Welcome to Tick Talk, formerly known as Talk Time! Tick Talk is CiTR's weekly spoken word check-in. This week, we have excerpts from a lecture about women who fight in the guerilla militia's of Kurdistan, as well as a poetry reading by a CiTR volunteer.

David Usher has been a volunteer with CiTR for over one year. He is one of our most senior volunteers, and wants to share stories from his life through his passion for poetry. His experience is rich and varied, exploring themes of familial love, self-exploration, patriarchy, and pain. He writes and selects the poems he would like to share, and then we record them together and I edit them for air. The poems we heard today were:

My Friend David - By Toni McGregor
Tyra at two, already an artist
Thirteen, a birthday poem for Ella
Eric
Two Hours
Domineer

On Sunday September 13th, Simon Fraser University's Institute for the Humanities hosted A panel discussion about the power of female fighters in Kurdistan from both the Canadian and Kurdish perspective. Female fighters in Kurdistan are called the YPJ, which is a branch of the leftist People's Protection Unit militia. This group is quite controversial, but they have been one of the most effective units actively fighting ISIS on the ground in the MIddle East for the last few years. The presentation centered around the story of the Kurdish people, and a photo and video presentation done by Hanna B?hman, a Vancouverite who volunteered and fought for the YPJ militia this year. In this piece, you will hear excerpts from the panel discussion. Hanna Bohman and Nissy Koye, a Kurdish activist, discuss Hanna's experiences in Rojava, and the way women are treated in the militia. Following this is a short interview by Eleanor Wearing with Nissy Koye.