Welcome to Upper Zygonia, a reading from an excerpt from my current work in progress now online

 Thanks to the League of Canadian Poets for funding this reading from my current work in progress. We made the video inside my apartment and around my building.

Welcome to Upper Zygonia is my current work in progress, inspired by my early attempts at escape from reality. Over the years, I have daydreamed about Upper Zygonia while waiting for doctors and nurses, lying on a stretcher in a hospital outside operating room #3 awaiting surgery, waiting for bad hospital food, and most recently as an escape from fretting over this god damn pandemic. In 2020 I spent a lot of time using magic markers to doodle and I found myself doodling the world of Upper Zygonia. Upper Zygonia is a planet in the Zygonian Galaxy below Lower Zygonia and larger than Greater Zygonia. Its first beings are dream beings: sea dragons, floating letters with wings, catterflies, flowerfish, and fire birds.

 Later the planet is populated by those seeking refuge: Sparrow who flies to those in need of relief from pain; Silver, who was burned badly in a fire and lost parents and siblings; Lilac, a playful genius who is a nonbinary character, Willomena, the willow tree; the Leaflings, who turn into trees when they die; the Flowers: Ivy, Orange Blossom and Violet, who are burlesque dancers, Saint Asemica of the Holy Order of Whimsy, Mt. Glyph, the River of Codes, the Library of Whimsy, Little Green, one of the many multi-coloured cats who roam around Upper Zygonia, airships, hot air balloons,  and other whimsical characters, places and spaces, events.