Céline Caruso Dixon Shares the Power of Poetry

“Poetry has always been in my life to some capacity,” begins Céline Caruso Dixon, a young writer and poet, currently enrolled in Political Science the University of Alberta. “My mom was really interested in poetry and so poetry was just around her house.”

Last year Caruso Dixon’s poetry caught the attention of both the Canadian Literature Centre and the Edmonton Poetry Festival, when she won the Canadian Literature Centre Student Poetry Prize in May of 2021 for her poem, “When Honey Drips.” Lush with illustrative text, the poem is both visceral and educational, as it depicts the battles and the beauty of being Black in a modern context.

“For poetry that is directly correlated to my activism, I hope people take something away,” says Caruso Dixon. “At the end of the day, that's something that I hope for all of the poetry that comes out—that it invokes a feeling in people. And because of that, they either do some internalized work or they do research on it or they just question what they've heard and how that's affected them and how that will continue to affect them.”

The subject of Blackness has entwined itself in her writing even in high school, where she participated in the Bellerose High School Slam Poetry Club under the instruction of Karen May Healey. Her passion for words grew as she surrounded herself with peers equally interested in poetry. 

In 2018, still a high school student, she performed her piece “A Regular Occurrence” at the St. Albert Mayor’s Celebration of the Art in 2018. In the work, she mediates on a confrontation with a stranger who has asked her to leave a café, summarizing the poem by calling it her resistance.

“Particularly for my activism, it's obviously very focused on the Black community—how my place in the Black community feels and looks, and how being Black within the world feels and looks,” she says. “It's not something that's easy to share. A lot of Black people who do come to the events, when they do hear poetry about either Black activism or Black pain or Black joy, you can see that there is a wave of emotions that goes through their face. I love that and I love that they're able to connect to it so strongly.

“Something else that I find really interesting about it is that you can see a different type of wave of emotions go through people who are non-Black. I'm not in any way saying that that's who my poetry is for. However, I think that it's important to have those people there because I want them to understand and to have at least some starting point—to feel something that will incite them to want to make change.”

While she shares her unique voice through her poetry, she also works hard to elevate the voices of others through the open mic series she founded, entitled Zion. Started in 2018, recently Zion has faced the same issues all events have faced in the pandemic, but Caruso Dixon persists, hosting the open mic when it’s safe to do so. Welcoming of a variety of art forms, including music, performance art, storytelling and, of course, poetry, with Zion, Caruso Dixon is focused on creating a supportive atmosphere for artists to share their own unique experiences.

“I was brought up off of the concept of community,” shares Caruso Dixon. “Even if you are not necessarily doing well, you have people around you that can support you, that are, regardless if they're truly family or if they're part of a family that you made for yourself, they'll be your community and they'll be the people that you can lean against. I think that for me, that has always crossed over into the way that I write and the way that I'd like to participate in life. So I really care about the perspectives, the opinions and the way that people see life in my communities.”

For both her writing and her commitment to the arts community, she’s nominated for the St. Albert Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts in the Emerging Artist category, which will be celebrated this April. While they might seem like separate endeavors, when it comes to Caruso Dixon’s work, the community building and the writing are inseparably interwoven.

“For a long time writing only came when I was in a state of emotional turmoil,” she says. “It really played on that concept of the starving and depressed artist and then when you get into these very large communities, it slightly changes. Over the past couple of years, community has definitely been the output that I find the want to write and the inspiration to [write].”

For more information about the upcoming St. Albert Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts, stayed tuned to the website for announcements and update.

For updates on Zion events, follow the Instagram account.

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