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IQALUIT - Singers and musicians are on stage every night in major southern cities, but the hippest cafes and clubs make space for spoken word artists.

Taqralik Partridge practises spoken word on stages in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and beyond. She writes and speaks about life as an urban Inuk. - Daron Letts/NNSL photo

Taqralik Partridge is plugged into Montreal's spoken word scene.

The passionate poet performs in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, around the country and around the world sharing words about urban Inuit life and things Northern.

She shares firsthand and secondhand observations and experiences collected from her life growing up in Kuujjuaq, Que., and Rankin Inlet.

Her subjects are bold, intimate and challenging. In Battery, Partridge riffs about conjugal violence.

The slow cadence of her voice as she performs the piece makes the sound of the words as haunting as their disturbing subject. In another poem she celebrates the late Iqaluit songwriter, broadcaster and beloved personality Charlie Adams.

Eskimo Chick is an irreverent ode to the strength and spirit of young Inuit women that incorporates a throat song heartbeat between verses.

Partridge has played with poetry for a long time but she got into spoken word performance about four years ago. She had been living in the south for about six years before she heard Toronto hip hop artist Camau doing spoken word. Her passion was piqued.

"I was just blown away," she said. "I really liked it. I went to see him in Toronto and saw a whole bunch of other spoken word artists and said that's something I want to do. I had been writing poetry but I hadn't written anything for performance so I started writing stuff that I wanted to perform. I kept talking to people about it and people started asking me to perform and then I started getting gigs."

Partridge has appeared on stage at spoken word festivals in Canada, Norway and Wales and will soon tour as a throat singer with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.

She also works with an Inuit cultural institute in Montreal.

"There's a whole range of experiences (for Inuit in the south), but for most people it is really difficult when they first come down," she said.

"Some people come down for hospital (visits) and they get stuck there and they have a difficult time of it for a long time.

"There are homeless people and people with major substance abuse problems. It's a real culture shock. When I first came to live in the south there (was) sensory overload.

"There's too much stuff. Too many people. It's like you want to try everything and you go kind of wild. But among the challenges are opportunities."

Life in the south provided Partridge with access to other artists and ideas, pushing her to explore new creative expression and take artistic risks.

"There's so many different influences that you can draw from and I found it's really important to hook up with other artists in the field that you're in," she said. "I think it's probably the same for any artists - you come out of a really small community in the North and everybody knows everybody. I write stuff not about particular people but I'm always afraid that people are going to think 'Oh my gosh she's talking about such and such, what the hell is wrong with her?'

"When I first started performing I was kind of nervous that Inuit would hear and think 'What the heck is she talking about?' Some of the stuff I talk about is pretty heavy."

Her fears abated after performing in Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet and Nunavik.

"The response was really good," she said. "A lot of the restrictions you have expressing yourself as an artist in the North are self-imposed because you don't want to step too far out of the box."