Canon Fire Canon Fire

From the beginning of her life, Audre Lorde challenged standard meanings of what it meant to be a woman, what it meant to be a lover, what it meant to be black, and what it meant to be a poet. But she also challenged the standard meanings of words, changing her vocabulary to change the context in which she spoke. In this episode, the finale of our trilogy, we discuss Lorde's nonfiction work and essays and how she questioned commonly understood concepts to advocate for social change.


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Official Canon Fire Website: www.canonfirepodcast.com/ Banner designed by Brittany Baril. Theme song by Alan Hardison, mastered by Nick Cameron.

Warning: This episode contains mention and frank discussion of rape, racism, and violent murder.


Writing during the Civil Rights Movement, the AIDS crisis, and in the aftermath of civil rights abuses and tragedies that had been perpetuating themselves for decades before her work, Audre Lorde managed to confront a harsh world with furious recognition coupled with deep understanding - a feat that reverberates through her continued legacy of activism, social justice, and community outreach.


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Official Canon Fire Website: www.canonfirepodcast.com/
Banner designed by Brittany Baril.
Theme song by Alan Hardison, mastered by Nick Cameron.

In this episode we discuss Audre Lorde, a lesbian woman of color who was as bold as she was unapologetic. As a black lesbian woman near-sighted almost to the point of blindness, Lorde faced more civil rights restrictions than could be counted on one hand - and she responded with a honed rage and a practiced compassion that reverberates through her poetic successors even today.
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Official Canon Fire Website: www.canonfirepodcast.com/
Banner designed by Brittany Baril.
Theme song by Alan Hardison, mastered by Nick Cameron.

Intentionally ignored by her contemporaries and largely forgotten by history, Aemelia Lanyer demonstrates the invisible influence that women, minorities, and the disenfranchised have been dealing with for centuries. While history remembers little of Lanyer, you can find evidence of her groundbreaking influence in the work of her fellow artists. Lanyer's wit, intelligence, and proto-feminist leanings mirror similar developments in the work of others - and might have even set the stage for William Shakespeare's greatest plays.


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Official Canon Fire Website: www.canonfirepodcast.com/


Banner designed by Brittany Baril.


Theme song by Alan Hardison, mastered by Nick Cameron.

Writing in the same period as Western canonical greats like Shakespeare, Donne, and Jonson, Aemelia Lanyer was consistently overlooked by her contemporaries and forgotten by later critics and scholars. Lanyer responded to this forced obscurity with an audacious, rebellious indictment of the treatment of women in Early Modern English society - and changed the landscape of English literature in the doing.


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Official Canon Fire Website: www.canonfirepodcast.com/


Banner designed by Brittany Baril.


Theme song by Alan Hardison, mastered by Nick Cameron.

Working to reclaim her heritage, traditions, and identity amidst the tumultuous changes that indigenous American populations were forced to deal with in the mid-20th century, Joy Harjo became a force herself: a force of artistic, spiritual personhood that refused to allow misconceptions, stereotyping, or oppression to define her.


CW: This episode contains reference to domestic abuse, alcoholism, rape, and genocide.


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Official Canon Fire Website: www.canonfirepodcast.com/


Banner designed by Brittany Baril.


Theme song by Alan Hardison, mastered by Nick Cameron.