Tartan Turban Secret Readings #51

​We are delighted to welcome you to our 51st Tartan Turban Secret Readings, curated by Gavin Barrett. Featuring Pamela Mordecai, George Elliott Clarke, Rabindranath Maharaj, Gavin Barrett and a posthumous appearance by Mayank Bhatt (TTSR's co-founder), presented by friends and family.

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​Pamela Mordecai has published eight collections of poetry, five children's books, and a collection of short fiction, Pink Icing first published by Insomniac Press and recently released as an audiobook read by herself in ECW Press's Bespeak Audio Editions. Her debut novel, Red Jacket, was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Award, one of Canada's top prizes for literary fiction. Mordecai is well known internationally for her children's poems, which have been widely anthologized as well as used in language-arts curricula in the Caribbean, India, Malaysia, UK, USA, and West Africa. A veteran anthologist with several collections to her credit, she has a special interest in the writing of Caribbean women. She has published numerous language-arts textbooks for the Caribbean, most of them with the late Grace Walker-Gordon. A play for children, El Numero Uno or the Pig from Lopinot, had its world premiere at the Young People's Theatre in Toronto in 2010 and its Caribbean premiere at the Edna Manley School for the Performing Arts in Kingston in 2016. With her late husband, Martin, Mordecai wrote Culture and Customs of Jamaica in a series edited by Peter Standish, originally for Greenwood Press. A trained language arts teacher with a PhD in English, she was for many years publications officer in the Faculty of Education, UWI and publications editor of the Caribbean Journal of Education . She has also worked in media, especially television. In 2015, Mordecai was filmed reading her first five poetry collections, as well as some poems and stories for children. You can access the video recordings at Memorial University of Newfoundland's Centre for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. She lives in Toronto and has three children and a granddaughter.

​George Elliott Clarke was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, near the Black Loyalist and Afro-Metis community of Three Mile Plains, in 1960.  A graduate of the University of Waterloo (B.A., Hons.,1984), Dalhousie University (M.A., 1989), and Queen’s University (Ph.D., 1993), he is now the inaugural E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto.  An Assistant Professor of English and Canadian Studies at Duke University, North Carolina, 1994-1999, Clarke also served as the Seagrams Visiting Chair in Canadian Studies at McGill University, 1998-1999, and as a Noted Scholar at the University of British Columbia (2002) and as a Visiting Scholar at Mount Allison University (2005), and as the William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor in Canadian Studies at Harvard University (2013-14).  He has also worked as a researcher (Ontario Provincial Parliament, 1982-83), editor (Imprint, University of Waterloo, 1984-85, and The Rap, Halifax, NS, 1985-87), social worker (Black United Front of Nova Scotia, 1985-86), parliamentary aide (House of Commons, 1987-91), and newspaper columnist (The Daily News, Halifax, NS, 1988-89, and The Halifax Herald, Halifax, NS, 1992-2016).  He lives in Toronto, Ontario, but he also owns land in Nova Scotia.  His many honours include the Portia White Prize for Artistic Achievement (1998), Governor-General’s Award for Poetry (2001), the National Magazine Gold Medal for Poetry (2001), the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award (2004), the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellowship Prize (2005), the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction (2006), the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry (2009), appointment to the Order of Nova Scotia (2006), appointment to the Order of Canada at the rank of Officer (2008), appointment as Poet Laureate of the City of Toronto (2012-15), appointment as Parliamentary [National] Poet Laureate (2016-17), appointment as a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (2017), and the receipt of eight honorary doctorates.

​Rabindranath Maharaj is the author of six novels and three short story collections. His novel, The Amazing Absorbing Boy, won both the Toronto Book Award and the Trillium Book Award. In 2012, Maharaj received a Lifetime Literary Award as part of the commemoration of Trinidad’s fiftieth independence anniversary, and in 2013, he was awarded Canada’s Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. His books have been published in Canada, the US, the UK, the Netherlands and Turkey. He is the co-editor, along with Dionne Brand and Tessa McWatt, of Luminous Ink: Writers on Writing in Canada.

​Mayank Bhatt's novel Belief was published in 2016 by Mawenzi House. The novel explores youth radicalization and alienation and the impact of terrorism on a family in the context of the failure of the immigration and settlement framework in Canada. Trachea, his collection of short stories was published posthumously in 2025 by Mawenzi House. Mayank Bhatt immigrated to Toronto in 2008 from Mumbai (Bombay), where he worked as a journalist. His short stories have been published in TOK 5: Writing the New Toronto and Canadian Voices II. In Canada, he worked as a security guard, as the Chief Administrative Officer of the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce and as an organizer for the Festival of South Asian Literature and Art. He lived in Toronto with his family and passed away after a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer in the summer of 2022.

