I have to get up close and personal with the feijoa tree...
Contributors
In Arabic, “wholeness” translates in a word that lifts when you say it rather than falling in your chest like in English.
“The land belongs to the indigenous Palestinians — Muslims, Christians, Jews and others — whose forebears are the Canaanites. Did this Promised country fulfill its promises to you as it did to those of European origins?”
How are we affected as we witness the savagery, the carnage, this unbearable, ceaseless attack on an already deeply traumatized people?
This is an auto-fictional story. It is not romantic. No palatable packaging. Just a complex series of nuanced, semi-fictional, real and raw events.
We can’t understand each other’s words—I am a stranger she wants to welcome into her wavering world...
Aren’t crows sentient, intelligent, social and repenting? Why wouldn’t the first one be able to create the stars and the moon to illuminate the night, the darkness of the mind, its tenebrous ignorance?
It was Nelson Mandela who told our leadership that the hardest negotiations are sometimes with your own people and how crucial it is to maintain unity.
That the burden of peace should lie with the occupied rather than the occupier is one of the great and absurd myths of the colonial age.
a path of olive trees filled with booming laughter now whispers beneath a barrage of bombs.
When we're all in bunkers on Proxima Centauri b, who’s to say we won't destroy those oceans...?
God sits next to her in the playroom as I distribute plastic pizza slices detached at their Velcro hips.
Almost like a badua, the lyrics to the title track from Tranie Tronic’s latest album are saturated with power.
Every now and then, a wisp of memory invades that foggy space between sleep and waking in the middle of the night.
Behind every Palestinian life taken is the kinetic force of a thread-link snapped and the First Law of Thermodynamics is always at play.
They say we should get over our grief in a year, like a light switch, turning on, turning off. But it doesn’t work like that.
The balm of Appalachia, the comfort of all the neighbours knowing my business -- how did it all go so wrong?
At 54 poems and less than 80 pages of text, you might be forgiven for assuming that Peter Taylor’s latest collection of poetry will be a fast read. You would be wrong.
The spontaneity of painting “natural” or “ordinary” landscapes is deeply embedded in my neurons.
I felt like there was no room to do things that were experimental and interesting and, at the end of the day, revolutionary, and that the community sector was essentially there to just patch up things for the government.
He was the loneliest man on earth. His words were not even listened to by anyone.
Why did a hip-hop artist suddenly become a threat who had to be arrested in order to be silenced?
Resistance, as the Wobblies used to say, should be the polite response to oppression.
Works of art reveal themselves to me, rather than my creating or composing preconceived notions.
A flash protest at the MoMA shows that what is happening in the world and within art spaces is intrinsically linked.
Slowly, the majority vote like idiots / And let idiots rule the majority / Slowly they make films like Namesake / Of Mothers left behind
I have an identification card that I try to keep hidden in a drawer at home. It’s a constant reminder that I am not de-colonized, not self-determining, not free of Canadian paternalism. Welcome to the world of the Indian Status Card.
Long before “sustainable development” became fashionable, Indigenous philosophy always considered the impact of decisions on the next seven generations.
Wednesday the banks shuttered, the shop shelves went majestically bare. Not that it mattered. We were out of work, our currency not worth its paper.
What are the impacts of belonging to a certain social class?
As I mourned my father's death, I wondered how my family would cope with this tragedy in a politically fraught nation.
The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia is touted as the first radical revolution of the 20th century by those who have forgotten that the Mexican Revolution of 1910 preceded it by seven years.
May we never forget that we all belong and share the space – that is Mother Earth.
Avelia glances back at Sister Marie, who nods slowly, her arms folded across her habit. Now Avelia knows: this lady is The One.
Using lint as her "go-to material," Justine Béliveau's selected works speak to realities beyond the surface.
We turn people into caricatures of themselves. It simplifies things for us.
Is it an aspiration whose unattainability is borne out by the divisions of our present moment?
Biomimicry highlights nature's lessons on collaboration and growth, urging a return to our foundational roots.
Let the beautiful world we’ve inherited remain beautiful for those, be they human, flora or fauna, who come after us.
Phases of the moon. Again mirrors. Worlds in her.
At the end of the day, death is just the shadow that follows life from the beginning
A critique of India's economic and ethical crises, urging engagement with its future amid upcoming elections
An interview with the director and members of the Debajehmujig Theatre Group and Storytellers
The wonderful thing about casual sex is how casual it is, so whenever offered, I take the deal.
In this interview with Winston Smith, James Oscar delves into the fugitive language of jazz.
Our guest editor shares his take on blues, jazz and beat as fugitive literature and an array of contributors, from DJs to sound artists.
Serai editor Jody Freeman digs in to the Indigenous roots of blues and jazz.
A conversation with sound artist, choreographer and performer Jassem Hindi.
Poet-guitarist Paul Serralheiro pays respect to Montréal’s historic jazz artists.
Montréal writer and musician Paul Serralheiro interviews renowned deejay and jazz educator Andy Williams about the potent role of jazz in education.
My truth is in the black / Call a spade a spade / When I see it clear I’m calling that
Naomi Klein conceived the idea for this book when the public started confusing her with a feminist author turned right-wing conspiracy theorist.
Unveiling Israel's structures of segregation, confinement, surveillance, and restrictions on freedom in the occupied West Bank
A delicate interplay between the fragility of life and the nuanced dance of relationships
This edition honours Maria Worton, a cherished Montreal poet and activist from Eau Secours and Échec à la guerre.
Maria Worton was fearless, compassionate and committed to social justice. She was funny, brilliant and sometimes enraged.
In the shadow of history, Iranian women's bodies bear the scars of intergenerational grief
Dark Sky Preserves are protected areas around the world dedicated to protecting the night
It’s 1991, barely a year after the Oka Crisis, and I’m with other Commonwealth Fellows visiting South Pacific island nations.
Something alive under the snow makes it shiver like it’s asking not to be shovelled, scraped, or salted.
Even though both of my parents are alive, much of my childhood was spent in a special orphanage
For more on Kathryn Jordan’s writing, photography and events, or to buy her book, please visit her website.
It seems now more than ever that we are faced with crises upon crises
Caroline Vu's third novel follows a war orphan in Saigon and his Vietnamese mother and African-American G.I. father
I had to dive fully in and swim around the poems as in a vast coral sea
Passing the gatekeepers four times with the rite answers we left you there in the garden
Susan Neiman is director of the Einstein Forum and a member of both the American Philosophical Society and the Berlin-Brandenburg Akademie der Wissenschaften
Against a global backdrop of discrimination against transgender, non-binary, and queer individuals, the late Rana Bose proposed our latest editorial theme.
If from Every Tongue It Drips (2021) explores distance and proximity, identity and otherness, through the daily interactions between two queer women.
A vibrant processions resonates down Ste. Catherine Street. Tiziano Cruz, from Jujuy, Argentina, reveals a nation all too eager to erase its Indigenous history for a whitewashed image.
In an Urdu poem, Iftekhar Ahmed expresses love and acceptance for his trans child, bridging cultural heritage with the language of understanding.
Kalpesh Oza's journey from India to Canada unfolded in three pivotal returns.
Montréal poet Katharine Beeman shares two poems about quantum entanglement and binaries.
The Myth of Normal expands the narrative beyond individual and family issues, delving into societal pathology and systemic analysis.
Struggles over recognition of personhood are rooted in the history of colonialism and private property. Indigenous worldviews of “Our Relations” – the land, and mountains and waters; the sky, sun, moon and stars; the trees, plants and rocks; the birds, […]
A Conversation with Chief Jean-Charles Piétacho Innu Council of Ekuanitshit, Québec Introduction Chief Jean-Charles Piétacho, who has fought for his Innu community and its ancestral territory of Nitassinan for over 30 years, spoke to Serai editor Jody Freeman on December […]
My name is Alix Van Der Donckt-Ferrand. I was born in 1995 and I live in Montréal. I make drawings, objects and music under the name La Cucurucha. Many of the images I draw have a synchretic component, a mixing […]
Note on the poems and images Poems originally published in Swedish in Vad jag saknades här (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Lejd, 2018). English by Nicola Vulpe. Images from the series philosophy of a tree by Gazelle Bastan (2022)
Saeed Teebi’s masterful collection of nine short stories delves right into the many nuances of the Palestinian community in Canada.
In Farzana Doctor’s first poetry collection, each part contains a different exercise followed by a haiku response.
Collections of Yahia Lababidi’s Verses and Aphorisms: Desert Songs and Learning to Pray Yahia Lababidi describes Desert Songs as “a slender love letter to the deserts of Egypt.” The poems in Arabic with English translations by Osama Esber and photographs […]
When the Editorial Board framed the theme statement for this issue of Serai on Nationhood, we asked in the opening paragraph, “What does nationhood mean today for the First Nations and other Indigenous peoples, who strive to navigate forward in […]
Introduction Dans les semaines précédant cette entrevue avec Yves Sioui Durand, en août 2022, des intervenant·e·s autochtones de tout le pays ont multiplié des actions interpellant le pape François à réfuter la Doctrine de la Découverte. Ce concept colonialiste européen […]
Haïti gained independence through a revolution led by those who experienced slavery firsthand.
They say books are on their way out – and who reads anyway, especially poetry? They say humans will either be done in by wars or melted down by climate change, or be replaced by cyborgs. They say a lot […]
“Lock and load!” I started noticing The Gateway Pundit clickbait site in late 2020, when the comments sections beneath the articles in that prominent far-right news-and-conspiracy webzine were full of posts urging people to head to Washington well-armed to take […]
To start out, I have taken great pains to not consult academic or internet classifications of the subject that I have chosen to write on, and have allowed my mind to wander and evolve. As a result, there may be […]
“The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” — Steve Bantu Biko I remember. I probably shouldn’t, but I do. It’s a distant memory. Still, like my parents and their parents before them and so […]
Introduction Panj, a solo performance seamlessly combining storytelling, spoken word, song, images, video and original live psychedelic-rock-fusion music, premiered in Montréal at the Festival Accès Asie (Asian Heritage Month) in May 2022. The show is based on creator Himmat Singh […]
Mount Everest: She was a mother hen and the other mountains were chicks under her wings – Tenzing Norgay Shimla was where I wanted to be, like nowhere else in the northwest Himalayas – where the houses stood on precipices, […]
Montréal Serai m’a invité à commenter ce livre, non pas en tant que spécialiste de l’Inde, du maoïsme ou des Adivasis (peuples autochtones de l’Inde), mais plutôt en tant que membre intéressé du public. À la fin des années 1960, […]
When I think of India, I think of many things: of broad fields dotted with the innumerable small villages; of towns and cities … of the magic of the rainy season which pours life into the dry parched-up land and […]
Montréal Serai invited me to comment on this book, not as someone with any particular expertise on India, Maoism, or the Adivasi (Indigenous peoples in India), but as an interested member of the public. In the late 1960s, when I […]
Admittedly, vigilantism may not be the first thing that comes to mind for most when thinking of pop culture, but that doesn’t make the two any less intertwined. From movies to comic books and beyond, the theme of justice is […]
Sometime in the late fifties, as a 10-year-old child in what was then known as Calcutta (now Kolkata), I wandered around in the neighbourhood I grew up in and would stop at a books and comics store, which was nothing […]
Walls You tell me you are not like me. Nor am I like you, but obliterating my thoughts, my feelings, my senses was not yours to do. It was my place as well as yours and if I chose not […]
Artist statement Working quietly for decades on a singular pursuit is what draws me, letting the pieces speak for themselves. This body of work is a study in power and refinement. For more on Eric James Jensen’s artwork, please visit […]
Caveat: There is a reason I’ve largely avoided the Italian crime thriller/poliziotteschi genre all my life. That’s what Tele-Italia aired on Montréal’s defunct ethnic TV channel, along with La Piovra mafia series and commedia sexy all’italiana (Edwige Fenech, Banfi or […]
If you were coming home at night and saw a group of people burning down your house and attacking your neighbours, your first inclination would likely be to call 911 and contact the police. But what if you realized that […]
Pororoca Do you hear the lament of the deep riverwhere you played as a childlaughed when youngand in which you drown today? Playful shorestickling water lettucesexcited crabshiding in the warm sandwhere you dipped your feetfreelyyour cleaned handsoverflowingwith the fullnessof the […]
plink, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip plink, drip, drip drip drip drip I hate the sound of raindrops on the roof. So insistent, loud, abusive. Noise is invasive— overpowering the senses. Angry noise dominated my family. As a child, […]
“Poetry’s appeal is rooted in emotion. It tends to chase people away whenever it becomes too cerebral.” Michael Fraser Author Mayank Bhatt interviews award-winning poet Michael Fraser, whose third collection of poems, The Day-Breakers, was published by Biblioasis in April […]
Over a year ago when our editorial team gamed out our upcoming issues, we decided that the theme for this April 2022 issue would be “Out of the Ashes.” The concept was based loosely on the idea that […]
[Serai editor Jody Freeman interviewed Vice-Chief Sipi Flamand from the Atikamekw Council of Manawan in early January 2022. The Council of Manawan and the Atikamekw Nation Council spearheaded consultations in the Atikamekw community and the larger Québec community, […]
Chernobyl II Revelation 8:10-11 “… the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.” We are the Chernobyl babushkas wearing black kerchiefs. We are the ones with radiation sickness. We are […]
[Editorial note: Serai editor Rana Bose was intrigued by the autobiographical story submitted by Miriam Edelson, from Toronto. “Intrigued” would perhaps be the wrong word. It was more of a sense of resonance with a time in the […]
AT THE END OF THE YARD Because after much meandering I’ve determined the world is that new bicycle, its chrome menace: Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, that hill. And because we laid out the table in the garden, […]
[Serai editor Kerry McElroy had the pleasure of interviewing Guy Sprung about his father, Mervyn Sprung, whose philosophical writings strike an evocative chord in our current era of extremes and hegemonized mindsets.] Kerry: You are the son […]
Recently, I read a collection of reminiscences on the hunger strike of 1981 carried out by republican prisoners in the north of Ireland. The hunger strike began March 1 and ended October 3. During those seven months, 23 […]
On the evening of January 29, 2017, a white Franco-Québécois gunman entered the Islamic Cultural Centre of Québec City (ICCQ) after Isha prayers, and murdered six Black and brown Muslim men. Survivor Hakim Chambaz was there when his […]
I will say it outright: Fear the Mirror, Cora Siré’s newly minted collection of linked short stories, is the most emotionally satisfying book that I have read in a long time. The author takes readers through the aftermath […]
Concertina Think of all the times you haven’t been thwarted by your teeth and tongue, your clavicle and ulnas, femurs and gut. Body says, This one’s on me. Brain says, What’s remembered lives; It’s alright not […]
Ann Eriksson’s Urgent Message from a Hot Planet is a heartfelt plea for all of us to do our bit, however little, to save the planet from global warming. In fact, author Eriksson contends that the term “climate […]
“Just Food,” the theme of our current issue, slyly downplays the power of food by dishing it up as utterly ordinary. The very idea of “just food” may, in fact, be an oxymoron. The humbleness implied by “just” […]
Ecosystem restoration and sustainable agriculture are two sides of the same coin and must go hand in hand.
POEM OF THE UNFINISHED SANDWICH Tomato slice, white baladi cheese, rye, a bite taken from one end, crumbs. An ant trudges her burden across the blue countertop. Ah, if only you’d listened! Ah, yes, if only […]
Sunlight filters through the treetops and spills onto our cobblestone road as I roll down my window and let the cypress-scented breeze flow in. Everything rattles inside, including my Cat Stevens cassette tape dancing in the car-door pocket. […]
Hands remember the skills and patterns of a lifetime. Text and photographs © Joseph Kary
An interview with Ossie Michelin Introduction Telling Our Twisted Histories is a popular podcast series focusing on all things First Nations, Inuit and Métis, co-produced by Terre Innue and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 2021. Created and […]
Green String Beans Long thin beans on slender stems, fresh, smooth velvet carefully picked, weighed, lifted. Carried them as she did the signs of fading youth. Softened each one gently from ends, Prepared, diced into tiny circles, pearls in […]
For the foods we chow down on every day, labels and nutrient values do not tell us enough about the history of their evolution or the processes used in their production. When we eat, we don’t always know […]
I read Wendell Berry’s The Farm on a rainy afternoon in late July. It took me fifteen minutes, and I enjoyed it. Then I began to think back to the first time I heard about and read other work […]
Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda wrote a passionate ode to the humble onion, acknowledging its importance as a staple food both for poor and rich. Marie Antoinette showed up her (wilful?) ignorance when she urged her subjects to eat […]
a thread of history, a thread of legacy, a thread of continuity in cycles, rhythms, tradition and culture
You see, the story people don’t realize is, we didn’t know we were making history.
Someone would light the incense, and sounds began: the tanpura, sitar, sarod, tabla, with a different person practicing in every room.
It is a particular history that we in Africa, and Indigenous peoples, have endured.
And you’d ask: Why do you write about fetuses and swallows, “Ciuri, Ciuri”? Flowers, Flowers.
The reunion of Sarah and Cohen as pupil and teacher at the age of 59 and 80, respectively, forms the heart of the memoir.
I wanted to make a soundscape with the rhythmic patterns of my father’s voice and cadence, as well as his poetic presentation.
She was one of a handful of women of colour working in an industry full of white middle-class men. So she felt that it was up to her to carve out her own identity.
I would close my eyes and watch the shadows play behind my lids while the vibrations molded and shaped my dreams.
I adjust my non-existent headphones and I add castanets, maracas, timbales, and I try to change the beat
dans la sculpture comme dans la musique on retrouve la forme, le mouvement, le tempo
This repudiation does not go as far as rescinding the “Doctrine of Discovery,” which is what many Indigenous leaders have been demanding.
A group of oil-on-canvas camel herders in Rajasthan, a number of plants sent from different parts of the Middle East and Africa to Montréal by mail, a black-and-white photograph of the longed-for “velvet hush of a foggy evening,” […]
Making artwork is my way of making peace with the inner battles that haunt me. I don’t belong anywhere, but I belong everywhere because of it.
Tell Mother, I’m Home is a series of images and text that I have been working on since May 2018. The photographs, previously manual – both film photographs and instant film/Polaroid – have been digitized for the series […]
In the 70s, Perú was blooming with all sort of audacious ideas, from feminism to social rebellion and sexual liberation. It was feast time for poetry.
Introduction Displaced Garden is the latest work of Montréal-based Iranian artist Anahita Norouzi, exploring the legacies of botanical exploration, plant-collecting and documentation inherited from colonial scientific expeditions. Taking the form of a photographic book containing 18 cyanotype impressions of […]
An interview with Roxann Karonhiarokwas Whitebean [Editorial note: Montréal Serai editor Jody Freeman interviewed Roxann Karonhiarokwas Whitebean in mid-May 2021, before the heart-rending discoveries of the unmarked graves of 1,148 children on the sites of former Indian residential schools.] Jody: […]
In my early school days, I was frequently sent out of class and instructed by the teacher to draw pictures on the walls of the hallway in chalk.
