Today I got to collaborate with Dr. Ghada Alatrash, a Syrian-Canadian author, translator, and assistant professor at the Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, as she performed some of her poetry at the Ranchmen’s Club of Calgary. It was a beautiful, emotional, and important day for cross-cultural understanding, and I was honoured to take part.

I played violin underneath her words — weaving in and out of the silences, trying to let the music breathe with her poetry rather than over it. Ghada’s writing carries so much: displacement, memory, home, the weight of translation itself. There’s a particular kind of listening that happens in a room when someone reads poetry that has crossed languages and oceans to get there, and I wanted the violin to hold that space, not fill it.

Some of her poems were in Arabic, some in English, some moved between the two mid-line. I found myself adjusting in real time — softer under the Arabic, letting a phrase land before I came back in. It felt less like performing alongside her and more like being in conversation with her.

Afterward, people lingered. Strangers were talking to each other about the lines that had stayed with them. That’s the whole point, isn’t it — art that makes people turn to one another instead of just clapping and leaving.

Grateful to Ghada for trusting me with her words today. You can follow her and learn more about her work here: instagram.com/ghada_signalhill