Terri-TOI-re, poetry in Montreal Chinatown

Terri-TOI-re is a live poetry and spoken-word performance by Filipina-Canadian artist Marie-Josée Desharnais. Drawing from more than twenty years of personal writing, the work explores adoption, renaming, memory, displacement, and the search for belonging.

By breaking apart the French word territoire into Terri / TOI / re, the piece transforms territory into an intimate question: Where do we belong when our names, histories, and places of origin have been shaped by others?

Through fragmented language, repetition, archival traces, and embodied voice, the performance moves between personal experience and collective histories of migration and identity. A limited-edition printed zine will accompany the reading, allowing the work to continue beyond the public performance.

Presented as part of Poésie du Quartier chinois / Dehors est un poème at Place Sun Yat-Sen in Montréal.