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Defending Her Hotel

    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 […]

The Honorable

   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 […]

Lash

   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

 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 […]

1984 Widow Colony

          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 […]

Parallèles et palpitations…

    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       […]

Hero

      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 […]

The Poet

    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 […]

Shelf

    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 […]

The Great Foreskin Debate

   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. […]

Home is where the heart is?

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 […]

The Berth Series

  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 […]

Homelessness – A Matter Of Choice

  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 […]

The Soloist

  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 […]

Corn

            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  […]

My Corner of Paradise

  The glare from the neon lights bores through my eyelids making them flutter. I fight  back and force them shut. They flutter again and one sleep-crusted edge disengages from its counterpart with a subliminal pop. Re-entering my dream is […]

My Daughter, Marisa

  With nails that curved over toes. Her limbs, limp, her eyes vacant. She took her acoustic guitar to music lessons. She attended art courses at the Douglas Hospital for the mentally disabled. She had lived in shelters and foster […]

Filling a crying need and shaking the myths

 Yves Engler’s The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy   When long-time Liberal “busboy” and former “rat-packer” Don Boudria was briefly minister for International cooperation and the Francophonie, he invited me to lunch during “Development Month” in 1997 to get […]

Theatre Review: Truth and Treason

 Truth and Treason by Rahul Varma, Directed by Ariana Bardesono, September 8-19, 2009, Studio Hydro Quebec, Monument National, Montreal. There is no denying that Truth and Treason is politically compelling. The shooting of a ten year old Iraqi-Canadian girl at […]

Art and Democracy

In November 2008, I saw a theatrical piece by Dave St. Pierre at Theatre La Chapelle in Montreal.  The piece was entitled “Warning” and it was produced by Mandala Situ.  It was my first exposure to the choreography of Dave […]

Unspoken Words

Artist Biography: Self-taught in traditional photographic practice, dating to the 1960’s, David Duchow switched to the less-polluting digital in the late 1990’s. In 2001 he began to flip images, creating a Rorschach-like mirrored result. Central to his work is the […]

Art IS democracy

Art is Democracy ! Acknowledgements: 1)The Design of Dissent, Milton Glaser and Mirko Ilic, Rockport Publishers Inc. www.rockpub.com 2)Paper, Paper Publishing Company, New York, www.papermag.com 3)Jean-Michel Basquiat, by Richard Marshall, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York I am strolling […]

Interview with Martin Duckworth, documentary filmmaker.

Biography: Montreal-born Martin Duckworth came to filmmaking from a background in history. Duckworth was on staff at the National Film Board of Canada from 1963 – 1970 and since that time, has made films there as a free lancer. He […]

Audioscapes by Mike Wozniewki

  Artist Biography: Mike Wozniewski is a designer and developer of interactive software for the arts. As a freelance researcher, he maintains collaborations with several recognized institutions and works with many creative minds who likewise seek to push the boundaries […]

“The Noise/Silence of Lasting Peace”

  “The Noise/Silence of Lasting Peace” [after seeing Yoko Ono “Imagine” exhibit in the Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal] @ 2009 by James Cockcroft   End wars by noise of revolutionary multitudes. Enduring silence.

Fight-Flight-Freeze

  When a person experiences invasion of any kind, one of three phenomena happen: Flight, Fight or Freeze. Any degree of aggression, force, trauma, violence, and post-traumatic stress, triggers the nervous system to react in one of these ways.  Modern […]