in Edmonton, but spoken word or performance poetry as we know it now was just taking root. It feels really special to have been a part of those early days”. “I believe all art can be a force for good. Poetry holds up a mirror. It illuminates and challenges. It comforts. It heals. My tenure has only just begun, but the reception has been incredible so far. It has been particularly wonderful to read the submissions for my Tenderness YEG project and to feel connected to people in that way”. Writing the truth as authentically as she can is the way she lives her life on and off the stage: “I write the truth. I live my life as a Black woman, an African woman, as boldly and as authentically as I can. I make room for others to do the same. On and off the stage”.