Renison University College and the Elora Poetry Centre co-sponsored, with funding from the League of Canadian Poets and Canada Council, a virtual poetry performance by MLA Chernoff

     1.00—2.20 p.m.  Monday 31 January 2022 

MLA CHERNOFF (they/them/@citation_bb) was born at Women’s College Hospital in December of 1991––oops. They are a six-hundred-year-old Jewish, non-binary pome machine, a Postmodern Neo-Marxist, and (somehow) a PhD Candidate at the Neoliberal University of York University, where they once held a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship––no kidding.Their first chapbook, delet this, was released by Bad Books in 2018. Their second collection, TERSE THIRSTY, was released by Gap Riot Press in 2019. Their debut full-length collection of poetry, [SQUELCH PROCEDURES], is now available from Gordon Hill Press.

In [SQUELCH PROCEDURES], MLA Chernoff contemplates the ways that trauma, poverty, and strict gender norms rupture the concept of childhood. The tension of multiple meanings in the word “squelch” acts as a guide to Chernoff’s unique voice, which uses language to swaddle intrusive thoughts and mimic defense mechanisms such as avoidance, depersonalization, and derealization. [SQUELCH PROCEDURES] is an ambitious attempt to show how healing and regression are often indistinguishable, while the past is always predisposed to happen more than once: first as tragedy, then as farce.