When Jordan, another member of the team, was given a model of a brontosaurus, he drew a seven-legged creature. Why?
I come from a thousand light-years beyond the dark twilight of Earth, a planet today corroded by ambition and destroyed by so many shambles and fights over territorial and ethnic powers and other foolishness of the human species. […]
There is a particularly treasured moment towards the end of the film where one of the men speaks in Purépecha, Michoacán’s beautiful native language.
Artist’s Statement All through my training in sketching and painting, I was inspired by Bargue and Gérôme’s Cours de dessin to reproduce what I saw in real life and the natural world. Included below is one of my sketches […]
Leandro Urbina est un des plus grands écrivains chiliens de notre époque. Et voilà que Julie Turcotte, une jeune traductrice montréalaise, pour sa première traduction de l’espagnol (Chili) vers le français, a choisi le premier livre de l’auteur, Mauvaises fréquentations (Las malas juntas).
After we learned to live with the plague, we learned to survive without the city’s darkness, thanks to the curfew. It is clear what we have lost in this pandemic: lives, loved ones, health, jobs, businesses, fearlessness, spontaneity, the […]
This compilation of poems and short prose pieces by marginalized Honduran writers reflects the diversity of intent and life experience of the authors themselves.
Introductory note: The term “conflict” play is occasionally used as a form of shorthand to describe the nature of the plays depicting the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The Palestinian community at large rejects the description of their reality as a […]
The affair quickly blew up into a media-and social media- driven frenzy, triggering resignations, condemnation, a petition and calls for boycott.
Easily Fooled, by H. Nigel Thomas Guernica Editions, 2021, 293 pages It does not matter how sharp and on top of things we are, we have been duped and hoodwinked too easily at some point in our lives […]
Los Nombres de Las Flores (2019) Director: Bahman Tavoosi (79 minutes) Genre: Fiction Language: Spanish Greenground Productions Amid the majestic terrain of Bolivia, a poetically sublime film unfolds. The Names of the Flowers / Los Nombres de […]
One Madder Woman, a novel by Dede Crane Freehand Books, 2020, 360 pages The year is 1858, the place, a Parisian suburb. A family of five is having breakfast. There is Papa, M. Morisot, the patriarch, a chief advisor […]
In this significant departure from the beaten path by our editorial board, we chose to dispense with the “theme statement”
to chase transgression, tussle demons in a private show
A stilled world, living in frames?
indeed, her keen sense of mortality heightens an anxiety-edged but ecstatic awareness that this is it
It is a celebration of the oral and spiritual traditions of the first poets of what today is known as the United States of America
There is a vital energy pulsing through this winter issue of Montréal Serai. It radiates off the landing page, with the vibrant art of Leah Kanerahtaroroks Diome, who is from the unceded Kanien’kéha:ka Territory of Kahnawake. In her […]
The effects of intergenerational trauma on both my family and community are felt every day.
The way I see it, I’ve made choices in a context that was imposed on me.
Sáasil didn’t know how to write at the time, so she told the story to María, her mother, in a combination of Mayan and Spanish, and then both of her parents helped her transcribe it.
What are the ethical concerns with bringing Indigenous languages into cyberspace?
They were right in front of us and I was shaking so much I almost shot my dad’s Ski-doo windshield.
Independence from British rule did not really improve matters for either the Dalits or the tribespeople as a whole.
Durant la nuit, j'ai peur. Durant la nuit, je vois des ombres. Durant la nuit, les démons sortent.
Today is a rainy, slushy, windy, still-winter grey day, and my mood matches the weather.
I felt more keenly aware of being a visitor and a guest here on this land — something I had always known instinctively.
“We were all family: witches, tricksters, what the ancients call cycles, balances and harmony.”
Globalization, as a phase of capitalist mutation, received a punch in the face from COVID-19.
Along these lines of racism, the pandemic brought to light some of our more troubling social reflexes.
The pandemic also confronted society with the nature of work.
Lax’s stories further the journey of questioning pre-pandemic “normalcy.”
Do you think that this is a turning point or a turning away from the notion of de-regulation, globalization and so-called free trade?
thin figures twisting, pleasuring, labouring....
a moving collage of essays, conversations, aphorisms, poems, interviews and reflections
There is the disease, and it’s scary enough, but even scarier are the underlying policies, and those that are improvised as we go.
Four hours later, they were intubating Karina for the ventilator.
What does it say about us that we resist the grief expressed in this play, displacing it into wishful thinking about a better king?
“Through removal and erasure of the paint from the surface of the canvas initially covered in blue, the final imagery appears as the result of an uncovering.”
I wake up one morning with Macbeth’s line trotting through my head like a horse round a manège
experimental poetry communicates changing times while remaining timeless
A plague forces us to isolate, sequester into our spaces without the shared moments that make us social creatures.
No oxys, no benzos, no sleeping pills, not even a bottle of Percocet.
Saw a police car this morning on my way back from the laundromat, driving around looking for signs of trouble.
In the past couple of years, we have all discussed and dissected, with intensity, the man-made climatological changes that have hit our earth. It has become frustratingly clear that it is not enough to debate the science, the […]
Photos by José Luis Aranda with commentary by Claudia Itzkowich The southern part of the Chihuahua desert is home to Wirikuta, the sacred land of the Wixáritari, who carry out ritual pilgrimages from the remote mesetas where […]
Stardust and Moonlight: A Love Poem Beaches built of melted Sun. Iridescent air Lavender thoughts sprinkle Yearning on sun-whipped skin Oceans shout to the shore, “I will sing to you of love.” Waves recede with a kiss. […]
We too are wild In the past year we have seen hundreds of kangaroos flee bush fires in Australia, half a billion birds and reptiles perish, and many people lose their homes or in some cases, their lives. […]
I Bob Carty’s Arctic report and how it froze my heart Scientists do not write in the first person, since their findings seek to reflect processes that unfold beyond the vagaries of human will. When they say that […]
He walked among the trees. They smelled good. He had rarely taken the time to notice. The smell was a counterpoint to that tendency to see only the claustrophobic solitude of boreal forests. In the winter the forests […]
Dhrupad of Destruction I see Nataraja dancing on a lofty hill, to the sound of crushing ice, Melting glaciers and rising seas. Primordial forces unleashed. From the dark corners of the earth, I hear the eternal rumble of Chaos […]
Eocene Time of rising temperatures the dawn horse gallops on primitive hooves greeting the day’s heat with hunger and teeth grinding small-brained toward longer-limbed progeny expanding onto the first grassy plains no mountains to snow on but coming on […]
TAKEWING a.m., written and Illustrated by Brenda J. Wilson. FriesenPress, 348 pages TAKEWING a.m. is Brenda J. Wilson’s first novel, although she has a long track record as a media producer, librarian, photographer and educator. She also wears […]
Dusk On Loukes Lake (for Kathleen) thin spirits of mist rise immobile on a lake flooded to ice by the calm water bugs skate in circles to a waltz of their own signature my canoe glides on the echoes of […]
Editorial note: Charles William Johnson shares some of his intriguing and controversial research into ancient art forms, with special reference to the legend of Pan Gu as it appears in both Chinese and Maya cultures. He describes how transparencies of […]
Along the south bank of the River Thames strode a sunken-faced man carrying a small book. The man, only thirty-nine years old, was meditating on life and death as he walked down the waterfront promenade. His eyes, bruised […]
Perhaps scientific understanding and artistic imagining are different aspects of the same impulse. And humanity’s great understanders and imaginers are inspired from similar sources. Jack Klein That science informs art is patently obvious: painters and sculptors studying anatomy […]
Montréal Serai editor Claudia Itzkowich visited Amanda Woolrich in her studio to prepare this piece. An etching press presides over Amanda Woolrich’s apartment/art studio in Mexico City. Next to it hangs Amanda’s camera, looking down from a rustic […]
Call of the Loon Come back. It’s cold here without you. When I bend my neck to drink there is no reflection in the water. Come back to the wild. When I call your name it ricochets off […]
My father’s death defeated me; I felt robbed by it. It didn’t come as a surprise because he had cancer, lung metastases to be exact, and we were told at some point that he had a month left […]
Mitochondrial Eve A plague of poppies: salmon, tomato, apricot. Some years I save the seeds, audible in upright cups, and carry them, carefully, to make two lemon cakes, eat all those flowers. Flowers that are as famous as […]
When we say first principles, we claim we are going down to the basics. To a fundamental truth. Being totally iterative, methodical and without prejudice. We are arriving at a fundamental principle. Scientists are not supposed to assume anything […]
Turbulence it’s not the breath, in or out not quite breath’s only the boundary sneaks past smooth ebbs on laminar silent it’s where streamlines retch mouth shot off with plosives, or trills eddying deep into passionate night where breath […]
One reason to go to medical school can be a letter from a university congratulating you on a successful application, with the suggestion that you bring your thinking cap and your running shoes. So long, Dostoyevsky; hello… Galen, Harvey, […]
I I find her hunched in her chair a wizened crow wrapped in a food-smeared bib porridge drying on her mouth and chin. Her hands are bony and translucent and her nails curl back on themselves like talons. She […]
The zeitgeist of our times is characterized by creativity and innovation, particularly in the fields of art and science. A question often pondered is where these two fields intersect. Do they touch each other at a tangent? Do […]
Cardinal Flower Red flash— a few sprigs puncture the monotony of brown-green bog, never-ending evergreens and skeletons of cedar. I know you, skulking in the wetlands between bridge and dam, around the island, beneath the boulder’s shoulder, under jack […]
ODE TO HIPPOCRATES Who’s Hippocrates, I know, in Crete or someplace else – calling out to the Sirens, the Sea’s own and asking you for healing ways, the mind or spirit’s, not the body’s own. Oh, the body, and […]
“In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos. And […]
Snow Is Falling Snow is falling. The earth turns white. Its new skin is as smooth as silk. The sun hides behind a veil. I stay confined inside my shelter while the cedars run between the houses and collect […]
Summernote V Call her goddess of heath and yellow gorse. Tell her you have left the moon unlit. Snuggled into its folds. Swamp-fed forest creeks. Grafted to fen carr, sedge grasses. Dwarf blackberries. See if she believes you. […]
The South Asian Film Festival of Montréal (SAFFM) was launched in 2011. Since then it has established a reputation for showcasing quality documentary and feature films from India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, as well as films about the […]
Cheeky Mathematics He and she fuse their cells with the sticky glue of their warm juices Two cells become one which then divides and multiplies until one plus one adds up to ten perfect little toes Baby trades […]
Is there a contradiction between performance as entertainment, performance that is essentially an esthétique of form, beauty and years of extraordinary cultivation of skills, and performance that is by itself an act of change, designed to disturb? For a moment, […]
Writer, performer and griot Koulsy Lamko directed the Centre Universitaire des Arts in Rwanda from 1999 to 2002, in the aftermath of the genocide of the Tutsis. After handing the project over to students, he continued to support and visit […]
Teesri Duniya Theatre was established in 1981 by Rana Bose and me as co-founders. Others involved were the cast and crew of the company’s launch production, Badal Sircar’s Julus. At the time, there was no other South Asian theatre company […]
Stanley Février’s art gets under your skin. It calls you and keeps calling. It engages more of you than you know. Heart and mind and spirit remember. Flesh remembers. You feel the expanse, the height, the depth. The […]
1. Circumstance and sorrow had aged me by the time I found my way into the fire-blighted wood scorched by flames rising up from an earth ravaged by explorations for oil, its water table plundered relentlessly by impulses […]
The 29th edition of the Montréal First Peoples Festival (Présence autochtone) unfolded from August 6 to August 14. On this occasion, it celebrated diversity and creativity through a combination of visual arts, film, music, song, poetry and gastronomy. It […]
Montréal actor Howard Rosenstein in conversation with Serai’s Rana Bose Serai: Good afternoon, Howard! The theme of this issue is Performance as Change. I will begin, though, with a slight diversion. I’ve come across your opinion on […]
What We Remember: Poetry that Reframes History Lisa Bird-Wilson combines two forms of remembering in The Red Files. Her poems mix archival sources with oral history to reconstruct the stories we tell about the residential school system and its […]
I am nobody else’s version of who I am You cannot set your mind based on my looks alone There is no language that defines me Do not box me in Because I am my own I choose not to be enslaved […]
Run J Run, Sokol’s latest novel, was published in May this year by Renaissance Press, a publishing company whose roster features writing that doesn’t fit into a standard genre, niche or demographic and which hopes to uplift marginalized […]
Sometimes it takes just a moment to realize that one is in the presence of greatness. Meeting Habib Tanvir was one such moment. In 1992, I went to India to visit my parents. My husband Rahul Varma, who runs Teesri […]
Québec has just passed Bill 21, which bans many Québecers from holding positions of authority in the public service ostensibly to extend the appearance of ‘neutrality’ of the state. There has been a loud cry of praise for protecting […]
We are still here Aimé, us the niggers of the north An otherness-nothingness imprisoned in our minds by our colour I have heard of white writers who claim to be bush niggers they live outside the high prison […]
Being Chinese in Canada: The Struggle for Identity, Redress and Belonging by William Ging Wee Dere Douglas & McIntyre, 2019 (400 pages) A life of struggle for redress from Canada’s systemic racism From 1885 to 1947, some […]
My Undiscovered Country by Cyril Dabydeen, Mosaic Press (2018), 129 pages Cyril Dabydeen is a Canadian writer born in 1945 in Canje, Guyana, where he worked as a teacher. He came to Canada in 1970 to study at Lakehead […]
Ma voix se dévoile Je me souviens lorsque j’étudiais le chant classique au Collège Ste-Croix. Thérèse, ma professeure, me répétait sans cesse de relâcher ma mâchoire pendant que je chantais. Elle était si rigide et si tendue qu’elle rendait […]
In Which, Being Book One of the Chronicles of Deasil Widdy by Louise Carson, Broken Rules Press (Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Québec), 2018, 152 pages “Their long horns drooped and they seemed half asleep, unable to feel his presence. Perhaps I am […]
The history of music is all about borrowing and building on the work of predecessors, whether it be Griots keeping old stories alive and telling the stories of their time, or Johann Sebastian Bach traveling to hear Buxtehude’s […]
Me Artsy, compiled and edited by Drew Hayden Taylor Douglas & McIntyre, 2015 (256 pages) The best way to enter into the spirit of this luminous collection of essays is to quote what Drew Hayden Taylor, its compiler and […]
Conception, photos, commentary: Tilak Seth, Keya Dasgupta and Subhendu Dasgupta English text: Nilanjan Dutta
My grandmother died in 1969 at the age (I think) of 89. My brother and I weren’t expected to go to the funeral and neither of us now can remember exactly when it was. My grandmother had become […]
Vibration before sound, that’s how it starts. You could be at school, at home, anytime, anywhere. You hear mumbling and feel your lips twitch as you mouth words. Keep on your noise-cancelling earphones, never go anywhere without them. Listen […]
Seven Mountains For my maternal grandmother That moment when you see spring on your windowsill you have lost your sister, ceramic pot yellow daffodils, nodding buds. Wilted petals. Ruffled trumpet. Shriveled and fading that moment when news […]
Veteran war correspondent, Robert Fisk, speaking to a packed house at St. James United Church in Montréal in 2015, reflected on ISIS and the colonial history that has fomented justifiable resentment across much of the Middle East and […]
The Lingering Past Identity is not a simple phenomenon. The farther back in time we go in studying the question, the more limited the number of groups there are to study and the more simply those groups are organized […]
Depuis le tournant du siècle, nous assistons à une montée alarmante de l’extrême-droite et d’un racisme décomplexé, pas seulement au Québec mais ailleurs aussi, notamment en Allemagne, en France, en Italie et aux États-Unis. Il est vrai que les […]
Démarche artistique Le travail intérieur qu’exige la création ne cesse de me fasciner. Il me garde vivante. Mon travail se module autour de deux pôles : la céramique-sculpture et le monotype. J’ai commencé à faire du monotype en 2009, […]
Beliefs and affiliations There are many people who relate the concept of “class” to level of income. This is understandable given that a majority of people see “class” as an extension of an archaic English approach towards social “classification” […]
Je voudrais dire wliwni (merci!) de vivre à Montréal, qui est en TERRITOIRE MOHAWK NON CÉDÉ! I would like to say wliwni (thanks) for being able to live in Montréal, which is in UNCEDED MOHAWK TERRITORY! Kwaï! Bonjour! […]
Je nage. Autour de moi les vaguelettes taillées comme dans l’ardoise remuent au vent. Le visage immergé j’expire à fond, faisant bourdonner l’eau pendant que se vident mes poumons. Par moments, j’entends mon gargouillis se répandre dans un écho […]
Kingdom of Olives and Ash, edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, 2017, HarperCollins Publishers, 448 pages The “land of milk and honey” generally refers to the promised land of Jewish tradition. As a notion, it denotes a […]
Hussey, Charlotte. Glossing the Spoils. Awen Publications: Stroud, England, 2017 (2nd edition), 72 pages. Montréal poet and scholar Charlotte Hussey’s most recent book of poetry, published by an Irish imprint, was sparked by a quest for reconnection to the […]
Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead, 2018, Arsenal Pulp Press (Vancouver), 223 pages Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-Cree/nehiyaw, Two-Spirit /Indigiqueer member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty). He is also the author of full metal-indigiqueer and winner of the […]
Maru and the Maple Leaf by Uma Parameswaran, Larkuma Publishing, 2016 (367 pages) Uma Parameswaran, a retired professor of English (University of Winnipeg) and well known author with a special interest in women’s literature and South Asian culture, has […]
Now, I have neither unease to express, nor artistic views to state, nor a CV to display.
Mes quatre médiums se rejoignent tous soit en prenant des chemins différents ou en se mariant les uns aux autres.
“The walk is a journey of the spirit carried by the body like a good friend, and sitting is an important part of the walking.”
This suffering had demonstrated to me the harsh limitation in my heritage, both Indian and Western.
The sound tech is weaponizing Classic Rock against me – “Start Me Up” by the Stones, “Light My Fire,” by The Doors.
...it would have been easy for me to fantasize that this landscape is the unspoilt one of ancient times, but I am focused instead on a radio program about a rural shooting that happened a few days ago.
Nungak delivers an often humorous, in-your-face account of the history of Nunavik
In her personal life, her friendship with a Zimbabwean fellow doctor earns her a brutal “correction” from her fellow countrymen.
And the ducks give up their dabbling at the lily patch
Collier was born a boy, but when I knew him in high school, he called himself two-spirit, fluid.
