Song of the Sybil: fifth lesson The Sybil foretold the end will come. The house deserted. Broken grey barn wood fence. The family beyond Curé-Clermont Street. Mount Royal foothills. Split into layers. Perennial river grass. Parched earth. Not […]
Aging Fine lines grace your face, Your eyes, beautiful Remain so, As you age. Self-conscious, You gently turn your head. A blush, Lightens your years. I remain smitten. The nectar in your eyes Flows through, My insides. Over the […]
REFLECTION the tree that stands near the edge of the pond sees the deep blue abyss into which it would one day tip and fall without end THE SKY IS FULL OF SHINING STARS […]
In the next issue of Serai – an exclusive Serai interview with Syriza on the hopes and aspirations of the young and the old of Greece. Please check back. Image Source
[Montreal Serai received this comment from architect Michael Fish on Roger Jochym’s LOST URBANITY and Serai editors think Fish’s remarks are sufficiently pertinent to appear as an article. We hope the debate about this project will be ongoing. […]
[The Beautiful West and the Beloved of God, Michael Springate, Guernica Editions, 2014] Michael’s Springate’s first novel, The Beautiful West and the Beloved of God, is a powerful book set in Montreal and Cairo in the year 2008. Mahfouz […]
My mother hated her wedding dishes. These dishes, of fine china with a lavender floral pattern numbered E2904 from Henry Birks and Sons department store, had been given to her by her family when, at twenty years old, she had […]
[Holy Fools + 2 Stories, Marianne Ackerman, Guernica Editions, 2014] Holy Fools + 2 Stories is Marianne Ackerman’s first book of short fiction. Ackerman, who is the founder and publisher of The Rover an online magazine of art and culture […]
For several thousand years, the dominant view of the arts and literature has been that they imitate reality. Even in the 21st century, well after the normative idea of mimesis has been challenged, toppled, and made fun of – […]
[Mara Grey explains the origin of her interview, carried in this issue of Serai, with Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) the world-famous Argentinian writer of fiction, poetry, essays and translations. In Grey’s words: “I returned to Buenos Aires in 1980, after […]
Gods and Monsters is a series of paintings based on manipulated images of symmetrical trees. These trees appear somewhat hallucinatory –simultaneously commonplace and supernatural – both “tree” and “not tree”. I want the work to provoke viewers to […]
I share a room in the geriatric ward With another who can speak A language everyone understands. I feel my body shrink My mind grow in anticipation of a visit I try to hold Try to keep Try […]
To Gertrude MacFarlane, in memory Edith peers down the long shadowed nave of the church. There is only a sparse sprinkling of people seated close to the altar. She has heard that her former neighbor, Andrew McIntyre, spent […]
LIT 101 The dawn, drawing itself up the brick wall, begins conjuring graffiti out of the dark that bore it. A blocky weave of leaning letters, bursting with blood orange arrows, shock red spikes, and vampire violet […]
The Situation The McGill University Health Centre at the Glen (the MUHC) is a mega- complex on the western edge of downtown Montreal. It is the agglomeration of a number of hospitals into one immense entity: the Montreal […]
(*unmâd is a term in the Bengali Language, which is used to designate a totally insane but intellectually possessed person) I knew she was scanning me. Everywhere people are watching. From tall bank towers, security cameras and […]
LA LECTURE (Quatuor de quatrains n̊ 72) Je lisais dans mon lit des romans d’aventure, Une torche à la main, dessous la couverture. C’était une façon de sauter la clôture Dans l’univers où je fuyais par la […]
ATWATER STATION The man in the metro yelled hoarsely to his rush hour captives: “Ma tante Denise has a nice cottage on a lake. Do you know my aunt Denise? She has a beautiful cottage.” This man asked […]
A day doesn’t go by now without reports that disaffected Western youths—some as young as fourteen—are joining or trying to join the Islamic State because they hope it will provide them with a sense of purpose. One might wonder if […]
AUTUMN LEAVES Autumn leaves have been falling, falling near and far. So silently they fall, they make no sound when they fall and hit the ground where standing over them dressed in dark suits are trees in […]
When I think of those who have called me a whore–– lovers, liars, taxi drivers, strangers, men who knew me but didn’t, women too. In a rage, my father, my mother. Those grasping for the scourge that will always […]
Unsteadily into the light a bumblebee sipping nettle flowers now in shatters on a field her party dress partially burned organza, silk tulle becomes just another trope for the scarred and sunken sound of a whipping wind: […]
Loren Edizel was born in Izmir, Turkey, formerly Smyrna. In The Ghosts of Smyrna Edizel deftly interweaves the small and the large: the story of a single family with that of a community; a description of the neighbourhood where […]
We are very average women in the way that we wake up and make up ourselves in the morning. We are very average in how we are working towards our dreams by educating ourselves and living raw experiences, and never […]
Abstract art is always hit or miss, and although taste in any creative form is entirely subjective, the merits and quality of abstract works are arguably harder to qualify. Ideally, the culture of art appreciation would be devoid of the […]
If you were to ask me how my summer went, I might answer you that I traveled to Portugal, to Porto, the city of my birth, and there, for the first time, met family members whom I grew to love […]
The leaves are red, deep red, burgundy, bright yellow, baby green light, crispy brown, dark green, orange mixed with red and yellow. The leaves stick on the windows of cars on the tires and our shoes. The rain and the […]
http://www.nouveaucinema.ca/ *** Review by Mirella Bontempo The Kindergarten Teacher, Nadav Lapid Nira, a middle class Kindergarten teacher, seems banal at first, kissing each student every morning as they enter the classroom to stroking and caressing children during naptime, a practice […]
Beliefs are strange phenomena. They define our values and principles. Some of us hold them close to our hearts, whereas others reject them as baseless and unreal. Although they inform our most important social systems, they are neither rational nor […]
The 10th Montreal International Black Film Festival – 10 MIBFF – closed on September 28 with the screening of Half of a Yellow Sun, a United Kingdom/Nigeria coproduction. It is based on the novel by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie […]
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