ORIGIN

BegonY’as began as a rant poem written after I was deliberately excluded from a music improvisation group I’d played with, and for three years had been the only woman who’d regularly shown up. The man who engineered my exclusion had unplugged my microphone mid-performance, saying “Round sounds only.” I was improvising, making the vocal sounds central to my practice – part beatbox, part vocable, part scat, part breath. The sounds he silenced are the sounds that belong in BegonY’as.

I’d just returned from Vancouver, where I’d nursed my guy Lyle through his fatal leukaemia. Lyle was Plains Cree – a Knowledge Keeper, language carrier, residential school survivor – descended from shamans and hereditary chiefs. BegonY’as was seeded in my grief – born in the rawness of loss, and the immediate experience of returning home only to be excluded and silenced. I felt oppressed.

I wrote the poem, and privately shared it with some people. I read it to a friend, she told me to keep going. Six months later I performed it for the first time. A young man in the audience told me he was mesmerized by my performance. 


EVOLUTION

The piece kept growing – and kept attracting the very forces it named. After performing an early version at a private jam that had welcomed me for several sessions, I was suddenly no longer welcome. It evolved from “Begone the Man” to “Begone the Boys”, then – after neighbouring boys accused me of witchcraft while I rehearsed – it became BegonY’as. I then took it to Victoria’s Haus of Owl Poetry Night that was calling us ‘to bring your wild’. A woman in the audience asked: “What’s BegonY’as? It sounds like Begone – a witch’s word.” I’d never thought of it as a spell, but the people hearing it did!

At that same open mic, I also performed a second new poem “Fabulously Fat”. It uses two voices to explore fat shaming and clinical obesity. Afterwards I was told I could never again perform that piece in their space, and “No, I don’t want to discuss it.”

These were two comeback poems written after a long grief-filled silence (in the preceding eight years I’d lost my mother – June; my best friend in Victoria – Gloria; my childhood friend in England – Jane; then my guy – Lyle) and both poems were silenced by the communities that should have held them. I truly felt oppressed.

I put Fabulously Fat aside, and kept working BegonY’as. In 2025 I took it public again, improvising live with musicians at NorthPark Open Mic. Afterwards a woman sang the finale back to me, and I knew my poem was starting to find its path. Every subsequent performance has refined it further: audience members prompted me to shift banishing ‘isms’ to the Oppressor Alphabet; one person called for more rhymes in the introduction; another told me I need to tell them I’d made the costume. The linked video (scroll to the end of this post to find the link) shows the first part of the performance has become, the results of my working with their feedback. This responsiveness to audience is characteristic of how I work, and how BegonY’as grows.

ROOTS, KNOWLEDGE AND THE BODY

I carry knowledge in my body, in my blood – a sense I’ve held since writing my first poem at age ten, playing in Nova Scotia woods and performing one-girl cabarets in boathouses along the tidal river of my childhood. My partner Lyle also held that connection. I inherited his ceremonial drum and rattles. Last year I joined the Bradley Family’s Unity Drummers at the Victoria Native Friendship Centre to deepen my understanding of Indigenous drumming and vocables – to add that sensibility to my practice. I’d long wanted to build on what I’d learned from Tanya Tagaq in 2006, at the Vancouver Folk Festival, where I’d met her and she’d spontaneously invited me to breathe and vocalize with her. That brief encounter planted the seed for what I now do, and what needs to fully emerge in BegonY’as.

THE PERFORMANCE

BegonY’as is a masked, costumed, spoken word, participatory performance. The costume – handmade, covered in fabric blooms – is itself a transformation: old pantyhose, and a ruffled top dyed pink, a white lace jacket dyed green, repurposed flowers from a Hawaiian lei stitched petal by petal onto an old green, ruffled skirt – making me a begonia.
The performance guides the audience through the Oppressor Alphabet – naming and collectively banishing oppressors, letter by letter, with the audience invited to add their own. It culminates in the Blooming Begonias finale, where the audience joins in song and free improvisation:
“…the fuzzy wuzzies start to thrive, each dancing, singing their own tune, watching the Begonias bloom-ing in every colour…bloom-ing out, outside’a da box..” (excerpt BegonY’as copyright Alison Boston 2026)

CURRENT STATE AND DEVELOPMENT GOALS

The piece is actively evolving. The linked video, filmed at Government House Gardens, predates the newest audience participation moment: “I’m a Begonia – what are you? I have a friend who tells me they’re a SweetPea, another who says they’re a frog, what are you?…”

Other ideas in development shall, for the moment, remain private! Come see BegonY’as at the Commie Bop, join in the Oppressor Alphabet, and let loose joining in the Begonias Blooming finale! Talk with me after…I’m open to receiving your feedback.