Days of Moonlight by Loren Edizel, Inanna Publications Inc., Toronto, Ontario, 205 pages The compelling, contradictory nature of cover blurbs! They excite and prod the reader on. Depending on the era – from Jane Austen to Grace Metalious, from […]
This was my third time at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). It was also Piers Handling’s final year as the TIFF director, with Joana Vicente now as its new director – a sign of the times reflected […]
This issue of Serai, “Beyond the Pale” (Vol.31, Issue 3), is one that resonates with me deeply. Hence, I am very happy and honoured to write this editorial. The issue looks to the many changes in cinema across both […]
Commentary on La Negrada, Sueño en Otro Idioma and El Violín [Note: References to film portrayals of Indigenous dramas from the golden age of Mexican cinema have not been included because they depict a folkloric and at times disrespectful […]
As Cinema Politica turns 15 in Montréal, Dipti Gupta and Raphael Cohen-Demers interview co-founders Svetla Turnin and Ezra Winton to walk us through their accomplishments, challenges and vision. “If it’s still just a few profit-driven corporations that control all the platforms, venues […]
1. Tradition NANA PEAZANT (narrating) “In this quiet place, simple folk knelt down and caught a glimpse of the eternal.” (from the screenplay) Traditions can be looked at as auras of history. Specific traditions associated with individual families are […]
Interview with Catherine Bainbridge and Ernest Webb Introduction: The evening of the interview, I showed up at Catherine and Ernie’s door. Ernie had just come back from a rehearsal with the Montréal Symphony Orchestra for Tomson Highway’s opera, […]
In 1991, Indian feminist filmmaker Reena Mohan produced a little-known documentary called Kamlabai. The film chronicled the remarkable life of one of the first Indian film actresses, Kamlabai Gokhale – one that began with the dizzyingly modern new […]
In response to a three-page critique[1] of the film by Boots Riley, the first point I want to make is that labelling, categorizing, denouncing, and tearing apart a filmmaker’s entire IMDb may be cool posturing, but it is […]
Padmaavat (2018), Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s latest magnum opus, became mostly notorious for what was claimed as its attack on Rajput pride and its portrayal of the legendary queen Padmavati (the story of the film was based on a […]
[Note: The film was featured in the diaspora panel at the South Asian Film Festival of Montreal (October 2017) and generated a dynamic discussion, with the director in attendance.] “Egalitarianism isn’t always a by-product of education and […]
Magnificent. Maddening. John Cassavetes’ Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) is a small story about big love. Seymour Moskowitz, played by Seymour Cassel, is a hapless parking attendant living in Los Angeles. He goes on dates, spends time with strangers at […]
Démarche artistique Ma pratique photographique est inspirée de l’environnement qui m’entoure. Un premier projet abordait le thème de l’eau. Celle-ci selon ses différentes phases, son parcours, ses empreintes et la manière dont l’homme vit avec elle. Le […]
CD Review Cultures around the world provide a rich heritage to draw from for practicing contemporary artists, but it’s always a thorny issue when a non-native draws on stylistic features of the practices of another culture, as care needs to […]
At the beginning of the year, I was invited to act as guest editor for the current issue of Montréal Serai on “Populism and the Erasure of History.” I had to ask the editorial team to clarify what that […]
Preface by Montréal Serai A high-profile yet anonymous artist in his hometown Québec City and beyond, Wartin Pantois is a breath of fresh air, a quiet voice of dissidence, a street artist, an agent of change, and a catalysing […]
My name is Dina Gardashkin. I’m a Jewish Israeli, and the first time I learned what the word Palestinian really meant was at the age of 23. Since I grew up in Haifa, a city known for its […]
Things were simpler in the past. Authority figures told us what “our” gods wanted us to believe and how to demonstrate our beliefs. They established rules and the dire consequences of disobeying. They could even prompt those consequences to […]
Journaliste de longue date, lauréate du prix Hyman-Solomon pour l’excellence journalistique dans le domaine des politiques publiques, et professeure adjointe au département de journalisme de l’Université Concordia, Francine Pelletier nous livre le fond de sa pensée sur le populisme qui […]
À travers mon travail avec l’argile, j’explore les notions d’identité et de territoire. La mémoire, le legs, la tradition, tout comme l’espace que j’habite, m’amènent à me confronter au temps qui se dérobe. J’aborde le thème du […]
As a political ideology, populism can be divided into an array of currents, beyond the obvious distinction between right- and left-wing. It can have negative connotations and be written off as demagogy by some individuals of the fortunate classes […]
A quick search of the term populism in cyberspace reveals its increasing popularity (no pun intended) in the last decade, in both traditional and social media. The term democracy, on the other hand, became de rigueur a long time ago […]
Radius Islamicus by Julian Samuel, Guernica Editions, 2018 “The radius islamicus is the farthest distance a camel part is thrown from the blast centre.” The narrator of Julian Samuel’s second novel is a “stateless” leader who supposedly spent more […]
Man on a Rocking Chair in San Juan In San Juan I found a man rocking on his balcony, the floors creaking, the glaze in the gaze, a daffodil stem hanging from his lips. I asked him was he […]
Writing and rewriting history are primeval pursuits of human beings. Not all human beings, maybe, but at least those who care for power. The ones in power believe that the past can provide them with some displayable justification for their […]
Sometime in 1976, Jean Baudrillard, the French philosopher, suggested that saturating the media with carefully selected flash news disables the concept of historicity, depth, intelligence and transparency in following daily events, and creates a hyper-reality that challenges or drowns out […]
Alicia Loría, langagière, accro du numérique, mère d’une femme merveilleuse, grand-mère de trois fleurs printanières cherchant leurs vocations professionnelles, et être sensible à nos réalités diverses et à nos contradictions parfois inextricables, se demande si la transition énergétique et […]
As we observe that the multitudes of heritages operate in competition with each other (“mine is bigger than yours…”), we find that ramifications of this scramble for influence pervade a multitude of cultural, political and economic spheres. In what follows, […]
You will be the midwife To whatever little I have, You will be the midwife To what little miseries I cherish You will be the mast To my lost catamaran You will be the frozen froth of […]
Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. Soren Kierkegaard I The Europeans left with a vengeance, what I said to Lia. Now a new political atmosphere marred our lives with land masses falling apart and going into the ocean, it seemed […]
Acts of dispossession, ethnic cleansing, genocide, discrimination, erasure of cultures and languages go back to time immemorial. But the backdrop of events of the past two decades, looming catastrophic climate crisis, Trumpism and the rise of the “alt-right” across […]
What we ask for is true justice: justice for ourselves, justice for our daughters, justice for our grand-daughters…
Sound of water intensifies, from flowing to rushing, to almost a waterfall. Transforms into the sound of motor.
I shot myself But I can’t seem to recall how it felt
By my country, they mean India. Complete strangers will ask me how to get Indian rice to be saffron-coloured.
First of all, the Nekawa people were socially, culturally and politically matriarchal.
“Nowhere in these treaties or court decisions does it say we grant you permission to take over management and control of our territory and our lives.”
Franklin drove into the inner city from a middle-class white neighborhood outside the city limits, where his stern Christian father once sold insurance, where home was his mother’s orderly domain.
Oleg Dergachov is an internationally recognized Canadian cartoonist who has won over 130 international prizes and awards in 25 countries.
And now, I’m declaring it, I’m shouting it out: I no longer want to belong to the “dominant culture.”
A certain element of uncertainty and adventure motivates me.
The other neighbourhood happening here, on these shared streets. So why do I now feel naked on them?
“A poisonous, crucial element of this imposed expectation is that brown people and their books should look back, into a past and a place that may never have existed.”
Muslim and Hindu villagers alike worship Jholmolia as their mother and believe her waters bring light into their lives.
This issue is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Abby Lippman (1939-2017). “As we were preparing to go on-line with this issue, we were hit with an emotional sledgehammer. Abby Lippman – a frequent contributor to Serai, a dear […]
After Mark Rothko’s Untitled (Red on Red), 1969 Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Peace Pavilion
Since human beings are eminently perishable, they seem to have an obsession for permanence. It is normal for people to yearn for what they do not possess or do not have a chance to possess in their lifetimes. But […]
Artist Statement: “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die… for the harder I work, the more I live.” This is my mantra, which encapsulates the intensely and sometimes uncomfortable feelings I explore when I’m creating in […]
Qi or Ch’i is often defined as a spiritual force that emanates from, or animates, living beings. In Chinese, Qi literally means breath. So do the words psyche in Greek and atman in Sanskrit. It is perhaps no coincidence […]
[This tribute to Art Solomon is an adaptation of a radio documentary written for Radio Canada International in 1995, a year and a half before he died. Now, twenty years after his death, his words and actions and powerful spirit […]
Réflexions de l’artiste La photographie est entrée dans ma vie à l’adolescence et s’y est taillée une place unique. Suivant les traces de mon père, passionné de photo, je capturais tout ce que mon oeil curieux trouvait beau. […]
[NOTE: A different and shorter version of this essay, with another title, has appeared elsewhere.] Kabari ani? How are you? Hoori. Good. I introduce Morga, an invented language, with the above phrase, in my forthcoming novel, Land for Fatimah. […]
Musée Rodin, 1972 I saw this body I am sure of it. Flesh and bronze. In one long stare, In fixated, circular study, In love with this thoracic cage, Vertical breakline, rack Of ribs, sinews strong, Tying life and […]
Lorsqu’on nous regarde d’en bas, ça donne l’impression que notre vie est facile. On imagine les grands espaces, la liberté. Eh bien, je dirais que la liberté n’est possible qu’à l’abri des problèmes et la seule période sans problème […]
Cayo Santa Maria (Written in Cayo Santa Maria, Cuba in February 2017, right after meditation on the beach) Crashing wave reaching high up on to the beach, then disappearing like a dream, like some understanding, into silent sand (a […]
Selection of aphorisms from Yahia Lababidi’s forthcoming book, Where Epics Fail: Aphorisms on Art, Morality and Spirit – Unbound UK / Penguin Random House, 2018 The danger of cynicism is getting what you believe in: nothing. In the same way that […]
Talula Talula, my seven-year-old visitor, meets the ghost of my husband in my kitchen. Her father lifts her onto the bar stool at the counter where I’ve spread out a festive buffet of beads. Lately, Talula has been […]
Film Review of Mathieu Roy’s The Dispossessed (Les dépossédés) The camera shows a woman in a field. The ground around her is rough, with a bit of greenery in the distance. She goes down into a ditch, comes […]
Chronic Fatigue System Too tired to exercise (who gets mono in their 50s?), endorphins droop and symptoms of menopause return, drench night’s sheets. And the bones, breaking down, what that other poet said, ‘the leaking’ or ‘letting in of […]
There is nothing benevolent or beautiful about the forces of Nature mercilessly unleashed on Texas, indiscriminately flooding its precious oil refineries and destroying its population’s homes and livelihoods.
It was the shyness and shame in his voice that struck me full in the chest and had me weeping before I could even sit down.
Peuple dilué investigates the psychology of bodies untethered to borders and regions. Originally inspired by the Roma population of Sutka, Macedonia, this on-going series explores the idea of a people versus a nation and transient identities.
We are the rational and sensible ones with access to almost every piece of information over the Internet. We are intelligent, sentient beings.
So now, the poor be damned! There was now one single model, based on individual indebtedness, promoted around the world as UN policy and supported by the World Bank, the IMF and multiple governments.
Such systems are attempting to learn to recognize and identify voices, images, vocal tones and facial expressions, and develop a response that will go beyond a databank-based response system.
The South Asian Film Festival of Montréal (SAFFM), launched by the Kabir Cultural Centre in 2011, has grown year by year in scope and reach. This year it runs over two weekends: October 27-29 and November 3-5. http://www.saffm.centrekabir.com/en/ Veena […]
November: Poems by Jaspreet Singh, Bayeux Arts, July 2017 Jaspreet Singh’s new anthology of poems, November, is about memories of pain, grief, migration and mourning, following the 1984 mass murder of Sikhs across India, and the loss – thirty years […]
Fifteen years ago, I would have never even thought of this as an option. Yet here I stand, looking out of my window from my closet of an apartment, and I watch the stars.
Undoctored is an honest, well-researched, clearly written indictment of an unholy alliance that affects each and every one of us.
Having played Hitler,Nixon and a range of serial killers and social screw-ups, and Picasso, for that matter, the aura surrounding his presence in a frame shot is devilishly complete.
In this well-researched and incisive book written at breakneck speed (to match the speed of Donald Trump’s sharp turns in the White House), Klein makes it very clear that Trump’s rise to power is not an aberration, but rather the inevitable culmination of neoliberal politics in recent decades.
Who is (are?) the actual culprit(s?) in both books and in the film? Please do not consider my initial question as a provocation, but as something to be taken literally, although ironically so.
Early Work History: Sold sugary fruit-flavored shaved ice piraguas on busy South Bronx streets for chump change. Opened laundromat mornings to sweep mop roll down lock steely cocoon face at night. Loaded outdoor lumberyard truck with plywood sheet-rock […]
We at Montréal Serai are overwhelmed by the response to our call – a response by writers, artists, poets and performers, sharing their experiences, at times highly personal, within this new state of the world.
The 70 per cent of Canadians living in poverty are part of the “working poor:” people who are working, but don’t make enough to get by.
The current land and seascape paintings combine near-abstraction with realistic references. The portraits, initially inspired by increasing signs of intolerance towards minorities in Québec, are also set within abstraction. I continue similar works in Toronto. Julian Samuel […]
The precariat is growing because “there was a crude social compact in the globalisation era.”
Oleg Dergachov is an internationally recognized Canadian cartoonist who has won over 130 international prizes and awards in 25 countries.
As the woman is walking back and forth between the two poles, I try not to think about where I want to be in five years. I also try not to think about where I was five years ago.
One day, I had to face the fact that there were no more options, and even borrowing on the future was no longer viable.
It is as if she had come to me in her old age, dressed in black, to tell me the dangers she faces and how she is coping with them, and as if I were meant to be her messenger.
Like worms in the soil, we love to slide and wriggle down this wonderful rectilinear cement-way of uniformity.
When we were young, some of us were very fond of the phrase, “Live dangerously until the end” (courtesy of Godard, not Nietzsche).
In Latin, precarius is something given to you as a favour by somebody else, or in other words it describes a bond of dependency.
On the face of it, Icaros: A Vision brings together two pathologies, a shaman’s developing blindness and a rich Westerner’s spreading cancer. Both the blindness and the cancer will be victorious, in spite of a healing forest.
Chew-Bose invites us to meander with her through her thoughts and live with her reflections on a wide variety of subjects touching on relationships, art, movies, music.
“War on drugs is hell,” announced Candide to his friend. “Someone’s always trying to rip off your grow-op. They better learn to cultivate their own garden if they know what’s good for them.”
Throughout Mapping Grief, Granter refers to a considerable number of artistic works that seem to have their place in her narrative as witnesses to the enduring powers of life, youth, love, urgency, innocence, and artistic timelessness.
What sustains our hearts, our minds, our bodies, our spirits, our families, our communities, our environment?
After Fukushima, it became clear to me that there was a problem with memory in Japan....
In Che’s imagination, two things were inextricably linked with sustenance – freedom and sacrifice.
Well then, assuming you’ve got air you can breathe, water to drink, food to nourish you – what more do you want?
I believe that poets have a moral responsibility to speak up for those whose own voices have been suppressed or altogether silenced.
The title of The Invention of Wings is inspired by ancient black folklore which maintains that Africans were able to fly before they lost their wings when trapped into slavery.
I opened Dean Steadman’s collection hoping for something rich and flavourful, and I was not disappointed.
Set in the near future and structured into two books, the novel tells the story of a family and their fraught journey from New York City to Montréal, or, in some respects, from the dangers of dystopia to the refuge of utopia.
Perhaps the notion that indigenous people living on reservations should have the same constitutional right to clean drinking water as non-indigenous people has not really dawned on the city people!
The speakers, however, made little reference to people from different cultures, ethnic origins or language groups, with the exception of Charles Bender, a First Nation’s speaker.
Because going to Montreal seemed like going to another country.
...we need to honour these silenced and silent women and all others who are still exiled and violated and unseened.
Though he is a chronicler of injustice, misery and the need to oppose the status quo, you don’t feel weighed down while reading Nawrocki.
"The human impact on biodiversity, to put the matter as briefly as possible, is an attack on ourselves."
...they were born in a country where female foeticide – and even infanticide – is endemic.
Where there is no poverty and oppression – Where there is no prisoner of political dissent – There will be peace Editorial note: This article was first submitted in late 2016 when peace talks were still underway in the […]
The Filipino people are like a long-lost family that I did not know I had.
A Second Coming, Canadian Migration FictionEdited by Donald F. Mulcahy, Guernica, 348 pages One of the best stories included in the twenty-four chosen by Thomas Mulcahy, editor of this intriguing anthology, has the chilling title, “Mephisto in the Land of […]
Getting into her white coat, she glanced at the list of people to whom she had given an appointment over the telephone during the weekend.
Thirty years ago, in November 1986, we launched our very first issue of Montréal Serai. While commemorating this important milestone, we are proud to announce that Serai’s contribution to the promotion of literary arts has been recognized through the Quebec Writers’ […]
Article 4 is an article of the Constitution of the post-WW II Italian Republic that deals with the right of every citizen (regardless of race, sex, gender or any other bias) to obtain a reasonably paid, decent job.
Mexican filmmakers Luis Ernesto Nava and Keisdo Shimabukuro have devoted the last ten years to understanding and documenting human migrations through Mexico.
Settler Education, is a historically informed book of poetry that roams through Canada’s past, focusing on the destabilizing impact of colonialism, particularly on the indigenous population of North America, but also on European settlers.
And on the second day, God said: “When sadness falls upon thee, eat gluten and eat a lot of it.” That day she ate many pancakes.
Rafiq is a young, second-generation, Indo-Canadian Muslim being implicated in a plot to bomb public places in Toronto.
Leonard Cohen was unaffectedly honest about his warts and failings and, far from wreaking havoc, his candour revealed a rare, gentle grace and elegance that defeated ego or pretence.
In these difficult, divisive, often overwhelming times, all of us crave a clear, quiet space
On the Side of the Road premiered on November 28, 2013 during an International Film Festival on “Nakba and Return.” It was the opening film at the fest, held in Tel Aviv — a radical break from the past.
A man awakens from his coma, his caregivers, family and colleagues realize that he suffers from “neglect syndrome”.
An aging movie theatre owner in a small town near Kolkata, India, is forced to send his dreams up in smoke as new technology and morality takes over (Cinemawala, Bengali feature film, 2016), while a group of talented musicians in […]
Grant Munro, affectionately known as “Grantie” to his friends, is as beguiling and entertaining as ever, edging toward his mid-nineties.
I don’t know about you, but when I think of American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, I think of the height of his notoriety in the 1980s, when he photographed the rich and famous the way Rodin sculpted busts for his aristocratic patrons.
Cinema South Asia: the human condition in all its complexity
Read Chomsky. Things are dangerous and bad things happen. But you can't let fear control you, you'll never get anything done.
India in the 1960s. We were growing up very quickly, and could not imagine the luxury of a boudoir, or even a room of one’s own, closed to others.
Boudoir (/ˈbuːd.wɑːr/; French: [bu.dwaʁ]) is a woman's private sitting room or salon in a furnished accommodation usually between the dining room and the bedroom, but can also refer to a woman's private bedroom.
“It’s hard to decipher where the fictional madness and social seclusion begin and end for both the work and life of Edgar Allan Poe, one of history’s most compelling horror writers who, it’s believed, was wracked with his own demons.“ […]
The notion of a place where women can talk among themselves, even sulk – or maybe rant, rage, and agitate – is likely foreign to those who are today engaged in doing this via the various social media that occupy so much daily time.
