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 the last 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 at that time – part beatbox, part vocable, part scat, part breath. The sounds he silenced are sounds that belong in BegonY’as. They’ll come back and get there – eventually – it’s a reawakening, rebirthing, re-sounding process!

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 by one man who’d taken control of a public jam I’d jammed with off and on for the last ten years! 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 (again I was the only woman who regularly showed up to jam), I was suddenly no longer welcome. I figured it was the “Begone the Man” phrase, so changed it to “Begone the Boys”, then – after neighbouring little boys, listening at the wall, accused me of ‘cursing’ them while I rehearsed – it became BegonY’as.

I then took it to Victoria’s Haus of Owl Poetry Night that called poets ‘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 that woman and those two little neighbour boys sure did!

At that same poetry night, 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.” Shortly after that, I had my beta membership – which management had invited and encouraged me to apply for, and had expeditiously granted me – cancelled, and my key taken away.

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 communities I’d trusted as an artist, and 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. I then started taking it to Victoria’s Commie Bop where it met a truly supportive audience and gave great feedback! One audience member pointed out that not all ‘isms’ are bad, so I switched banishing ‘isms’ to banishing oppressors with the Oppressor Alphabet; another said, when learning I’d made my costume: “You need to tell us that! I want to hear that!” That same night, Buckman Coe co-hosted with bop founder Wes Carrol, and said to me afterwards:“You need more rhymes in that intro sistah!” Using their feedback, I wrote a rhyming intro which you can hear in the linked video (scroll to the end of this post to find the link). This responsiveness to audience is characteristic of how I work as a performance artist, 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 LaHave River of my childhood. My guy and good friend Lyle also held that connection. I inherited his ceremonial drum and rattles. Last year, seeking to deepen my understanding of Indigenous drumming and vocables, to add that sensibility to my practice – I joined the Bradley Dick Family’s Unity Drummers at the Victoria Native Friendship Centre. 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 was experimenting with when that man unplugged my mic, and what I’d like to develop to fully emerge in BegonY’as. You can see a couple very early versions of this exploration in my performance piece, created during the pandemic, With Nature, In a Tree.

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 – one pair dyed green another dyed pink – 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 – all come together to make me appear as a begonia.
The performance invites the audience to imagine themselves as garden creatures, and to call out the names of what they are; then guides them through the Oppressor Alphabet – where they get to call out and banish by name, letter by letter, the pesty oppressors buzzing in our garden! The performance culminates in the Blooming Begonias finale – a work-in-progress – where the audience joins in song and free improvisation:
“…with the pesty oppressors gone, the garden starts to thrive and all the fuzzy wuzzies come alive, 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.