Hoda Adra is a spoken word poet and filmmaker with a practice rooted in writing as resistance and self-inscription. Born in Lebanon, raised in Saudi Arabia and adopted by Montreal, this triangle inspired her first album “La liberté des sens”, a rhythmical account of an Arab female body crossing worlds way too fast. Using performance as a pledge against erasure, Hoda examines notions of planetarity versus self-censorship through storytelling, somatic inquiry and the voice. Her writings explore gender apartheid, oral history abortion and politics of marginalization and their links to feminine motricity. Poetically drawing on phenomena from childhood, psychogenealogy and quantum physics, Hoda seeks to transmit that our hearts – when constellated – can become spaces of collective reimagining.
Alumna of the Banff Centre’s Spoken Word Program and New Media Institute, Hoda’s writing and video work has been supported by the Canada Council for the arts and the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec. Performances and screenings include the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, Nuit Blanche, FQD, Place-des-Arts, FIFEQ, RIDM, Montreal Stop-Motion Festival, les Halles de Bruxelles, and she once brought home the silver medal at the Quebec Grand Slam. As an antidote to words, Hoda can be found spilling paint.
Listen to her spoken word album here: https://www.h-o-d-a.bandcamp.com