The story of a marriage in decline and the reasons that will inexorably lead it to its fatal conclusion
Montreal is an island in the St. Lawrence River so wherever you turn, you can see water, provided you poise yourself on rooftops, stand on top of Mount Royal or cycle your way close enough to the shore. But that […]
Canadians adopting girl children from China, and “the dark world of transplant tourism” and organ trade in that country and its links to Canada
Below is a poem by Nilambri Ghai that was inspired by the mural Above and below the fault line by Montréal Artist OMEN. Nilambri lives and writes in Ottawa, but […]
How long are we going to be in denial about certain fundamental belief systems that have been put in place and are being continuously doctored and prettied up to look good?
Chomsky himself has stated on numerous occasions over the years, it is his duty as a citizen of the United States to speak out against the atrocities committed by his country on foreign shores
Why do we avoid probing the root causes behind a calamity, be it a flood, a massacre, a genocide, or severe environmental catastrophes?
...and so as not to waste time on the demagogic hysteria of fascist wall-builders and KKKers blending in with Trumpers, let us list a few things that still seem so unsettled in the discussion about what happened in Orlando.
11 Steps is a comment on the fogginess in the minds of our government as to what human chaos would really unfold if a nuclear disaster occurred....
Copyright protection beyond sixty years for any work, beyond the span of a human life, rewards greed.
Today, Peshawar is again in the hands of those who like to play with fire.
For the next six days, we stayed at home, obeying the curfew that gripped the city as the Israeli army stood at its doorstep.
It is an extraordinary fact that for more than three decades, France never officially acknowledged the Algerian War.
Lost in the Idomeni refugee camp, a young Syrian girl stands in the mud holding a bag of bread for her family
He tells me that the government came to decontaminate his house simply by washing the walls and the roof.
Born in Guatemala in Central America in 1950, Roberto Godoy has been living in Montréal since 1984. An architect and anthropologist by profession, he has explored painting and printmaking since he was in his teens. Roberto […]
Dheepan is a Tamil-language film directed by French director Jacques Audiard, featuring Jesuthasan Anthonythasan as Dheepan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan as his wife Yalini, and Claudine Vinasithamby as their daughter Illayaal. However, things are not what they seem. Dheepan is in fact […]
Following the rhythm of the seasons suggests an ebb and flow: a life in harmony.
Generous Inuit throat singer, Nina Segalowitz, offers Montrealers an unforgettable experience: the joy of playing – using only their breath, voice and heart – and turning a roomful of strangers into a strange living creature that sounds like a… saw! […]
Farida by Naïm Kattan, translated by Norman Cornett and Antonio D’Alfonso, Guernica Editions, 252 pp. Canadian novelist, essayist and critic, Naïm Kattan, has penned more than 50 works including 30 published books, and is one of the best-known francophone writers […]
For six days, Imraan and his fellow passengers talked about games and films, keeping themselves distracted from thoughts of their families and the war they had left behind.
The desires for freedom, safety and self-determination move people across the globe, away from familiar landscapes and across geographic borders. Lack of these basic necessities has led many to Cyprus. The second largest island in the eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus […]
Spoiler alert: If you are a devoted believer that putting Canadian “boots on the ground” in Syria will actually solve anything, you might want to skip this contribution. Let’s see if we can dissect the situation: ISIS commits […]
The eyes of the taxi driver regard me in the mirror. “Why are you going out in this storm?” I mention a poetry reading and his thick eyebrows rise. He turns off the radio, inhales deeply and begins to […]
But the Empire is wracked with growing contradictions.
Rampant globalization, senseless war, anthropogenic climate change, unbridled technological innovation and even (why not?) old-fashioned greed are the ingredients that lead to massive destabilization of human populations.
What we are seeing is a return of chaos whenever there is a unilateral decision to close borders
Together, perhaps we can recover our common spaces and our interdependent communities
Here I was, a seventy-year old Canadian artist, and yet I found the garment workers in Bangladesh eager to participate and to be part of something.
The Rohingyas become a stateless population in 1982
Hu has a lithe and beautiful body which he struts throughout the film in a fluid graceful calligraphy
Editorial note: This is a slightly modified and edited version of an essay that appeared in the author’s personal blog. Directed by Todd Haynes in a Cincinnati, Ohio made over to look like New York and its suburbs […]
In her recently published memoir Good as Gone, about her marriage with internationally renowned Canadian poet, the late Irving Layton, Anna Pottier boldly asserts that “modern Canadian poetry was born in Irving’s living-room” in his “tiny house” on Kildare Road […]
En route to Europe and Asia, I find graffiti everywhere on streets and train stations in Copenhagen. Many words on the graffiti look for peace in an unstable world. Others look for a world without borders or simply a place […]
Like so many artist-creators who felt somewhat suffocated under our country’s last political regime, for me it was like a breath of fresh air when our new government was formed. Cuts to the CBC and the arts gave […]
Le projet des cornets s’est amorcé en 2013 alors que l’artiste avait fixé sur sa bicyclette un petit atelier de sérigraphie. En déambulant dans les rues, cette installation avait pour but de sortir l’atelier des murs et de […]
He drove me in a TATA cab through the streets of Old and New Delhi. The air un-breathable. I heard his bone voice breaking down telling why he didn’t vote for “the man who wears a […]
Portrait of Nina Simone, heart blazing, on Jeanne Mance St., by Montréal street artist (and jazz singer) MissMe, who describes herself as “an artful vandal.” For more on MissMe, go to her website at http://www.miss-me-art.com/. (Photo by Jody Freeman) —– Anonymous mural […]
Municipal Court Mondays were always a low roar or outright chaos. Or maybe it was the other way around as the herd of weekend detainees was packed into the courtroom. The crimes for the most part were of a […]
Ellipse I am the chaos of my father’s order I am the conscience of his delight I am the fantasy of his prison I am the mirror of my father’s light I am the axis of his revolution I […]
I came looking for you on the streets of Montparnasse boulevard Arago, rue Saint-Jacques, rue Mouffetard, boulevard Raspail place de l’Odéon I came looking for a woman solitary not afraid living on coffee and fine on the money men […]
Approximately one hundred and fifty years ago, a remarkable play featuring a Muslim character who hates himself and who embodies what those in power at the time considered to be the villainous opposite of what was considered civilized, true and […]
Nelly Arcand, Breakneck, Anvil Press, 2015, 223 pages. Translation by Jacob Homel Nelly Arcand was a shooting star in Québec’s literary scene. Between her first novel Putain in 2001 (Whore, 2004) and her fourth and last novel Paradis, […]
Canadian poetry The birds are quiet here. They do not shout or bang about the window openings. They are discreet and twitter from a distance screened by shrub and fence, minding their business. Perfume All my life, […]
In the context of the present aggressive globalization, this affirmation – the heart has its reasons – is fundamental. It is not new. Already in the seventeenth century, the mathematician, philosopher, theologian and physician, Blaise Pascal, had written “The heart […]
[Melissa Bull, rue, poems, Anvil Press, 2015, 104 pages] I was handed a copy of Melissa Bull’s debut book of poetry, rue, less than a week after a meaningful exchange with a writer friend. Under late September lamplight, we […]
Woman in the dream of the pink house I listen to you tell, Éloïse. Years before this dream. Perhaps it is taboo because it is ugly. We are stripping corn and talking. I stare at your bruised […]
“She is a liar and a cheat. She is an elephant. She is my wife.” And it was the end of an almost perfect day. She thought of her beautiful daughters and her grandchildren. She counted on her fingers […]
This is an adaptation of the presentation I gave at the launch of the English-language edition of Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois’ book, In Defiance. It was translated from the 2014 Governor General’s Literary Award winner for nonfiction, Tenir tête (Lux […]
Resilience and Triumph: Immigrant Women Tell their Stories (Second Story Press) is a collection of writings by over 45 women from diverse cultural, linguistic, religious and national backgrounds. Edited and compiled collectively by a group of seven women, it is […]
Yves Engler’s latest book, Canada in Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation, continues this author’s relentless work not only of speaking truth to power, but also of telling Canadians the truth about themselves. Near the end of his […]
Cope, Karin. What We’re Doing to Stay Afloat. Pottersfield Press, 2015. 96 pages Persephone in Canada Karin Cope, a poet, blogger, photographer, videographer, activist, and sailor works in Halifax, where she teaches, and lives several miles […]
Imagine nomads in quilted alkhallas (long loose robes), strumming ektaras (single stringed drone guitars) in the Sufi-Baul[1] tradition on the streets of Chicoutimi, Québec! “Goley malé goley malé Pirit koro na!” Don’t mess around with love, because it […]
On October 29, hundreds of men and women packed the public square at Place des Arts in Montréal for a vigil saluting the courage of the Native women of Val d’Or who have spoken out against police abuse, and honouring […]
“It was on a Sunday afternoon that the portraitist came to me, not in search of any ransom, but out of pure admiration. I peered through the parlour window and squinted my eyes to clear my vision of the […]
José! The Migra, José, the Migra! Hurry up, just as you are, don’t even dry yourself off! What? The Migra! Come on, butthead, hurry, there’s no time for you to dry off! They’re on their way up to Doña Cira’s […]
‘In a way of living where fear and loathing is aided and abetted, the subtleties of wonder and contemplation are in the general weight of things, lost. Within a society that is just that, a conglomeration of a big group […]
Bombardier and refried beans The Québec government managed to pull $1 billion U.S. out of the ethers to bail out Bombardier, but for the 400,000 workers who “woman” our public education system, health and social services and the public service, […]
Love by Gaspar Noé “Can you show me how tender you can be?” Electra in Love Reading philosopher George Bataille’s Eroticism can practically be an erotic experience as he outlines the discontinuity humans have come to experience and our search […]
The 11th Edition of the Montreal International Black Film Festival [Sept. 29-Oct. 4, 2015] has chosen Martin Luther King III as recipient of the 2015 Humanitarian Award. This is a fitting tribute to the son of the man who led […]
As always, when editing an issue of Montréal Serai, there is a certain FEAR bordering on near paranoia that the theme that was chosen several months ago may not produce potent and relevant pieces. And as always, when we are […]
Tech and media workers for justice, and vice versa Director and filmmaker Laura Poitras has made another film worthy of award nomination by an elite ceremony honouring cinematic achievements. This past February, said latest documentary of Poitras’, Citizenfour, won an Oscar […]
They say everything happens for a reason. That’s what they say, but what they really mean is that you only know the reason why something happened when it’s too late. Take accidents, for example. If you turn your car to […]
There is a remarkable scene in Laura Poitras’ film Citizenfour, her prize-winning documentary on whistle-blower Edward Snowden. In the film, Poitras, the investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, and the defense and intelligence correspondent of the British newspaper The Guardian, Ewen MacAskill, […]
If there is any truth to Bruce Cockburn’s line that “the trouble with normal is it only gets worse,” the great enabler of our deteriorating normality is the country’s sterile media consensus. Media then serve as a loudspeaker for a […]
The Amadou Diallo Diptych is a memorial divided between a section of darkness and violence, chaos, and a section devoted to Diallo’s suffering. A bleeding hole drips with his blood from the unwarranted barrage of police bullets that killed him in front […]
DISCONTENT AND ITS CIVILIZATIONS. Dispatches from Lahore, New York and London. Mohsin Hamid, Penguin, 2015. Discontent and Its Civilization, the title of this collection of essays by Mohsin Hamid, is a take-off on Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents, published in […]
Her name was Jane Houde. She was half French-Canadian and half-Irish. She was born in Quebec City and raised in a convent there. My parents found her through a newspaper ad. She came to live with us and to take […]
Parallels can be drawn between the ways in which medical screening (with mammography, for instance) can lead to over-reaction and over-treatment, and the ways in which socio-political screening for criminals or alleged “terrorists” (with social profiling and predictive policing) does […]
– “I haven’t come to the store since this started. I don’t feel safe here anymore.” – “I look around me and I don’t know who I can trust. I don’t know which side they’re on.” – “All this talk […]
Siddharth, 2013, Richie Mehta’s second feature film, opened the 5th South Asian Film Festival of Montreal on September 11, 2015. This festival is an annual feature of the Kabir Centre for Arts & Culture, a Montreal-based charitable organization whose mission […]
“At your age, you should consider screening,” the obstetrician said. She gave me an earnest look from behind her desk. Six months later you were placed on my chest: raven black hair, covered in blood and softly screaming. My reward […]
For five years between 2007 and 2012, Susan Dubrofsky and I ran Poetry Plus. These events were held six times a year at the Arts Café at the corner of Esplanade and Fairmount in trendy Mile End. Each event featured […]
The celebrated author, academic, and essayist, H. Nigel Thomas, says:“I write because reality mystifies me, and my temperament pushes me to explore it via my imagination. I know that my senses apprehend little more than the masks of reality. My […]
Medicine, Healthcare and the Raj. The Unacknowledged Legacy. By Daya Ram Varma. Three Essays Collective, 2015, Gurgaon, India. Dr. Daya Ram Varma (1929-2015) graduated with honours from the prestigious King George Medical University in Lucknow, India. He obtained his […]
When I wrote a poem inspired by the 1876 painting by Edgar Degas Dans le Café also known as L’Absinthe, I wasn’t aware that I was practicing a genre that originated in ancient Greece. Ekphrasis, from the Greek “ek” […]
Ideas are cheap. It is the physical actualization of a thought or a feeling that can be torturous, laborious and demanding but when ultimately achieved, and achieved successfully, that result, can be wondrous and mystical. As Mark Twain so […]
We regularly see, read or hear works of art only when they are completed or when they are considered finished by their creator. The following statements are from various visual artists who have previously been showcased on Montreal Serai […]
Elena Stoodley is a Montreal-based, multidisciplinary artist most known for her sultry, jazz and rhythm and blues infused vocals and sound art performances. I met Elena when she was hired as the sound technician for the Create Dangerously: […]
What will you be making when you make it? I was just in Mexico City. On my “must see” list were Diego Rivera’s murals – as many as I could see in three days’ time. In hindsight, I know that […]
“I view art as a system of action, intended to change the world rather than encode symbolic propositions about it.” Alfred Gell, Art and Agency In a 2014 lecture titled “Contemporary art: considered philosophically and poetologically” the eminent French philosopher […]
The musical group Mosaïque was attracted and inspired by the diversity of folk music of Bengal and that led them to undertake a trip for 4 weeks in Bengal in January 2015 in order to acquaint themselves with a different […]
They came from the Cordillera region in northern Philippines. Their families were grabbed of their ancestral lands. Without their own houses to live at and farmlands to till, they moved to another country to work in order to help their […]
A note from Rana Bose, Co-Editor Montreal Serai I first met Tanya Bindra, an alumna of McGill University, during a cultural festival in the Philippines in 2011. She was there with her backpack full of lenses and camera gear photographing rappers […]
The Concert Pianist Through her half-open window, she lets out a series of sweet notes, the melodious raindrops, repeats and repeats till a lively mountain stream comes to life in the opening of the concerto she has chosen to […]
‘Jahaz’ is the Punjabi word for a ship. On the 23rd of May, 1914, Nanak’s Ship, also known as Komagata Maru made it all the way to Canada. In Japanese (a friend told me) Koma Gata stands […]
Adele Shtern embraces her calling as a multi-disciplinary artist using traditional and digital media. She takes pleasure in discovering visually interesting sights in diverse loci. Her creative process involves opening herself to the revelation of seeing the familiar in new ways. […]
This summer 2015, from June 23-June 26, the Simon Fraser University English Department’s France Field School will be in full swing with special guest speaker Professor Norman Cornett, from Montreal, introducing the students to Paris’ international jazz culture. Professor Cornett […]
“REMAPPING HISTORIES & EXPANDING TERRITORIES” March 7 2015- THE ARMORY ART SHOW CONFERENCE ON THE MIDDLE EAST, NORTH AFRICA, AND THE MEDITERRANEAN (MENAM)- NY March7-8, 2015, NY Is there only one story of modern art? Is it not […]
I keep trying to write a story about a woman I saw once in the metro. It was crowded, probably sometime around rush hour. All I can remember about that day was that it was raining and cold; I […]
For seven years from 2005 to 2012, I was enrolled in ceramic sculpture courses at the Visual Arts Centre, Westmount, and at the Town of Mount Royal culture centre. I was uniquely interested in hand building pieces, not […]
Editor’s Note: This issue of Montreal Serai — “Old Age and Youth in a Changing World” — has featured two pieces of writing by young people, Savannah Stewart’s story “Alzheimer’s” and Meghri Doumanian’s essay “War is a Wrong Kind […]
We (the editorial board) struggled with the theme for some time – Old Age and Youth in a Changing World. We tried to find the balance between keeping the theme open and general enough to allow for interpretation and limited […]
SéKAI SéKAI is a Canadian artist for 30 years based in Montreal. His creative development began in Nova Scotia and PEI. A mixed racial background inspired him to explore the world through painting, dancing, theatre and literature. For over […]
Given the number of years that have elapsed since my birth, I could be considered an “expert” on aging, at least an experiential expert. Therefore, it should have been simple enough to come up with a few hundred words on […]
I was twenty-three and living in London for the first time. I should’ve been fulfilling my father’s dreams for me, which had me doing a qualifying teacher training year in some grimy Midlands town. Instead I was working for […]
Author note: Written in 1993 for a wellness conference sponsored by The Gazette, Montreal. It was one of ten winning submissions. Many people aspire to a ripe old age, but when they reach it, they spend most of their […]
It’s Algebra Tibe! If someone only likes you 6 out of 10 you can tutor them to like you more. Sinbad Richardson is a Montreal animator and filmmaker. He has filmed numerous shorts and also directed/created music videos for many […]
“Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.” ― Mark Twain “No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.” ― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms […]
[Montreal April 6, 2015] Greece – Ελλάς or Hellas – is a place that for many people has existed only as a sunny spot visited from some monstrous cruise ship, or perhaps a mental image of a make-believe […]
The temperature had finally settled down to a mild -15 degrees in Ottawa when Louise Crandall and I sat down to discuss the new Supreme Court Ruling over Physician Assisted Suicide. Louise has worked for three health organizations including […]
“Audrey, you have visitors,” the nurse says to me, looking me in the eye while pointing to the door. A man stands in the doorway; he is tall, standing with his shoulders tense. A younger woman stands slightly behind him. […]