​Gavin Barrett is a poet, creative entrepreneur, and the author of a collection of poems titled Understan (Mawenzi House, 2020), a CBC Books recommendation. He was born in Bombay and lived in Hong Kong for several years before immigrating to Canada. Gavin’s poetry has been published in The Brave New World of Goan Writing & Art 2025 (CinnamonTeal, India) Reasons for Belonging (Viking Penguin India), an anthology of 14 Indian poets; The Joao Roque Literary Journal; the Pen India journal; The Folio; The Independent (Bombay); The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad; and Poiesis, the Bombay Poetry Circle journal. He was a contributing writer to This|ability, a book on Canada’s art brut and outsider artists. He is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of idea consultancy and brand advertising agency Barrett and Welsh. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Canadian Authors Association (Toronto), PEN Canada and is EDI co-chair of The League of Canadian Poets.

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​About The Tartan Turban Secret Readings

​In good weather, Barrett and Welsh hosts a (not so) “secret" reading series on its rather lovely open-air office rooftop deck or in its large open-concept studio space in Toronto. In winter, our readings migrate online in a virtual reading format that accepts writers from across the country and can be attended from anywhere in the world.

​The Tartan Turban Secret Readings feature poetry, drama and prose readings and celebrate Canadian multicultural writing created by IBPOC writers. The idea is to provide a platform for IBPOC writers with few such platforms. At the same time, all writers who want to celebrate Canada’s multiculturalism, literary diversity and Indigenous heritage and have talent to share are welcomed.

​Curators change from reading to reading. If you would like to curate an evening, contact Gavin Barrett, who is the series curator.

​Tartan Turban Secret Readings are variously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the League of Canadian Poets, The Writers’ Union of Canada and Barrett and Welsh.

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​Open mic

​Anyone attending is welcome to read or perform (if you are a musician) in our limited-room open mic sessions. If you are a writer or musician who would like to perform in the open mic session, we ask that you listen in to at least one session to get the flavour of the evening and join in on your next visit. To participate in TTSR #51, please contact curator Gavin Barrett. This allows us to line up open mic readers and manage the evening in a way that respects each writer's work. These are first-come, first-served spots.

​The ambience at our readings is intimate, extremely informal and very supportive. Open mic readers are given 4 minutes in total, including a brief introduction to themselves and their work. Detailed open mic guidelines are posted in our FB group.

​Open mic readers who have published works they would like to offer for sale are free to mention these upon finishing their readings.

​Smile, you'll be on camera ​​The sessions are photographed, filmed and streamed on FB/YouTube live and recordings will eventually be posted on YouTube and the series website. Please be aware that by attending this event, you agree to be photographed and/or filmed and give permission to use your likeness in promotional and/or marketing materials.

​About Barrett and Welsh

​Barrett and Welsh is a minority-owned, creativity-powered, change-making advertising and branding agency that puts ideas first to make ideas last. A certified B Corporation, it uses design and advertising to create access and inclusion for racialized minorities and persons with disabilities.

​Accessibility Barrett and Welsh donates its beautiful open-concept office space as a venue for the readings, but the offices are on the top floor of an old townhouse that was converted, pre-AODA, into the more modern office building it is today. Unfortunately, this means the office is not wheelchair-accessible as there is no elevator and the stairs are fairly steep. We do our best to accommodate anyone with mobility needs, but this is mainly limited to helping them up the stairs or carrying assistive devices up for them. If anyone attending is hearing-impaired and lets us know in advance, we can arrange for the pieces being read by the featured writers (if they consent) to be projected. We also live-stream each reading to make each session accessible to audience members who cannot attend in person.

​About the series co-curators

​Gavin Barrett is the series curator of the Tartan Turban Secret Readings, which he co-founded with the late Mayank Bhatt in 2017.

​Mayank Bhatt's novel Belief was published in 2016 by Mawenzi House. The novel explores youth radicalization and alienation and the impact of terrorism on a family in the context of the failure of the immigration and settlement framework in Canada. Trachea, his collection of short stories, was published posthumously in 2025 by Mawenzi House. Mayank Bhatt immigrated to Toronto in 2008 from Mumbai (Bombay), where he worked as a journalist. His short stories have been published in TOK 5: Writing the New Toronto and Canadian Voices II. In Canada, he worked as a security guard, as the Chief Administrative Officer of the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce and as an organizer for the Festival of South Asian Literature and Art. He lived in Toronto with his family and passed away after a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer in the summer of 2022.

​Gavin Barrett is a poet, creative entrepreneur, and the author of a collection of poems titled Understan (Mawenzi House, 2020), a CBC Books recommendation. He was born in Bombay and lived in Hong Kong for several years before immigrating to Canada. Gavin’s poetry has been published in Reasons for Belonging (Viking Penguin India), an anthology of 14 Indian poets; The Joao Roque Literary Journal; the Pen India journal; The Folio; The Independent (Bombay); The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad; and Poiesis, the Bombay Poetry Circle journal. He was a contributing writer to This|ability, a book on Canada’s art brut and outsider artists. He is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of idea consultancy and brand advertising agency Barrett and Welsh. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Canadian Authors Association (Toronto), PEN Canada and is EDI co-chair of The League of Canadian Poets.