With the arrival of February, preparations for  Black History Month are underway in Toronto. Black History Month is meant to celebrate the social, cultural and political accomplishments of members of the African diaspora in the face of adversity.

Is spoken word poetry or music?

Spoken word is often an unnoticed, underrepresented art form; is it poetry? Is it music? It's hard for the uninitiated to tell. As novice spoken word artist Billy Ferguson puts it, spoken word can be most simply defined as "emotion meets language." Something even the most unpoetic and artistically-challenged of us can relate to.

For those who don't know, acclaimed science fiction author William Gibson was the first person to use the term "cyberspace" and has  written some of the most innovative work in his genre to date. Born in rural South Carolina, he was orphaned at the age of 18.

It takes surprisingly little to convey the tragic story of Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad. For those who are familiar with the novel, its transition to theatre may at first seem questionable, especially since much of the novel consists of Penelope's monologues about her life.

ROM exhibit explains the real importance of sacrifice and weird calendars

The ancient Maya are well known, but not well understood. In popular culture, Mayans are frequently misrepresented as a culture that practiced human sacrifice en masse, or a culture with uncanny predictive powers.  Archaeologists, however, see them as ingenious astronomers, timekeepers, farmers, and warriors.