“Don’t tell my husband I touched a white man” — our interpreter, Rajat, speedily translated the language of a woman farmer in a field in rural Rajasthan, India. She had quickly recoiled after her initial interest. It was […]
First there is nothing, then a sign there might be something comes like a sudden flinch a flash in the night an economic crash the death of a friend the bolt of a deer before […]
For as long as I can remember I have considered middle age to be fifteen years older than I am. When I was five, twenty was definitely middle-aged. At twenty, middle age clearly began at thirty-five and by the […]
American journalist and author Chris Hedges’s War is a Force that Gives us Meaning places war under three categories: war, he says, is culture, myth, and crusade all at once. He explains that war is often a tool for the […]
Rethinking AGING. Growing Old and Living Well in an Overtreated Society. Nortin M. Hadler, M.D., The University of North Carolina Press, 2011. “The days of our years among them are seventy years and if, with special attributes of […]
That Which Drowned with Narcissus Where there was once a lake Is barren land now From there can be heard the footsteps of Narcissus Even today She has gone there Looking for flowers bees and butterflies For many other […]
En ouvrant les yeux, je vois la neige légère accumulée sur le bord de la fenêtre. Je crois qu’elle se dissiperait si je soufflais dessus, mais je n’ai pas la force de le faire. Tourner simplement la tête […]
I am tired now. I sit at a table and write cursive. Tables are something taken for granted. They live such a long life, and as a rule, aren’t discarded for disease or wear, but for fashions sake. […]
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 […]
[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 […]
The Universe in a Single Atom. The Convergence of Science and Spirituality By His Holiness the Dalai Lama (Morgan Road Books, New York) Review by Maya Khankhoje. Reviewing a book with such a momentous title is no small task. Can […]
Montreal Serai had the opportunity to have a discussion with Scott Weinstein, Montreal based social and political activist, who has often been in the fore front of organizations that have protested War in West Asia (often referred to as the […]
The human mind is clever – and the human hand as well. There’s much that they’ve discovered, as our books and stories tell. But yet it is enslavement that our cleverness has brought To most of us – who live […]
JO: We have invited Professor Cornett here today to discuss issues surrounding a film called L’Heureux Naufrage/Fortunate Shipwreck: The Ambient Emptiness of Postmodern Society made by Guillaume Tremblay. Professor Cornett held a dialogic session on Sep. 22, 2014 in Montreal […]
Every summer during school holidays my mother would take us from Indian-administered Kashmir to Ludhiana in Punjab to visit our grandparents. The address still resides within me: ‘30 Civil Street. Near Ghumar Mandi.’ Summers are extremely hot there, especially the […]
Turmoil Sometimes I feel consumed by anger, perhaps I ought to say by RAGE, a rage of unfathomable limits! Witnessing what is happening in our world today, particularly in the Middle East, and how our societies are being completely dismantled […]
Growing up in early post-colonial India, the country was so different. The ethos was that we were newly-independent from colonialism and building a new nation; we were all in it together and needed to look out for each other, to […]
[The prehispanic part of the story is based on sociological findings and traditional legends. The modern part is based on fiction. Sac Nicte and Can Ek were the real names of the doomed lovers.] They had told her she would […]
Artist Statement: The preoccupation of life and death and the search for the transcendent are universal and timeless; it is the core which unites humans in the past as it does now in the present. In my work I interweave […]
“Advertising invalidates people, leading to anger. Anger turned sideways, that’s cultural jamming. It’s a way of reinserting ourselves into culture,” says Shanee Prasad, a BC-based teacher and activist. She was giving a workshop entitled Taking on the Madmen of the […]
This story is in memory of the passengers who were on the Komagata Maru. This happened exactly a hundred years ago. Three-hundred-and-seventy-six penguins arrived on an iceberg (a huge chunk) to the shores of a glittering city. But they […]
Communion Ambiguity adds another layer. Slice into a fresh made day. Take. Eat. You know who you are. Three are forward, sterile. Fourth perspective shows a liquid light. Take it. Drink it. Let it fill you. Admit […]
Una mujer desnuda Era una mujer desnuda Un hombre desnudo Era un hombre desnudo Un hombre y una mujer Eran un hombre y una mujer desnudos desnudos O Dos personas de diferente sexo desnudos Todo […]
Lately I’ve been wondering whether I’m a ‘Skeptic’ or a ‘True Believer’. American author Chet Raymo coined these categories in Skeptics and True Believers: The Exhilarating Connection Between Science and Religion. Published in the late 90s, the book discusses the […]
Being believers is problematic for women in a world saturated by religions that are patriarchal and androcentric. The belief systems within this rubric accord women a secondary position. Various rituals and symbolism derived from these belief systems legitimize and […]
It must be a passionate subject since Woody Allen, one of the rare American filmmakers still producing auteur features, has dedicated an entire movie to deal with this issue. I plan to see the film only after I have finished […]
The City of Glass. Tokyo, is a compelling Japanese film screened during the 38th Montreal World Film Festival, 2014. It has all the ingredients that attract an audience interested in the seamier side of life: sex, suicide, murder, necrophilia and […]
Sometime in the third week of February this year, a physicist friend and teacher from Brooklyn, pondered the probability/possibility/paradox of locating an event (perhaps even as an alternate reality) at a distance using mathematical relationships between space, time (and […]
Liza Sokolovskaya is a painter and printmaker based in Montreal. She has studied at Concordia University as well as the École Supérieur d’Art et de Design de Grenoble – Valence. Having left the world of academia to pursue an […]
Although humanity today seems dangerously close to a precipitous fall caused by an unmatched desire for growth, we also have before us the never-before-experienced ability to connect, transform, de-create and disrupt. What kind of a world will there be in […]
Why does Keanu Reeves act like a robot? The “singularity” (in its non-mathematical sense at least) is the purported point in time when machines take over the world – Matrix style. Ok, maybe that is a crude description of the […]
It is a warm spring night on St. Laurent Street. At 8pm, the appointed hour, my group of friends were on the lookout to join one of the neighbourhood pot banging orchestras. The pot banging or casseroles, as you may […]
I — Mimesis Beyond all the special effects in the world of 2014, behind the digitalized technologies, the espionage, the surveillance, the intrusive computer viruses, the attempts to create self-conscious machines and even to cook up new universes – […]
On researching about Gregory Corso, the poet, I found this in a compilation Blog on some of the greatest poets of our time. In the introduction, it says the following: “ Gregory Nunzio Corso was an American poet, youngest […]
This British/American/Chinese techno-thriller depicts a scenario in which a technical singularity reaches a point of no return and the events following this crucial moment. The technical singularity in this case is that of a quasi-sentient computer uploaded with the intelligence […]
** In memory of Alain Resnais recently deceased ** Should the art of cinema be used for propaganda purposes or is it in the nature of any kind of art to remain separated from socio-political issues? We could defend […]
http://youtu.be/YiRUlYlsPVw Written and directed by Oleg Dergachov Producer Zheng Liguo © Studio DO 2011 Posted with permission of the author www.dostudio.ca
Everything I know I learn from Google My spellchecker, my thesaurus, my encyclopedia my music player, my video player, my search for prayer, for meaning, for understanding my need for titillation, entertainment, delight all pass by the […]
“ROBOT & Frank”, as the title implies, is a film about human-robotic interactions. Frank is an elderly retired cat burglar who is losing it. His children consider institutionalizing him but before doing so, they get him a robot to help […]
A recent FM channel survey caused me some intrigue, since the topic of discussion was the novel one of “Problems caused by Facebook.” Callers were invited to narrate their own experiences on how Facebook had adversely affected them at […]
CHEF, 2014. Featuring Jon Favreau, John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Emjay Anthony, Scarlett Johansson, Dustin Hoffman, Sofia Vergara, Oliver Platt, Amy Sedaris, Robert Downey Jr. and Russell Peters. Chef is a feel-good movie about food, father-son relationships, creativity vs control, […]
“Sell the kids for food/weather changes moods.” Cobain’s tense phrasing was blasting in his ears, when his father knocked. With a shrug and a sigh, Andrew lifted himself out of his chair. An architect with an eye for […]
Mermaid Road, a handmade book; Louise Carson, Broken Rules Press, 2013 Mermaid Road is not a conventional imagining of a mermaid’s life. It is set along the shores of North America’s east coast and an unnamed land not unlike Greece. Inspired by […]
The Monarch butterfly can travel up to 2,500 miles across “borderless” lands to seek warmth and nourishment for its larvae. The wildebeest journeys through the Serengeti forming part of the largest mammalian migration in the world. And the Arctic […]
I – Long Ago In the beginning there was Migration…not Eden, not Providence, not the Prime Mover. If we dig deep and look far, we see that migrations have made us what we are. And the first of […]
One of the biggest challenges of migrating to another country is leaving your family behind. In most cases the reason is economics. If you are from a developing country, it becomes inevitable for at least one person in the family […]
Degrowth Interview with Joan Martinez-Alier Interviewer : Richard Swift Joan Martinez-Alier is one of the founders of ecological economics and the author of numerous important and pioneering works in this field. Some of his most important works include Ecological Economics […]
Fatima woke up and rushed to turn the alarm clock off. She did not want the rest of the household to wake up before it was strictly necessary. She had taken her shower the night before just before slipping […]
We seem to be global witnesses to what I can only characterize as neo-tribalism. To a large extent, this is the result of social structures that emerged during the Industrial Revolution. Universalist claims were articulated in the name of religion: […]
(part of The Paradise Project) The first voyagers to the Americas really believed they had found Eden; Columbus called it “the terrestrial paradise” and went in search of the four rivers described in the Bible. However, in the end, it […]
Jaswant Guzder is an internationally-renowned transcultural psychiatrist, a psychoanalyst, an associate professor at McGill and the head of child psychiatry at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital. She is also a visual artist. Born in British Columbia, Dr. Guzder is of third-generation […]
Artist’s statement: During the 1950s in Lahore and Karachi I rarely saw women who were Burkaized or Hijabized. Most women during that era did not cover their head. In the UK in the 1960s I never saw any Hijabs or Turbans. We […]
Oh you, who remember Jerusalem too well, Wash sacred rock with your tears. Whether exile has chosen you or not, Do not sing of her to one who has seen A stone is no more than it is. […]
Pavitra in Paris Stories for Life by Vinita Kinra Greengardens Media, Toronto, Canada, 2013 Vinita Kinra, who has recently published her first book, Pavitra in Paris: a collection of eleven short stories (www.vinitakinra.com), was born in Canada in 1975. […]
Chimanigasse Through the kitchen window: walnut trees in bloom. Forsythia. Alpine foothills, granite cliffs by the old railroad tracks, Chimanigasse, the Magyar refugee camp Ungarnlager Korneuburg — 220 beds, 270 mattresses, 25 tables, 28 chairs. […]
Slowly the skin gets depoliticized mottled and flaky. The throat parches over Beleaguered, crotchety and shaky . The shoulders cringe Blue veins, snake rivers Crawl, where muscles Once showed off Slowly, the voices, of mothers and fathers get closer To […]
This is a short story in Italian by Pietro Ferrua [the synopsis in English by Mirella Bontempo follows the original]. Ferrua’s most recent publication is “John Cage, Anarchico ‘Schedato’ in Brasile”(Ocra Press, 2013), an account of how the Brazilian […]
The Lowland. A Novel. Jhumpa Lahiri. Random House India, 2013. A priori The Lowland appears to be yet another novel about the immigrant experience, the alienation imposed by geography, the gut-wrenching loneliness of the expat, the numbing pain of losing […]
Cazzarola! Anarchy, Romani, Love, Italy: A Novel, Norman Nawrocki, PM Press, 318 pages Disclosure: I always loved gypsy culture. From Tony Gatlif’s films to his soundtracks and sometimes even the works by non-Romani Balkan filmmakers who examine or exploit […]
El Amor Amargo de Chavela or Dreaming Chavela, if you wish, is a 2013 documentary about Mexican ranchera music singer Chavela Vargas who died in 2012 at the age of 81. This documentary is what at first sight appears […]
If I believed in fate as an intelligent force, I would see my relationship with Jay as predestined. From the very beginning Ma Kirton, his grandmother, wanted us to be friends. Not sure if to this extent, but she’s dead […]
“Sometimes we revolutionaries are alone; even our children see us as strangers.”– Che Guevara The “guest speaker” was coming; and the Party bosses were at it again. Hush-hush everything seemed, or sounded. But I also wanted it […]
[Editorial note: Part one was published in December 2013.] III. Shakespeare, Nothingness, and the Audience An actress who worked professionally in the 1920s said to me of Shakespeare: “To appreciate him, I think, you have to realize that Shakespeare was […]
My Multi-Ethnic Friends & Other Stories, Cyril Dabydeen, Guernica Editions, Fall 2013,206 pages I waded into these short stories with no inkling of what shoreline I was leaving, what stones were underfoot, what spirits were alive in the water. […]
The knock comes as Ellie scratches at the remnants of a dream. A chilly wind on her cheeks. Moving against gravity high up into the blue, her head tilted towards a melee of trills and chirps. Ellie squeezes the sounds […]
Cricket’s on the TV. It’s on but you’re not watching. You’re lying on the couch in front of the TV, but your back is to the TV and your face is burrowing its way into the back of the […]
I have become interested in the sonnet form recently after years of writing and publishing books of free verse. My preference is free verse but why not try my hand at writing a sonnet? It would be a […]
An essay on reading Bread and Wine By Ignazio Silone Signet Classics, 2005 – Fiction – 279 pages Forty years ago, I read Bread and Wine while living in Calcutta. Despite my indifference towards the folks who wrote […]
I used to take my short stories to girls’ homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her? Ray Bradbury Women want love […]
No, it was not you I was thinking of when you caught me. I didn’t answer you last night, because to give such an answer is no answer. It merely opens the floodgates to more questions. None of […]
Does she usually read this way? Always in the same room? Is the tiny black object on the trunk (on the steel cabinet) really a bird? Why exactly am I moved by this image? There are 48 black-and-white photographs in […]
As Trixie and I filed out of the interpretation booth for the coffee-break, a smiling woman intercepted us. Trixie and I exchanged a look, returned the woman’s smile and said hi. She explained that she was training as a […]
I come before you in this essay without any intellectual pretensions whatever, because that is precisely what I will try to probe here, whether certain varieties of contemporary and short writing, inter alia, can be considered representations of literature. […]
After two months cruising the southwest Mexican coast, picking up poco espanole and John, I was ready to go home. We caught the ferry at Puerto Vallarta and landed before noon on the tip of the Mexican Bahas. We planned […]
Part I This country’s fathers’ paramount desire was this – pursuit, unlimited, of wealth. But Jefferson, whose land and slaves were surely wealth enough, wrote “happiness” instead and not because he’d had his fill, but since he thought […]
G. Willow Wilson is a boundary and border crosser of the rarest variety–a sophisticated political thinker who is also a cracking storyteller. In Alif the Unseen, she gives us a novel whose thriller elements are in perfect equipoise with a […]
ARS POETICA Although I have dreamt of floating virginal and weightless, my blue gown ballooning on an updraft, orange fire rippling off my fingers, I am crouching naked, my pale breasts stretched slightly, brown nipples spilling into […]
Wood ashes I growl in the back of my throat. There will always be ashes waiting to be carried out. Cold, burnt out, the opposite of harmful. Composition of ash: animal to vegetable to mineral soul. […]
There is something obscenely theatrical about the Bhopal disaster. On the night of December 2nd 1984, a leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant caused a 27-ton cloud of methyl isocyanate to drift across the Indian metropolis of Bhopal, […]
[Editors’ note: We are publishing Patrick Barnard’s essay “The Ladder is Gone” in two parts: the first installment in this issue of Montreal Serai and the second in the next issue this coming Spring. In this first part of the […]
Popular Southern folk singer and autodidact guitarist, Matteo Salvatore’s pastoral hell themes weren’t observed from a privileged distance. He hailed from a very poor family that begged and stole vegetables in Puglia, where the Latifondisti exploited landless peasants. These […]
Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was the best-known Afro-American poet of the 20th century. His work also ranged from novels, to plays, to books written for children. And his newspaper columns in The New York Post were sources of amusement and insight […]
Montreal Serai requested a list of films that Productions Multi-Monde has produced on the topic music of protest. Below are some of these films. At the turn of the millennium, our team here at Productions Multi-Monde started to […]
“On ne parlera jamais assez de l’Afrique. De cette Afrique qui mange ses propres entrailles. Partout où point l’espoir, des coups de canon explosent, des chars prennent les corps humains pour du macadam. L’Afrique tue l’Afrique, entrouvre ainsi la porte […]
The Chinese in Toronto from 1878: From Outside to Inside the Circle By Arlene Chan Dundurn Natural Heritage. Toronto: 2011 Arlene Chan’s book is a historic gem chronicling the remarkable journey of Chinese Canadians, and their success in moving from […]
Norman Nawrocki … a Montreal legend for his music of protest – and for his daring, insurrectionary performance theatre — was interviewed for this issue by Rana Bose, Serai Editor and Montreal novelist. Norman’s new book details : Cazzarola!: Anarchy, […]
The word rebellion derives from the Latin rebellare, which means, literally, to restart warring. This suggests that it is a continuous state, something that is about remembering the struggle and what causes are worth fighting for. And then there’s the […]
In the 1960s, for at least a brief moment, Montreal became what seemed an unlikely centre of Black Power and the Caribbean left. In October 1968 the Congress of Black Writers at McGill University brought together well-known Black thinkers and […]
Bloomsbury, New York: 2013 Jaspreet Singh’s new novel, Helium, is about Raj Kumar, a scientist with a doctorate in Chemistry from Cornell University and an undergraduate degree in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. After an absence […]
Surojit Chatterjee came to Chicoutimi-Saguenay to celebrate the 20th year of existence of Mosaïque (a percussion and vocal band specialising in intercultural explorations). The public in Sagueany discovered his immense talent as a musician and singer; they also discovered his […]
In a country where Opera was invented, it is no wonder that love songs seem to be omnipresent and over-represented. On the flipside, amorous passions lead to political ones. The bulk of these protest songs about rebellion do indeed date […]
[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/spirodon/piano-in-the-atmosph-re[/soundcloud] Playing piano has been central to my involvement in social movements over the past decade. Although building melodies and improvisations on the keys can seem distant from holding banners at a downtown Montreal rally in the snow, the reality […]
