"Don't care what people say. Don't give a damn about their laws." - Edith Piaf
Influences
Reviews
"Reminiscent of Miranda July and complemented by a deadpan delivery, Alland's words are at once both drolly funny and sweetly strange." - Lock Up Your Daughters, Glasgow Spring 2009
"This is not My Coming Out Poem of Pain, this is Sandra Alland's brilliant Beckett cut-ups...The images come so fast you sometimes feel like a Slinky falling down the stairs, yet the emotion and intention are clear, moving, and often funny." - The Skinny, 4-star review, Edinburgh, December 2007
"Alland’s poetry flies, and it is full of her life’s intelligence and emotion, social and political connection." - www.rabble.ca, Toronto, September 2007
The following are excerpts from the show and zine "A Spot of b)other", currently showing at Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art. Collaborators include Stuart Crawford, Nathan Gale, Jennie Kermode, Y Josephine, Janet L, Nine, Kika O, Penny Stenhouse, Alison Smith and Kristiane Taylor.
Sandra Alland is a Scottish-Canadian writer, multimedia artist, performer and activist. Her poems, plays, stories, articles, photographs and films have been published and presented across Canada, the US, Mexico, Bermuda, Scotland, England and Spain.
Sandra has published two books of poetry: Proof of a Tongue (McGilligan, 2004) and Blissful Times (BookThug, 2007). Recently, she's been writing short fiction, and has published in Toronto magazines and journals including This Magazine and Broken Pencil. Edinburgh's Forest Publications recently released a new chapbook of her work, Here's To Wang, which sold old in three months. Sandra also appears in the recently-released Can't Lit: Broken Pencil's Best Of Fiction anthology (ECW Press, Fall 2009).
Besides being known for text-based work, Sandra has a reputation for innovative multimedia and sound poetry collaborations and performances. She currently works with the poetry-music-video fusion group Zorras. She is also the founder of, and a co-collaborator with, b)other, a collective of Deaf and disabled LGBTI visual artists, filmmakers and writers who currently have a major show at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow.
In the UK, Sandra has read, shown and performed at such places as Soho Theatre, Oxford Playhouse, Bar Wotever, Aye Write! Festival, Kabarett (Voodoo Rooms), Museum of London, GayWise Festival, Bongo Club, Edinburgh Fringe, VoxBox, Manifesto Politikal Kabaret, Street Level Gallery, The Hidden Cafe, IDAHO at the GRV, Club Welto, Who's Your Dandy, The Golden Hour, Edinburgh Queer Mutiny and The Forest Cafe. In Canada, she has featured at over 150 series and events, including Pivot, Test Reading Series, Contact Photography Festival, Mayworks, The Ottawa International Writers' Festival, The Hillside Festival, Gallery 1313, Word on the Street, The Mariposa Festival, Scream Festival and Pride Toronto.
Also a micropress publisher, Sandra advocates for the protection and nourishment of independent publishers and bookstores. sandraslittlebookshop, for which she is editor and translator, has published five chapbooks and one book, Some Poems By People I Like, and now has an online presence with More Poems By People I Like.
AHA! Gigs! That's the stuff chaps. The fuckers will rue the day...Highest regardations from the sots over the seas. See you in August, come hell or high watery officials...
Oh, wait -- what is the boat? Is the boat where we're reading, maybe because the store doesn't float if there are too many people -- is there smoke anywhere near this boat? Please tell me tell me tell me...
We (royal, obviously) have begun to make some hideous sense of our page. Please to tell us how to demarcate bold and otherwise, as we are technological nitwits, and feel we are giving credence to words and sentences that do not warrent it. Good stuff, by the way, begorrah! Am beginning to actually LIKE performance poetry. If yer doing it, that is.
Is business still shite as usual? You, poncing about on yer bike. Doing human-type-things. I am tempted to turn your room into a roller-disco, in your absence. I should say something nice about yer poetry here....ahem...Alland's work provokes a disturbingly visceral jolt that is best offset by the copious consumation of wine. A more agressive yet subtle "spoken word" poet hath rarely been seen or heard. Smarmy eh? Have been reading yer work over..bloody marvellous stuff. Hats off! Where's the fecking wine..
