Girouard Avenue, copyright Stephen Morrissey 2009, Coracle Press (Montreal), 80 pages. The Girouard Avenue that Stephen Morrissey offers us is no mundane stretch of pavement and cold-water flats under a pale sky. It spans an ocean and centuries, reflecting […]
Blue Poppy, copyright Ilona Martonfi 2009, Coracle Press, 72 pages In Ilona Martonfi’s new book of poetry, the title offers us a riddle that we have to figure out for ourselves. The poppy is not red, it is some […]
February 18, 2010 For Elisa Zlami, the burden of her fractured leg just got heavier, literally. The day before, Marc, an ortho-tech at the General Hospital in Port au Prince, came immediately to her tent, “Post Op 3”, after I asked […]
http://www.haitianalysis.com/2010/1/29/the-land-that-wouldn-t-lie-foreign-intervention-in-haiti Reprinted with permission from Haiti Liberte. An abbreviated version of this article first appeared as ‘The Land that Wouldn’t Lie’ in the New Statesman, 28 January 2010, at http://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2010/02/essay-haiti-france-colonial Nine days after the devastating earthquake that struck […]
February 9th, 2010 Slande flew out of Miami two days after the Haitian earthquake struck. She is a nurse at a Ft Lauderdale nursing home, and her home country was devastated. “Well, I had to come” she explained. Slande went […]
“Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not simply due to the bad influence of this or that individual writer.” — George Orwell George Orwell had a sixth […]
Literature has always been important, is still important and will continue to be important for as long as human beings have a speech centre in their brain. And were an errant blood vessel to flood this important area of […]
Often inflated and possibly misleading, the titles I chose for my college Lit essays were always picked last and were usually the invention of unpardonable puns and last-minute panic. In my first and second year, those amateurish instincts did […]
The novel encourages – a form of storytelling that promotes our sense of being individual, but never forgetting the bond of our “common humanity” and of the “universal experiences” that we believe the best novels elucidate and comment on. – […]
Quebec’s Robert Lepage and his company, Ex Machina, collaborated with Theatre Sans Frontieres to bring Lipsynch, to The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2009 Next Wave Festival (Oct 3-11). It would be an understatement to state that this production transported […]
Samira sat on the floor of her adobe hut studying her hands as carefully as if she were plucking a daisy or reading the constellations on a bright night or counting the drops of water that dripped […]
In October 1975 Roy Lowther was charged with the murder of his wife, Pat, a gifted and renowned Canadian poet, when her two young daughters, Chris and Beth, were seven and nine. In this film, the two women […]
WOMAN WILLING TO DEFEND HER HOTEL – MEXICO CITY [ZOCALO] HOTEL ISABEL 2003 I was invited to Mexico City in the fall of 2003 on a research and production grant from the Conseil des Arts et des […]
In the tradition of Sadat Hasan Manto: A man by the name of X hopped from one shelter to another telling families that the enemy had crossed the line and to be prepared for the worst. When he […]
I met him in a dream. It was a bar, and I sat staring into the long mirror as he pushed his way in. He stood listening to the creaking back and forth of the swinging doors at his […]
Stealing Nasreen by Farzana Doctor, Inanna Publications and Education Inc., May 2009, 230 pgs. Every immigrant to the western world knows, or knows of, a cabdriver who was a brain surgeon or fiscal economist in his homeland. The narrative […]
Hope- For them hope is a rubber tyre around their necks Someone will douse kerosene and strike a match Dear Dr. Singh, how long does it take for rubber to burn fully? Does it burn […]
Le fils de madame Locarno a écrit un roman. Mon dieux dite-elle, à tous ceux qui l’interpellent Cette vie fructueuse à Sas Fé, là, où les montagnes Hérissent le dos un contre l’autre Une énorme famille qui somnole […]
The woodcutter’s daughter was not the one saved when he split open the wolf. Hero to someone else, heralded for his selfless deed, he wandered away, seeking greatness and fame. Crumbs eaten, stones grown moss […]
So poet, you think you’re a mystic? With oars of words and boats of paper you navigate the gentle waters churning them this way and that But deep waters run silent and I wonder if your oars […]
Given it starts me reading, Letters on a page open up with meaning, With someone else’s words who was hoping, To let others know what they were thinking. My friends usually will be thumbing, Might see how […]
Why do Jews have to be circumcised? Christ was a Jew before the Christians arrived, Yet Catholics tend to remain intact. You can pray all day, But you’ll never get your foreskin back. Yes, I know about hygienic concerns. […]
They say home is where the heart is. Or is it the hearth? Or both? What constitutes homelessness? Are people homeless because they brought it upon themselves, as some would argue, or because they have no choice, as mounting evidence […]
I almost took a Sculpture class once. The first assignment which was to create an outdoor installation and my idea was to address the manner in which a person who lives on the street becomes perceived as being of […]
If homelessness of an individual or family is a tragedy, homelessness of millions of people must multiply that tragedy millionfold, mustn’t it? Here’s a recipe for disaster. Take a city of eight million people, destroy forty per cent of […]
Twenty five years ago a man strolled by me on Viger Street in Montreal. I figured he was a drifter. He looked straight ahead through his round John-Lennon glasses. He had a slight stoop to his walk. For a […]
The Soloist. Written by Steve Lopez and Susannah Grant. Directed by Joe Wright. Starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. The Soloist could have been easily called The Duo since it is the true story of how Los Angeles […]
Short video clip of my friend Edward Charles Lewis. Ed was my inspiration for writing for this article. He is 54 years old and is a homeless man in and of Chicago and has been homeless off and on for […]
In the middle of the 9 a.m. newscast I have to leave for work, which is a shame. They’ve just started a story on a heroic rescue in New York. Something about a subway train. At a quarter […]