„Ohne Musik wäre das Leben ein Irrtum.“ Frederick Nietsche Forget military parades and college football halftime shows. The term “martial band” might be more appropriate to describe the ethics and esthetics of a marching band culture which is all […]
RENCONTRE AVEC CLAIRE SIMON Dans le cadre du Festival du Nouveau Cinéma 2013, en présence d’un public vivement intéressé a eu lieu hier la rencontre avec la réalisatrice française Claire Simon qui se trouve à Montréal pour la présentation […]
Veena Gokhale interviews award winning, Indo-Canadian playwright and actress Anusree Roy whose work comes to Montreal for the first time this fall. Anusree Roy has an impressive list of accolades to her name – three Dora Mavor Moore Awards, the […]
MIBFF MIBFF MIBFF Gideon’s Army , 2012, US, is an HBO documentary following the stories of three public defense lawyers in the United States who are idealistic enough to work long hours, earn a miserable pay and sometimes suffer death […]
Carlos Ferrand interviewed by Julian Samuel Carlos Ferrand was born in Lima, Peru. For the past 35 years he has worked as a filmmaker, screen writer, director of photography and he has directed several works which have been shown in […]
Editor’s Note: This commentary generated a lot of questions and raised many issues around the argument of the piece: How far can legislation be an answer to the issue? Should compensated surrogacy be supported at all? What about health risks […]
Voting Rights for Women Seventy-three years ago, on April 25, 1940, Bill 18 was passed, putting an end to electoral discrimination against women. Québec women were finally be able to vote and stand for office. This was a culmination of […]
Artist’s statement Through symbols and textures that echo Indigenous art and the memory of childhood I explore various themes that deal with our primordial connection to the natural world. Collagraph printing is my medium of choice. The flexible and […]
Maria Ezcurra Exposition Fils, tendances et dangers Maison de la culture de Nôtre Dame de Grâce Du 25 avril au 16 juin Vingt femmes Le textile, matière de nos vêtements, deuxième peau qui nous couvre, nous habille, nous protège, […]
The most important thing that a doula can do is the personal touch. A woman carries her birth experience through her whole life. It shapes her. To find out more about how a doula supports women and families during the childbearing […]
We manoeuvred out of a tight parking spot only to have a youth in a black pick- up truck gesture meanly at my driving companion: “Over here we don’t just cut off people like that, Christ! don’t you know […]
Annie (Kishkwanakwad) Smith St-George is a well-recognized Algonquin Elder, born and raised on the Kitigan-Zibi reserve near Maniwaki, Quebec. She was the founder of Kumik, the Elders Lodge (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada) established in the early 1990s following the […]
In a country where nearly 33 percent of the population live under the poverty line, and where there is a rising unemployment rate, the drive to migrate for a better job and a better life remains a strong […]
The unsayable Pruning the wild roses Why? Is there any purpose? each detail Douglas outpatient hospital for your psychosis tarpapering over the window before the roses fade melancholia meds, the fatigue scarring lung sarcoidosis, adult foster home, […]
Canada lost a giant on May 29th. The death of Dr. Henry Morgentaler signals the end of an era in which safe modern abortion clinics replaced dangerous back alleys in the short span of 20 years. In most countries, […]
One day I’ll read something that doesn’t set me off, but it seems this day has yet to come. It certainly wasn’t the day when I spotted an article circulated on the Science Daily list summarizing research on what […]
The Reluctant Fundamentalist, directed by Mira Nair 2012 Duration:130 minutes Starring: Hanluk Bilgner, Riz Ahmed, Liev Schreiber, Kiefer Sutherland, Kate Hudson It’s an evening during le joli mois de mai and I’m off to see Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist […]
By Day, By Night. Writings on Art. By Edmund Alleyn. Edited by Jennifer Alleyn and Gilles Lapointe. les editions du passage 2013 This slim volume is the first in a hopefully long series of books on art. As the title […]
Canada supports one of the most expensive education systems in the world; yet four out of 10 graduates from the secondary school system do not have the minimum level of essential skills required to function adequately within the workforce. […]
“À leurs yeux, nous n’étions pas humains.” Le début d’un procès historique: le général Efraín Rios Montt accusé de génocide et de crimes contre l’humanité. Les survivants témoignent. La droite contre-attaque et paralyse le processus. Guatemala, mars-avril 2013 N.B. MISE-À-JOUR: Le […]
Dominique Normand provides us with eight pieces of art and four answers to questions posed by Serai’s Nilambri Ghai. Your paintings, photographs, and films reflect centuries of Cree tradition and culture. What do you see as the future of this […]
This document, Kastevæsenet, was written in Danish by Johanne Nielsen, who was born in November 1873, in Fiolstraede, a district located in the inner part of old Copenhagen. She was one of the few women to have completed the Upper […]
“Il est comme un chauffeur de taxi!” Which means he could be Black, Haitian, Iranian, incomprehensible, immigrant, shifty, or that he does not dress well, speaks in monosyllables and may not be a taxi driver at all. But, a “taxi […]
There have been several exemplary articles over the last couple of months challenging and exposing a euro and ethno-centric point of view of looking at Cultural Transitions. There was the explosive “Can Non-European’s Think” (Al Jazeera, Jan 15) by Hamid […]
I woke from nightmare into the vast bed. The magnificent coral bed carved into figures of men and dogs, with four dolls as legs. At night, the dolls broke away, ran far off, and returned to tell of the scandals […]
A good friend recently reminded me of how I behaved at the Cancun bus station in 1991 when we travelled together through the Yucatan Peninsula. Lilian said that I stood there, surveyed the ticket booth and reception areas , and […]
Phula did not look tall enough for a twelve-year-old, but that was the age she went by. It had been decided for her much before she could remember. Her eyes had an unforgettable stare as they opened wide and looked […]
It is generally accepted that the term caste as applied in India was introduced by the Portuguese when they established their first colonies there. The word is derived from the Latin castus which means pure or unmixed. According to some […]
Accordion I passed a man playing accordion on a park bench filling the thick afternoon sunshine with strands that made me homesick for that time I never had in Paris and movies with saturated colours and quirky love stories and he smiled […]
It’s Tuesday night in the back room of le Cagibi, a café in the Mile End neighborhood of Montreal that can remind one of images of Weimar-Republic-era Berlin with the place’s muted lighting, clashing bright reds and pale splotchy […]
In the early 20th century, an enlightened Indian sage named Ramana Maharshi lived at the base of a mountain thought to be the incarnation of Lord Shiva himself. Ramana’s radiance attracted many disciples, including westerners like Somerset Maugham. When his […]
The city, with its street grids, the space given over to cars, to stores or housing or public spaces seems, at times, to just be there, part of our everyday lives where we work live and play. But, upon […]
I love the smell of napalm in the morning. –spoken by actor Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, 1979 On May 16, 2003, in the al Baya neighborhood of western Baghdad, a 155 mm. shell was […]
I. Inequality and Breakdown In the spring of 2013 we are still living in an economic crisis of global proportions, marked by inequality and massive injuries of class. That the Dow-Jones index has broken through the 14,000 mark, or […]
ROMA In the last heat, little puffs of fog lift off the marsh like white birds, and although she is kept in the yard by the old frying pan faced maid, Janet knows where in the reed beds the South […]
12 March 2013 In 1876, a number of Saskatchewan Cree and Chipewyan chiefs, faced with starvation due to a decrease in buffalo and with the dire effects of White colonization, signed Treaty Six without consulting Cree chief Big Bear, who […]
This song has been kicking around in my notebook for a while now. I figured what better time to record a version of it than from the balcony of the Lakou Mizik house in Port au Prince, Haiti during Barack […]
Anne Cimon’s new novella, A Room on the Mountain, (Gemma Books, Greenfield Park, Québec), is a story of grief, following the loss of a beloved spouse. It is told by Caroline Sauvé, a fifty-year-old journalist, waiting for heart surgery in […]
Jennie was seven when she first met Tai, her father’s sister. Sadashiv, her father, had been longing to return to India after long years of training and then marriage in London but had hesitated to broach the subject with his […]
Montreal Serai’s cultural critic ***** Le Siecle de Cartier-Bresson. France, 2012. Pierre Assouline. Whoever has seen photographs of Gandhi’s funeral, Nehru’s meeting with Lord Mountbatten and his wife Edwina, the liberation of Paris or other landmarks of the 20th Century […]
Louis Dudek was one of my professors at McGill University, later he became a friend. As I’ve written elsewhere, what brought me to McGill as a graduate student in 1974 was the desire to study with Dudek. It was one […]
In november, flocks of birds fly in spectacular changing formations over the botanical garden of the downtown roman sky. Les étourneaux sur Rome Comme un nuage élastique Dirigé par une main invisible Malléable et fluide Se dessine dans l’azur Comme […]
Yes, this is a Literature issue and it was always destined to be one. I was going to talk extensively about Literature as we have all known it to be, in the mainstream and alternative sense. The thematic title was […]
Two excerpts from a forthcoming debut collection of short stories, Bombay Wali and other stories, by Veena Gokhale, Guernica Editions, 2013. The book will be launched in April of 2013. Printed with the kind permission of Guernica Editions. Preorder on […]
The Tao Book Club gang was safely ensconced in the corner of the restaurant mezzanine by the time I got there. I peeled off my coat, shook the droplets of water on the dark carpet and sank into a chair. […]
In the mid-1960s Alonzo Martin and his brother Victor inherited a stony farm in the Luberon from a bachelor uncle, a house and barns in various stages of decay, the miniscule arable surface consisting of a few scraggly apricot trees. […]
Artist Statement: Mille et un papiers, les chemins de l’exil s’inspire des échanges avec plusieurs réfugiés forcés à quitter leur pays. Leurs récits habitent et hantent mon imaginaire et sont ma source d’inspiration. Dans ma peinture, j’utilise l’aquarelle, l’acrylique et très […]
…do the bouquinistes along the Seine offer a lesson for us? Sometime in 2004, I was talking with Judy Mappin at her Double Hook Book Shop on Greene Avenue in Westmount, and she expressed how very pleased she was because […]
Partial submission I thought of mailing you a paper-clip then thought again for surely you must have some in a similar small green tray or palm-sized round jar (on its lid a scene of camels, desert, sun) or in a […]
Who made us and our world? The questionhas baffled humans for centuries, and resulted in stories known as the “myths of creation.” Based on oral tradition, many of these myths have been told and retold in different versions. They have […]
Editor’s Note: The following paper was presented at a Conference in Honour of Northrop Frye on the Centenary of His Birth, at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, October 4-6, 2012. Paul Hawkins has previously contributed to Montreal Serai. […]
I Canada – Deformed at home, diminished abroad Activist, journalist, and researcher Yves Engler has just produced an important handbook of our national recessional – The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper’s Foreign Policy (RED Publishing, Fernwood Publishing, 2012). In this small […]
TO BIG BILL BROONZY OF MISSISSIPPI it’s moving and it’s quiet in mISsissipI, MISSisSIP pi, miSSSSiSSSSi pI! and she cries out in protest of the color of her skin: if you’s white you’s alright if you’s brown you can stick […]
An Interview With Meenakshi Shedde There was a rare treat at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in the week of November 14th to November 21st 2012: a retrospective entitled Indian Expressionism. It explored the cinematic links between India and […]
[From the website of Véhicule Press] Véhicule Press began in 1973 on the premises of Véhicule Art Inc., one of Canada’s first artist-run galleries. The large space occupied by both the gallery and the press at 61 Ste-Catherine St. West […]
Take a pinch of Conrad, a soupçon of Chekhov, shake vigorously and you get Rushdie. Not quite, but their forenames were the beards behind which Salman Rushdie hid during the nine-year fatwa against him. 1989 was a low point in […]
The first repetitive notes of piano announce a call to remember; a drawn out saxophone note responds. We are off for the 44 minute improv voyage that makes up Duets for Abdelrazik. If it seems like an unlikely name for […]
In August of 2012, Vandana Sood-Giddings, journalist, visited Montreal. Montreal Serai decided to interview her about her current project – a crowd sourced web documentary called The Taxi Takes on the World. To keep in the spirit of the project […]
“My Way” comes up in the Karaoke machine and Evelyn Calugay rushes to grab her microphone. “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention,” she belts out, reading the cue line. “I did what I had […]
The Artist as Mystic: Conversations with Yahia Lababidi, by Alex Stein, Onesuch Press, 2012. Conceived by Alex Stein, U.S. writer, illustrator, and author of Made Up Interviews with Imaginary Artists (Ugly Duckling Press, 2009), and Egyptian-American writer Yahia Lababidi, whose […]
The photograph, of the wall of a tunnel that takes pedestrians under the railway on Lucien L’Allier near the Bell Centre, inspired the poem. The pair of them together turned out to be pleasing to all members of the writing […]
Dans le secret moite de ma poche de paletot, mon index lèche sans répit la courbe de la languette. Avec un mouvement régulier, j’effleure le petit tracé sinueux en lissant sa tige ondulante. Même en prenant soin de la toucher […]
Malinchista, derived from La Malinche, is a Mexican slur denoting a person who betrays the fatherland. La Malinche was an Aztec noblewoman who is considered to be the mother of all Mexicans by having given birth to the first officially […]
(For sure, this is no chronicle of Heroes and Heroines, be it action heroes, rescue heroes, firemen heroes, conquering heroes, rebel heroes or David Bowie’s best ever cut — Heroes.) On a recent trip through the extraordinarily gorgeous region […]
(a song inspired by my anti-Hero of folk) Sometimes I feel like a nut In the last couple of days two separate people have asked me “What is your favourite band? What is your favourite song?” Both times I was […]
The 41st Montreal’s Festival du Nouveau Cinema (10-21 October) follows in the heels of the 8th International Montreal Black Film Festival held in Montreal Serai’s hometown and reviewed by us. Montreal is a very festive and highly cultural city. Faced […]
Heroes and heroines. These are words that graze the archaic. Words that suggest people with extraordinary super powers. Words that arouse forgotten childhoods. Words that provoke legends. Words that rouse jealousy. Words that arouse admiration. Words that stimulate our senses. […]
Artist statement: Je privilégie la peinture abstraite pour les voyages qu’elle propose, pour l’imaginaire qu’elle interpelle, pour ce qu’elle éveille dans le coeur de l’observateur. Je ne peins pas pour plaire. Je peins pour toucher. These works by Dyane Lessard […]
Heroes turn up in the most unlikely of places. Take the Wildberry Inn in Newfoundland. The Wildberry isn’t up to much really. It may have seen better days but I wasn’t convinced. The Inn is a sprawling motel-like structure set […]
TIME AND AGAIN Out of the curse of his exile, there sprang ogres and elves and evil phantoms and the giants too who strove with god time and again until he gives them their reward. Beowulf Did they […]
A hero can do no wrong, and this idea is difficult to refute, especially if you are talking to a youngster who has placed an individual in that pantheon. I was just such a young fellow. But with greater knowledge, […]
Bio: SHAM is an independent Montreal Hip-Hop/Rap Artist with strong influences from 90′s hip-hop. He was born February 20, 1986 in Nigeria Jos Plateau State. Shortly after his birth SHAM left Nigeria and moved to Montreal, Quebec. Releases: SHAM […]
There goes Rudy! Now that is a tuff dude— what’s up carnal! Everybody greets him. As the homies pay their respects, and senoras show their fear towards him and his two pit bulls, they also give their kids coscorrones for […]
In the National Gallery of Canada, gazing at Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings, some still in their original, massive carved wood frames, gave the sensation of being in nineteenth century Paris, at the famous gallery Goupil & Co, managed […]
Sexual Inequality Walking home from the metro she sees shadows on the wall of a building to her right. The youths’ shadows are bigger even though she’s in front. Theirs loom larger, covering hers. From their voices they […]
The Creators, South Africa, 2011. UPDATE: Awarded Honourable Mention for BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE Maya Khankhoje [This is the last film reviewed by Montreal Serai for the 8th International Montreal Black Film Festival which closed on September 30. Montreal Serai thanks […]
Soir de pleine lune au Janicule. On m’a dit un jour que les Japonais voient un lapin dans la lune. C’est tout ce que j’y perçois depuis, et j’en ai marre. Il m’a toujours gêné ce lapin à demi renversé […]
As I run along my routine jogging trail from middle-class NDG in Montreal, up the hill into the Westmount maze of mansions, I often catch myself staring at the wealthy estates, some I should call castles… Spacious gardens colored with […]
Je n’ai pas découvert la musique au concert mais au cinéma à travers le son feutré des haut-parleurs qui s’associe facilement aux images absorbe les sens et approfondit certaines dimensions de l’histoire dans une salle noire traversée d’un faisceau lumineux […]
Indo-Canadian filmmakers have contributed to bringing stories and faces that we don’t see in Canadian Cinema. Srinivas Krishna (Masala, 1991) refuses to be dubbed a Canadian filmmaker. Eisha Marjara (Desperately Seeking Helen, 1998) and transpacific phenomenon Deepa Mehta, who films […]
A film by Marie Boti and Malcolm Guy-52 min, productions Multi-Monde 2012. The wind beats against a high telecom tower in Quebec. The camera finds a man on top of the tower, hard hat, safety glasses on. Several hundred feet […]
As we prepare to release our latest documentary, the End of Immigration? we wonder whether it will be our last, with the new round of funding cuts from the federal government that has this sector reeling. The hunger for documentaries […]
If you were to ask your friends whether they thought Canadian films were sexy, they would probably laugh and unanimously say no. Collectively, they would all probably be pretty hard pressed to make a list of many Canadian films at […]
Cigarette smoke rises in small plumes, merging into the dust beam created by the projection light in a full theatre of young Canadian adults staring transfixed at the screen; a crippled fishing boat floats in dark, still water… The weathered […]
[This piece originally appeared in Five Dials Number 15 and is reproduced with their kind permission.] In Sophocles’ tragedy, the incestuous Oedipus only gains wisdom after experiencing darkness by piercing his own eyes. For the Greek playwright, wisdom, redemption and […]
Avec huit documentaires achevés, je devrais pouvoir me considérer une réalisatrice expérimentée et envisager le restant de ma carrière avec confiance et optimisme. Mais quand on réalise des documentaires de nature politique, avec des nuances poétiques par dessus le marché, […]
Welcome to Canada (1989) and Monsieur Lazhar (2011) This film review will comment on two Canadian films that deploy immigrants and political refugees. These films are separated by over two decades. Within this period so called “visible minority” film directors […]
Dreaming By Movies In 2012, a great number of people of the world’s population live and stay in one place, with very little material wealth, and without any luxury. But in absolute terms, there are also many individuals today who […]
Many years ago, Bernardo Bertolucci, on a visit to Canada, was asked what he thought of the movie industry in this country. He confessed he did not know much about it but he felt that this would be a good […]
Confronted with the query --“Are Canadian films sexy … question mark?” - - I was baffled as what angle to take.
Aonan Yang was born in Wo Long Quan, (Dragon Creek Village), Liao Ning Province, China. As a youngster, he wrote his own plays, stand-up routines for pairs (“in the Chinese style”), and poetry. His family was one of […]
I would like to share with you a few thoughts on my experience as someone born and brought up in Montreal and by now having lived for over fifty years in Kolkata. How did that happen and what am […]
[audio: Diamond.mp3] The Diamond that Used to be You Oh honey, after you died from eating that bad meat Didn’t seem right to just keep your remains on a jar in top of the t.v. But […]
As various contributors point out in this issue of Montreal Serai, we are obviously now living in an era of immense technical change, most of it centered on digitalization, computers, and nano-technology. At the same time, a large […]
Quebec’s health records are going digital. Recently, I along with other Montrealers received a letter in French describing the process, the timeline, and the implications. The digitization of patient records will have an impact on the quality of our […]
Note de l’auteur: Le texte qui suit est un texte d’opinion et non un essai. Il ne fait pas une revue exhaustive des études en cours sur les sujets abordés et puise ses arguments de façon libre à […]
Hypothetically, a child asks “Mama and Papa who is my real daddy?” In the old days, before the advent of new reproductive technologies, the answer would have been straight forward “your daddy was ____, but he left me, […]
Dad gets home from work and goes down into the basement to watch television and go on the internet. Mom gets home from work, orders a pizza on her Blackberry, and then goes to the living room […]
The insistent electronic beeping of my alarm clock jolts me from sleep. Beep beep. I see 4:30 in crimson digits. Damn, it’s way too early. I bang down the alarm button and soon the beep beep reawakens me. […]
Ganesh, also known as Ganapati, was the son of Siva and Parvati, two high-ranking deities in the Hindu pantheon. It is said that Parvati, while bathing, fashioned her son out of the dust on her body and then asked […]
One hundred years ago H.G. Wells grappled with the affliction of war. He saw the ebb and flow of civilization, the rise and fall of empire, and the efforts of historians to put things in order; that is, to […]
A recent picture, amongst others, of Mark Zuckerberg doing the rounds in cyberspace was a source of some irritation to animal rights activists because it showed the Facebook founder dangling two chickens by their legs. The picture was […]
1956 was the year that marked a sea change in my life. I had to leave a private grade school to attend a public high-school that was so poor that our classroom only had three walls, the fourth being […]
Reproductive Technology and Ethics Until the development of reliable contraception methods in the 20th century, control of the means of reproduction belonged to those who exercised brute force or financial coercion. Sex led to pregnancy, abortions were difficult […]
Tous les quelques jours, en marchand sur Quattro Venti, je croise un vendeur de bricoles itinérant. Ils sont pour la plupart Nigérian dans mon quartier. Je traverse via Raffaelo Giovagnoli, quand à ma droite au haut de […]
In 1984, my good friend Maurice Lemaître, a noted French intellectual and artist who is prominent in the Letterist movement, invited me to produce an avant-garde film to be shown in Paris at the French Cinémathèque in a program […]
They met at an art college in London, England, not at the posh Slade or arty Goldsmiths, but at what was actually listed as a charity, near Covent Garden. It was 1969. The college had one communal lavatory […]
“I’m not Christian” “you mean you don’t believe in God? …then, what are you?” “I have a lot to say about that.” but at this time I’ll be anything. all religions are the same. all rituals are the […]
He creeps through shadows, robed in dark colors to blend with his surroundings. Every breath he takes is measured, his feet tiptoeing along the edges of buildings and through royal courtyards. Henri Denjean is a stealthy man, overly cautious […]
“Humanity’s ascent is often measured in terms of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards towards collapse?” – IMDB http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1462014/plotsummary March 1st, 2012 – Montreal Filmmaker Mathieu Roy has directed and former Montrealer Harold Crooks, […]
Susanna Moodie, pioneer author, Anne Cimon, XYZ Publishing, 2006. Of the many immigrant groups that streamed into Canada, none is so curious and interesting, as the Victorian gentry emigrating here. Susanna Moodie arrived in 1832. Educated, impecunious, idealistic, her […]
******** March 24, 2012 Elle s’appelait Simone Signoret. France. 2010. French with English subtitles. The American public will remember Simone Signoret as the first French actress to win a Hollywood Oscar. French filmgoers will, more often than not, think […]
Ars Poetica At Bain St-Michel, 5300 St-Dominique, Montreal, from January 17-February 12, 2012. Infinite Theatre Production An Anglo Montreal Theatre company when it chooses to explore the local Anglo Arts Angst (AAA!) scene in a spectacular manner, and for […]
An issue on Canadian Literature has been on the cards for a long time. Here it is, and…… here is to bemused looks, neutral shrugs, crinkled foreheads, and other intense Canadian-isms. Oh! Don’t get me wrong! We love grovelling […]
I first came into contact with Theodore Harris when I was given the opportunity to moderate “Art as a Weapon: Critical Thinking and the Media,” the keynote event of Culture Shock 2011 co-organized by QPIRG McGill and the SSMU […]
— No language is neutral Derek Walcott To my students at the local university I announced that we would be reading the essay “My Canada,” and, who is the author (I’d told them previously)? “That girl from India,” blared out […]
Between the ages of twenty-eight and forty-four, I lived for Montreal. Nothing could have budged me from this town. Pure blind love, I was utterly faithful and happy to offer up my youth. I had my heart broken a few […]
I am walking along 21st Street toward 11th Avenue to see one exhibition which takes place in three different art galleries. Extractions, the name of one part of the exhibition, shows bronze sculptures made from images of cancer tumors by […]
The 2011 literary awards season is drawing to an end, with new stars such as Esi Edugyan and Patrick deWitt in the Canadian literary firmament. It has been an inspiring year, an inspiring few years in fact, and we can […]
I was first introduced to ghazals by my father. Well, not really. I first heard ghazals at my father’s house. He would plunk in tapes of Pankaj Udhas, a famous ghazal singer, and my sister and I would groan, […]
Burning hot it keeps becoming, and Professor Ivor and I have been traipsing around the island. Tall, angular, and English to the core, the Professor says he wants to learn about creole ways, and grins. “Really, Ivor?” “I do.” […]
Il était une fois un petit monstre très laid et très méchant, qui portait en lui des pensées si tristes et si funestes qu’il n’avait aucune envie de grandir pour devenir un grand monstre avec des pensées […]
Rana Bose (RB): Canadian Literature has been evolving in all directions. Literature out of a newer multicultural context is also making its presence felt. The Globe and Mail reviewer in reviewing your best seller The Love Queen […]
Rope, A Tale Told in Prose and Verse by Louise Carson. Broken Rules Press, 2011, 53 pages I first heard of Louise Carson’s new work, Rope, when she read the opening scene at Twigs and Leaves, the monthly open […]
I don’t want to talk about what to read—that anyone can choose for themselves. What I want to talk about is how to read and why to read. Those alone are the pertinent questions to ask. If we know how […]
Of late, I have been deluged with messages regarding the shifting of elephants from Toronto Zoo to the PAWS(Performing Animal Welfare Society) sanctuary in California in USA. and have been constantly reminded of the Canadian poet Margaret Atwood’s statement, “Nature […]
(Inspired by Robert Frost) If only I had enough pens, enough to write ghazals in my sleep. then I would know I have miles to go, miles to go before I sleep. In my city, […]
[Please note that this piece was originally published in Poetry Quebec. – ed] 3625 Aylmer Street, Montreal It is Thursday evening at The Yellow Door and you are hearing poets and prose writers reading from their work. […]
C’est en descendant de la montagne que je l’aperçus pour la première fois. Mon premier réflexe eût été de m’en éloigner en ignorant sa présence. Mais plutôt que de le fuir, je m’approchai sans crainte et m’assis calmement […]
Canadian literature is as rich as its native children such as Joseph Boyden, who, Through Black Spruce, has allowed city folk to breathe in the heady scent of aboriginal life in the north, Hugh MacLennan, who bridged […]
IN THE WRITERS’ WORDS Conversations with Eight Canadian Poets, Laurence Hutchman, Guernica Press, Toronto-Buffalo-Lancaster (UK), 2011 The1950s in Canada were energized by a group of young poets who were on a mission to create a national literature. Their hard […]
A deluge of water filled up the Sunday morning I went to see Varnam at the 35th edition of Montreal’s World Film Festival. On the way to the theatre, I biked and waded through meandering streams coursing through the […]
Los Angeles, February 1972 Dear children: When I myself was a child, in Italy, and toured the country with my parents, we would visit churches, basilicas, and cathedrals. Either for religious fervor or as a cultural duty I […]
Sociological (and sometimes mischievous) terminology like identity gap and cultural appropriation, accommodation and even assertions like Euro-centrism and Orientalism and political programs based on multiculturalism and interculturalism are very simply losing their edge. They have been overused, misused and abused. […]
Dawson – The New “Other” as The New “Us”? Most writers and journalists who have grown up with the contemporary world and have puzzled about it are also people who think about the perennial divisions of “Us” and “Them.” That […]
Jason is a 36 year old male. Thoroughly addicted to pushing charcoal and ink around paper, he is also the co-creator and director of EN MASSE, a large-scale collaborative drawing initiative based out of Montreal. Graduated from Alberta College of […]
The mass shootings in Utoya, Norway seemed to have shocked the average person, who has never noticed the trends and the blunt comments on television made by politicos in which racism camouflages itself as snide commentary. Society has become complacent […]
Rola Harmouche (RH): Thanks for letting me know about the show. Prasun Lala (PL): Well I needed someone to understand the Arabic….so my pleasure. What does “Tadamon” mean? RH: Ummm…“to stick together”….um…“to join forces” [Googles]….“solidarity!” On June 9th, 2011 – […]
When I was in class three, I remember reading a story about Guru Nanak which spoke about his perplexity with the discrepancy between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have nots. The story narrated his bewilderment with […]
Canadian/Australian visual artist Ling Yuen photography series ‘boxed – and if you must put me in a box, make sure it’s a big box’ was exhibited at Concordia University in 2010.
When did Canada become the country that it is today? Only a few years ago it was seen as a bastion of freedom and democracy, a place where people from around the world could look to, they thought, in order […]
Al Malki, a Canadian, was incarcerated and tortured in Syria based on false information which was provided to the Syrian governement by the RCMP and CSIS.
** Editor’s note: We rarely re-print essays of a recent pedigree, but in this case, we found this essay particularly relevant to the theme of this issue. Originally published in 2008. When I return from a trip and open the […]
Reprieve Back again in Brooklyn, where it’s hot.Coffee upstairs in McDonald’s withA.C., at eighty-sixth and twentieth.Music piped, that’s not unbearable.The subway, elevated here, in view,And people, people, people, everywhere.For this is home, Calcutta in the West… The NY Times: a […]
The low-budget aesthetic lends itself best to local, intimate settings. Bedrooms, backseats of cars, unfinished basements are the places where people, most often young people, get to know each other and themselves. Science fiction and the ultra-low budget indie are […]
Their love was banned. He was secular and she was religious. Mais l’amour était profond comme un puit dans le desert, un puit avec tous les permutations de l’eau qui coule. . . Lui et elle/l’amour/les gens qui voyagent/qui traversent […]
Guy Rodgers, writer and scenariste, has been a tireless campaigner for English Language Artists in Montreal Quebec.
A fictional rendition of the story of King Dasharatha from the Ramayana Dasharatha could hear the mynas and macaques above him mixed with the squawking peacocks. The young king could not remember this large pond and was happy […]
Budapest Suites, I (from Grand Gnostic Central: DC Books, 1998) “Apply what you know to what you feel that’s more than enough” On Váci utca, mongrel pigeons, flapping, Mount American-style shopfront windows. Grey cops in pairs […]
[audio: Mumbai Blood.mp3] [soundcloud]http://soundcloud.com/montreal-serai/mumbai-blood[/soundcloud]
There are twenty-seven sequels being released this year. The fourth of Spy Kids, the fifth X-Men, the eighth Harry Potter. Studio executives are trying to mitigate risk, the way a hedge fund manager might. This results in the investment […]
******** August 27, 2011 What a Beautiful Day. Italy. Director: Gennaro Nunziante. What we have here is what Italians know how to do best: a comedy that will make you laugh and tons of love, art, religion and […]
For the past several years, we have been justifiably looking out and beyond the city we originate from—-Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Our self-imposed mandate has been to look beyond borders and fences and peep into cultural worlds that surround us in […]
Artist Statement: The expression “motion photographer” came to me spontaneously since movement is the basis of my work: I am constantly in search of a perspective that will transmit both the beauty and the speed of the world in which […]
I – Wings in The Dust Le vieux Paris n’est plus (la forme d’une ville Change plus vite, helas! que le coeur d’un mortel… –“Le Cygne,” Charles Baudelaire, 1857 The old Paris is gone (the form of […]
On the night of the May 2, 2011 federal election which saw the NDP come out of nearly nowhere to win close to 80% of the seats in Quebec, I wondered whether and to what extent the NDP’s surprise surge […]
Jean Talon Market is without a doubt one of the most popular spaces in Montreal. Located just North of Little Italy, it offers a wide variety of goodies that everyone can enjoy. On any given day you are likely to […]
I love Montreal, tu sais because English here is charmant and French c’est cool because locals know that a ridge is really a mountain because tortillas & chapattis & pitas & bagels have no quarrel with pâté chinois because […]
Spring days are very much here. Both the sunny warm days and political hopefulness is everywhere. My sojourn in Paris was an experience to absorb in many ways. I was invited to attend the international council meeting of the […]
32nd Ave., Lachine Now night, and off the curving yellow arches, the light, usually so harsh, glows dull in summer's haze. Moths leave it alone, cavort with brighter street lights. Cars move slowly, their noise softened. Songs drift by […]
If the commercials are to be believed, there is nothing more Canadian then a Tim Horton’s donut shop where coffee is served to hockey moms and seniors on cross-country road trips. On the Tim Horton’s on the corner of […]
Montreal is a special city. Some would say that it has a European charm that is rare in North America while others would swear that no other place has as many cool bars and clubs or let’s be […]
Ten years ago, after the 9/11 attacks, many commentators in Europe and USA expressed dismay at the way some Palestinians were seen celebrating the planes crashing into skyscrapers. Today, when Americans are shown dancing in front of the […]
The CBC report on 6 December 2010 left no room for doubt: “Taser killed Ontario man: Ontario Special Investigations Unit” (1). The SIU, an independent body, had just issued its report on the death of Aron Firman in Collingwood, Ontario.
The new student came to consult with his advisor in order to establish his curriculum. The professor tried to point out to him the nobility of culture and while doing so was attempting to discover the freshman’s tendencies, […]
I have a recurrent dream in which I am flying over a large body of turquoise water. The air is balmy, the water is deep, transparent, welcoming. Just as I am about to plunge, I wake up. I have […]
*** Editors note: Gabrielle Mathews has just won the junior category prize for this poem in the "Act NOW! International Performance Writing Festival". Tabloids surround me in shades of black and outbursts of red Screaming at me to pick them […]
Does Canada need bigger prisons, as proposed by the now newly elected Conservative government and at what cost? At a time when violent crime is decreasing and costs to sustain prisons are astronomical, when half the inmates in prisons […]
The Art and Science of Healing Since Antiquity. By Daya Ram Varma, MD, PhD. www.Xlibris.com, 2011. *** Why should a book on the history of medicine be reviewed in a magazine mainly dealing with the arts, culture and politics? Because […]
Welcome to the Hotel Chanson de Geste, for once again it is pillow mint in Paris time, where the Frosty Jacques and Tom Peepers crowd the Sunday street like savages to supper, and sing how they’ll stand tippy-toes on […]
The ambience of the demonstrations at Tahrir Square combined revolutionary edge with festive elements and scathing political humor.
I have never been involved in politics, I had made up my mind on the whole thing a long time ago: we are a nation that has known nothing but the rule of absolute pharaohs, be they called Cheops or […]
The above words, from our prime minister’s mouth, on April 4 2011, are supposed to spread fear in our souls, as Canadians. Fear of insanity. Fear of devastation. Here is Stephen Harper’s full quote: “It just emphasizes how crazy we […]
If you observe a mappemonde carefully you will notice a large body of blue water surrounded by land on all sides. Well, almost all sides, except for some straits that allow whales in, vessels out and the back-and-forth of water […]
There is a tendency amongst a lot of liberal-minded people to go ape about Wikileaks, beyond and above what are its obvious and spectacular contributions. After all, revelations of gory illegal acts, diplomatic about turns and faux pas and sickening […]
You’ll recall Marshall McLuhan, the “medium is the message” man. He knew. He knew what the computer could do… this extension of ourselves. Like so many fruits hanging on vines… unpicked…disconnected in our connection. Could he have foreseen what we […]
This is how it all started. As Tunisia and Egypt were followed by Yemen and Bahrain and as I remained glued to Al Jazeera, Facebook,Twitter (notice I do not state the CBC, BBC or CNN or mainstream TV) and as […]
The anomaly that is Italy– where a media mogul can have total control of the private and public television, print media and have friends filling in the abyss– is something that the rest of the world cannot fathom. What if […]
The original saying went, ‘Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.” Well, the perception seems to be changing. One of the stalwarts of communication of our times, Arthur C Clarke wrote about the phenomenon of Citizen Journalism […]
A few months ago, fearing terminal unemployment, I emailed some of my coder friends a query: “So, things were a no-go with writing, law, medicine. Hell I even looked into joining the army. I’m considering computers. Where should I start?” […]
The world isn’t what it was ten or even five years ago. Technology has taken our planet and transformed it from an immense collection of cultures and peoples into one tiny blue ball more interconnected than ever before in its […]
An Introduction To Visual Culture, Nicholas Mirzoeff. Routledge, New York, 1999. Visual culture can be described as the mix of different modes of media. In today’s world, a person is not left with a choice and is greeted by a […]
My sister, all of four years older than me, kindly informed me very early on that Santa Claus didn’t exist, thereby converting me into a life-long skeptic. She also let me know in no uncertain terms that I had been […]
The text below is from a collection in progress of yet unpublished short stories, entitled “Fragments”. Les rayons du soleil sont diffus en cette matinée fraîche. Ils dissipent l’humidité du printemps naissant et jettent leur lustre sur l’angle de ce […]
These days I can’t but remember Gamal Abdel Nasser. The Arab people are now finding unity in demands, hopes and aspirations, real unity from the bottom up not from the top down. Was this his vision? Even if it wasn’t, […]
The Journey I marched through thick snow until leaves began to reappear on deciduous trees, pine needles protruding from toes Dragons scuttled across walls dented free forms, shapes through cloud patterns against the canvass of azure Before it was all […]
Jeff Barnaby was born on a Mi’gmaq reserve in Listujug, Quebec. He has worked as an artist, poet, author and filmmaker who was recently nominated at the Genie awards for best short film – File Under Miscellaneous (2010). His work […]
The words aboriginal, indigenous, native, primitive, adivasi, tribal and first nations are used almost synonymously although there are subtle differences setting them apart. The word aborigine or aboriginal is associated with Australia, indigenous makes us think of Latin America even […]
Keena – Native Indian Artist – 1949 – 1995 Keena was born to a Mohawk father and French-Canadian mother in 1949. She was given up to be adopted and, until she was a young teenager, grew up in an orphanage. […]
Editor’s note: San Cristóbal de las Casas, located in the central highlands of Chiapas, was catapulted into the limelight on 1 January 1994 when the Zapatista rebels chose it as one of four places in which to launch their revolution. […]
More than half of the population of Guatemala is indigenous, heirs of an ancient culture and trustees of centuries of ancestral knowledge and traditions. However, to be an indigenous person in Guatemala means, more often than not, to be a […]
What is it to be indigenous? Indigenous to the land or to your self. Indigenous even to your heart. What is indigenous? Who is indigenous and to what? For we are metaphors of our minds, but the reality is that […]
This week families across the country will be celebrating Thanksgiving—sharing food and telling stories
Unknown to perhaps many of us in this part of the world, there is a significant population of aboriginal people living mainly in the central swathe of India for centuries. Their plight has been recently been brought to the forefront […]
Norman Bethune was a world-reknowned Canadian surgeon, a passionate humanitarian, and a brilliant medical innovator. Born in Ontario in 1890, Bethune studied medicine in Canada and Britain. In 1925, he contracted tuberculosis, epidemic at that time. He recovered and dedicated […]
Pain was his lot. He had to endure it constantly since . . . Well, he could not even remember when it started, whether before or after surgery. Was it the cause of his malady or a consequence? Why is […]
THE LOVE QUEEN OF MALABAR. Memoir of a Friendship with Kamala Das. Merrily Weisbord, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2010. In order to understand why we should care to read the memoir of a friendship between two writers who were born […]
What will the traveller see on the horizon? – From the meaning of Inuit place names This place is not favourableThe land is very flat and looks like ice There are lots of caribou antlers in the area This place […]
My hands can still plough the fields. He was a teacher, my younger boy He taught me to write my name Suddenly for days he lay on the bed Malaria in the brain, they said We waited for a miracle […]
(An editorial essay on the Middle East) What is it that we do here in Montreal or anywhere else in the world, as artists, writers, filmmakers, poets, that somehow draws us into the politics in the Middle East? We are […]
Printed originally by Viewpoints, The State of the Arts in the Middle East: Volume IV, The Middle East Institute, Washington, DC, March 2010. Reprinted with permission.
I am walking the streets of Ras Beirut where I grew up, where my parents’ home still exists in Diaspora; as I promenade while doing some errands within a four square kilometer area, I feast my eyes on the sign […]
Israel is losing the propaganda war. Mainstream newspapers now provide ample reason to conclude that Israel oppresses the Palestinians with sadistic enthusiasm based on flimsy excuses. (The Palestinians, after all, have lost the military war. Even Hamas works hard to […]
Rezeq Faraj and the “Descent into Hell” It was when I read Palestine: le refus de disparaître, the 2005 book of our dear departed friend Rezeq Faraj, that I realized the full extent of the Palestinian people’s continuing “descent into […]
Over the last few years, the intensity and breadth of the solidarity actions for Palestinian rights dramatically increased. The second Intifada was followed by a campaign of non-violent direct-action, popularized in the West Bank by a joint Palestinian-Israeli organization, the […]
Shatila is a part of the Lebanese war that will never be forgotten, but it is a part of Beirut that few want to remember. I’m an ex-resident of and a frequent visitor to Beirut, but I had never even […]
Bil’in, situated to the west of Ramallah, is a village typical of the eastern Mediterranean from many points of view: the white houses that are arranged along the length of roads that hug the meanderings and natural contours of the […]
Kamal AlJafari’s Port of Memory (2010) is situated in the port of Jaffa. The film explores the formation of time in space—durational affect—and constitutes a relation of space and architecture via the cinematic lens that conjures up a new way […]
Ilustrado. By Miguel Syjuco, Hamish Hamilton Canada, an imprint of Penguin Group, 308 pp., Toronto 2010. Miguel Syjuco (pronounced See-hoo-koh), with Ilustrado, has achieved what Salman Rushdie achieved with Midnight’s Children: a brilliant irruption into the literary scene. He also […]
A colleague of mine suggested that I contribute an article on my interest in the question of Palestinian rights and intention to participate in a World Education Forum taking place in Palestine at the end of October. At the time […]
Media coverage of the peace talks presently underway in Washington is generally pessimistic about the prospects of success. It tends to be depicted as formalized theatrics, with a “down-to-business” atmosphere, dark suits, hand-shaking, and canned speeches. Little, if anything, is […]
One party asks for more than he is willing to settle for. The other party offers less than he is ultimately willing to concede. Both parties haggle until they reach a compromise. Such is the universal law of negotiating. As […]
The armed settlers descend from their colonies on the hill tops on the Palestinian farmers of Sousia day in and day out, damaging their crops and orchards and denying them access to their own land and wells. Settlements Mansions […]
Canada and Israel – Building Apartheid by Yves Engler, a co-publication of Fernwood Publishing and RED Publishing, ISBN: 9781552663554, Publication Date: Feb 2010, Pages: 168 Right off the bat, let’s take an excerpt from a blurb on the book issued by – […]
In a café somewhere a light switch clicked behind a blue paint-chipped door. The bright light which crept out from between it and the worn wooden floor disappears and two men watch from a small table across the room. They […]
[from my Iraq suite, “Howl to the Dying of the Moon”] * A lean desert wolf howls... A child is being carried to her grave her tiny mouth closed forever but do not weep - do not weep! just open […]
In January 2009 Caryl Churchill penned the play Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza in response to Israel’s Operation Cast Lead military strike upon Gaza. Cast Lead lasted 3 weeks, ending January 18th 2009 and was responsible for the […]
I am a Japanese Writer. By Dany Laferrière. Translation by David Homel. Douglas & McIntyre, 2010. I am a Japanese Writer is a novel about a writer who is neither Japanese nor speaks Japanese, but is actually Black and hails […]
THE ISSUE: This summer Montreal Serai focuses on the environment through a variety of viewpoints. Jacqueline Fortson, who has moved to Canada from Mexico, gives us a contemporary photo-essay “Montreal – Nature and the City: What makes Montreal a […]
Bio: Sandra Levy, originally from Montreal, now resides in Victoria, B.C. She studied art at Concordia University, École des Beaux Arts de Montréal and Arizona State University. She also did graduate work in biology at Concordia University. She taught […]
Unpaved paths have been part of human activity for at least 12,000 years, and the histories of roads and cities are deeply linked. Together with waterways, rutways or tracked-roads ( ancient “railways”) were key arteries for commerce and social […]
With apologies to Bill Clinton and Jean Charest The word is in: we are now deep into the world’s Sixth Great Extinction. Over the 543 million years of the Phanerozoic Eon, that vast period in which life made […]
Note: At the bottom of this article you will find a powerful video version, best seen at full screen. When I was first offered to opportunity of moving to Montreal, I deeply questioned myself, not knowing whether I would […]
When I was a boy, my parents often reminded me of the reality of the working class. Its work, the big tasks it accomplished from day to day. Its trade-union action. And its yearning for dignity. For my […]
I – Every Piece of Green on Earth “Everything come up out of ground –language, people, emu, kangaroo, grass. That’s Law.” –Hobbles Danaiyarri, from Yarralin, Northern Territory, Australia* In September 2008, I was attending a conference on urban […]
One does not have to be a militant environmentalist. Neither does one have to be a duck, a penguin or a halibut to feel encrusted, choked and oxygen-less. One needs to be just an engineer and scientist here, in […]
It is perhaps inescapable, my being born and raised in a North American suburb in the latter half of the twentieth century, that my poetry should show some concern with the environmental crisis. However, being poetry, the four poems here […]
[First published in A. Rivista anarchica, anno 40, n.2 (352) aprile 2010, pp. 47-49, Milano, Italia. Translation by Maya Khankhoje] Imperialism is a phenomenon which dates back all the way to antiquity, its epicenter having changed throughout the […]
In 1996, legislation was passed in the state of California that deregulated the production and sale of electric power for the big three big power producers and retailers: San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E), Southern California Edison, and Pacific Gas […]
The British, ever adroit in matters related to furry-four footed creatures (except perhaps for the English beaver that disappeared in the 1500s), report that there are forty to sixty thousand urban foxes in England. They’re everywhere. Church lawns. Looking […]
Artist Statement: Singing and songwriting has become an extension of my dreamtime, a way to distil spirit and set free my pain, passions, confusion, solitude, vanity and love. Bio: Louise began singing in Chœur Maha in 1991 and […]
I have a relationship to traffic, similar to the kind of relationship a goldfish has to the water in its bowl. It’s never just about the fish and the water. Rather, it’s an ecology, and the ecology relates to […]
Exactly two decades ago I left the West Island to come and live in the United Kingdom. Like many expatriates, in recent years I have started looking back on the place where I grew up with a certain degree […]
From Rajahs and Yogis to Gandhi and Beyond. Images of India in International Films of the Twentieth Century, by Vijaya Mulay. Seagull Books, 2010, London, New York and Calcutta. [Vijaya Mulay, a.k.a. Akka, or Elder Sister, was born in […]
Soul Mountain, by Gao Xingjian. Harper Perennial, 2001. [NB: The reviewer has chosen to stay attuned to the Chinese style of the original to enable readers to better capture its flavour.] Although I had heard about the controversial Nobel […]
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lines for qi baishi (1864-1957) dear qi baishi your neat little cottages worry me a lot are those just vacant places? aren’t folks sleeping inside or waiting for a son to get back with herbs from town? outside […]
FAR AWAY to the south bayous— ruptured oil well tar balls soiling protected wetlands sea sponges crabs, fish, algae and octopus —coral reefs RÍO LAGARTOS thatch-roofed hut with […]
Where? Somewhere. She walked some more to reach the unknown. Some more, another mile to go there, where? Somewhere. To reach there she had to walk a mile more. Stopped for water but nothing to be seen, so she […]
This morning I plunged into the arms of death. I immersed myself in wisdom. In the silence the secret the mystery of Carthage. The roots of a palm tree bury a Tophet. * In the […]
In the small, dark hours, I perceive frozen chunks set loose in me: jagged blocks of icy skin above the right elbow below my left ankle over the third-eye scar on my forehead. My knuckle. A toe bone. A […]
It was exactly a hundred years ago that Clara Zetkin, leader of the Women’s Office for the Social Democratic Party of Germany, tabled the idea of an International Women’s Day. The occasion was the Second International Conference of […]
Montreal Serai Editor Rana Bose interviewed Catherine Potter, leader of the Catherine Potter-Duniya Project, after her show at the MAI in Montreal. MS : The show La Convergence des Continents at the Montreal Arts Interculturels on 23rd January, […]
Dr. Shree Mulay , Professor Emerita of the Department of Medicine of McGill University in Montreal, is currently Associate Dean and Professor of Community Health and Humanities Division, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s. Dr. Mulay served for […]
Edited by Susan Dubrofsky Has the work of artists who are women been attributed incorrectly more frequently than that of artists who are men? Has there been some kind of blatant disregard, or disinterest, or prejudice against the study […]
Think old people can be troublesome? You don’t know the half of it! Why didn’t my mother warn me? It didn’t feel like it at the time but was it a stroke of luck for me that my […]
Taking Root. The vision of Wangari Maathai. Documentary. DVD 2008, Mongrel Media. Taking Root is the story of Wangari Maathai’s life-long journey as a child in her native village in Kenya all the way to […]
Why would one state government spend sleepless nights trying to provide maximum security to someone whose mere existence is a threat to its own? What threat could an illiterate tribal petite woman of 28, mother of four children, pose […]
English version below. An extract from the documentary George Sand: The Story of Her Life produced by CNDP 2004, Montreal (Quebec) Quelques heures avant de commencer à écrire cet article, j’étais à Radio-Canada, dans la salle Jean-Desprez qui porte le […]
To listen to this text click here: [audio:Womaninalineup.mp3] Oh excuse me, I just got pushed from behind, I didn’t mean to bump into you. There sure are a lot of people here today. I just take this one class so I […]
…I don’t know why I’ve agreed to this… but here I am… here we are… he briskly raps the knocker. We’re standing in the corridor by the stairwell, with its dank smell and hollow sounds. There are 3 locks. […]
In grade seven, I had a crush on Eric. Tall, lean, gorgeous Eric. He was in the same year as I was, but he was a year older. I knew little about him and accepted the rumours that he […]
After years of denouncing Mother Country’s contempt for its emigrants stuck in the 1950s, I am airing the dirty laundry. What makes the immigrants stuck? I do not see peasantry as pejorative, just for some pernicious superstitions passed down […]
I was a teenager the last time I saw Fatma. I had just returned home for my summer vacation after my first year of university and she had come to visit us with her two children. One was a […]
Reading A Woman Among Warlords you may find yourself forgetting on occasion that this is, in fact, a work of non-fiction, so extreme are the terms of its author’s life and homeland. The youngest MP ever to be elected […]
PERFECT HOSTAGE. Aun San Suu Kyi, Burma and the Generals. By Justin Wintle. Arrow, 2007. In Burma there is no prejudice against girl babies. In fact, there is a general belief that daughters are more dutiful and loving […]
The Heart Does Break: Canadian Writers on Grief and Mourning, edited by George Bowering and Jean Baird, Random House Canada, 2009. 351 pp. The Heart Does Break is a Canadian anthology of personal stories on grief and mourning […]
Amongst the most memorable names that I heard as a child, growing up in a South Asian Muslim household, was that of (sir) Salman Rushdie. There was always an air of frustration, anger and utter hatred that seemed to […]
The following poems are taken from Luigi Moneferrante’s new collection entitled: Stiletto Heels And a Pork Pie Hat On the Road Again The door of the camper opens Out jump Billy, Bob & Suzy Pull out their pee-pees The […]
The Housewife’s Lament was written as a protest song, out of the experience of women in the not too distant past. The song originated during the Civil War in the United States. It was found in the diary of […]
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 […]
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 […]
Lost in the Land of Plenty I live in a welfare hotel and when the electricity gets shut off again in the room provided by Homeless Services, without the heater, even with blankets, it’s freezing cold. I […]
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 […]
Notations 21 by Theresa Sauer. Mark Batty Publisher 2009. Hardcover: 320 pages. Reproduced partial images are with permission of the publisher as stated for purposes of a review of the work. Notations 21 by Theresa Sauer is a collection […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 ! 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 […]
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 […]
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” [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.
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 […]
1. At Checkpoint Charlie customs huts The death strip – scraped earth :wildflowers. Sepia postcard of the Brandenburg Gate. Organized bus tour. A one-day visit. 2. Windows are bricks instead of glass. 3. A summer […]
[From the book The Men Who Killed Me: Rwandan Survivors of Sexual Violence, © 2009, by Anne-Marie de Brouwer & Sandra Ka Hon Chu, with photographs by Samer Muscati, published by Douglas & McIntyre: an imprint of D&M Publishers Inc. […]
Norman Bethune by Adrienne Clarkson Penguin Canada hardcover, 200 pp, 2009 At a conference on April 15, 2009 at Concordia University, Adrienne Clarkson, former governor general of Canada and now biographer of Norman Bethune, suggested that one of the […]
Vermeer, Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art. Masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. By Ruud Priem and others. Vancouver Art Gallery and D & M Publishers Inc, 2009. Art is often likened to a gadfly […]
[See English version below] غزوة غزة بأكتبلَك من جوه حصار بأكتبلَك من تحت جدار كان يوم شايل سقف الدار بأكتبلك من أرضي الحِبلى بالأحرار بأسمي وبأسم الشهدا والثوار … بأكتبلَك … وفي حلقي مرار […]
Kolkata Dreams K. Gandhar Chakravarty 8th House Publishing, Montreal Canada 2009, 75 pages “I wonder what it must be like To fuck with a severed penis.” Montrealer K. Gandhar ‘Ginsburg’ Chakravarty knows his penis from his elbow. He […]
June 04, 2009 Note for readers of Serai: I recently composed this poem in homage to my dear Cuban friend Celia Hart for a book being published in her memory by Havana’s Martí Studies Center. The poem’s title […]
We’re not idiots. But as Canadians, we’re told things, contradictory things, things that don’t add up… about Afghanistan, our mission, security, democracy… February 19th, here in Montreal, Robert Fisk, respected Middle East correspondent of 33 years, argued fervently for NATO […]
Artist Biography: Lyne Lapointe’s career dates back to the early eighties, when she rapidly made a name for herself as one of the most promising artists of her generation. Between 1983 and 1994, Lyne Lapointe created ground-breaking sight specific […]
Fennario’s War (41 minutes) is a simple film. The Montreal playwright, David Fennario, reads a text in his Verdun apartment about World War One. He has based his drama on an interview he did with a Great War vet in […]
I’ve known Jason Breckenridge for many years and over that time the two insights I’ve gained about what makes him tick are 1) He concocts the most ridiculously unattainable schemes in an effort to make his working life as […]
Introduction: When I left Montreal on February 15th I knew that this would not be a predictable trip. From all that I’d heard, the border crossing from Egypt to Gaza (at Rafah) was unpredictable, at best. Yet I did not […]
Hey kids! Want a career with a dubious future? A job where you get paid to play real life deadly games? Then join the Canadian Armed Forces! Kill innocent people! People you’ll never know! People just like […]
A cosmic motherly-sounding voice has always told me that even the darkest of clouds have silver linings. The past two weeks have forced me to now wonder if the same idea of a silver lining applies to clouds of white […]
In the following short reconstructed video, De-Construction, I’ve used a home video report from Gaza and extracts from other videos found on Youtube, along side my own recordings, to try to convey something of how development, occupation and destruction […]
Urban Iran Mark Batty Publisher www.markbattypublisher.com 130 pages, hard cover, $27.95 US/ $32.95 CA/ Urban Iran is a beautiful book. Its eye-catching stark black and white hard cover with embossed lettering […]
[Short listed by the CBC-Quebec Writers Federation Literary Competition and first published in In Other Words. New English Writing from Quebec, Edited by Claude Lalumière, Véhicule Press, 2008] A huge black crow was doing a balancing act on the […]
All militarization has environmental consequences. All of which have little to do with democracy. The other day, Montreal economist, writer, publisher and social ecologist, Dimitri Roussopoulos, took M/S on an amble through the four categories of militarization and environment, […]
Unembedded. Two Decades of Maverick War Reporting. By Scott Taylor. Douglass & McIntyre, 2009. Review by Maya Khankhoje Unembedded is the mid-life autobiography of a toy-soldier-playing boy turned real soldier, of a soldier turned journalist, of a fervent admirer […]
‘A Modest Proposal’ is from Norman Nawrocki’s anti-war, anti-Empire solo CD, ‘Duck Work’ released in 2004 on the Les Pages Noires label. [audio:10.mp3]
Standing on the sidelines of the parade grounds, they are old now, grandmothers, great-grandmothers; women who forfeited their lovers to the bagpipe sirens: the tangled sheets cooled by waving flags. Penelope knew the secret, the dark unraveling […]
May you die, in a coffin buried with tears, Buried with the youth of my years, Buried with the breadth and depth of your fears, May you die, in my eyes one more night, Buried from my sight, […]
From thickset specky windows he eye-balls the tough job warp and weft of the launch pad as it floats itself for the copter’s sea-strip. Then the kitchen’s remodelled – Tony bumps the eggbeater off its base buoying […]
Look through grandmother’s kitchen window: a concrete airstrip, wheat fields, red poppies, cornflowers. Forsythia, osier willows in bomb craters. We moved to Halle 7, in 1950, two-story, red-brick house attached to a shed. Windows blasted, front door, missing. […]
In the rush of city life, it is exceptional for a large gathering of people to get together to discuss, face-to-face, concerns that affect their quality of life in their neighbourhoods and urban environment. In discussing their experiences and […]
Rights are hard to locate. One man’s rigorous beliefs in his “cultural” assertion are another woman’s confinement and destitution. The rights of a nation, of a people, run against the path of development chosen by a state. The rights of […]
The artist would like viewers to profoundly feel her work, to establish a dialogue with what they see, what they know and what they live. Artist bio written by: Rene DetroyeMaterials: concrete, strawSize: Between 3 to 6 feet.
Rights are won through popular struggles. But once enacted into law, they have to be enforced. Governments are usually reluctant to do that. The rights are then just words on a piece of paper. Workers, however, have found that they […]
Text by Maria Worton This is a farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq. Here in Montreal, on December 20th, Block the Empire, a local collective working against occupation […]
[Adapted from an article by Warren Allmand in publication “Ideas, Interests & Issues, by George Maclean and Brenda O’Neill 2008 (Pearson-Prentice Hall). Adapted from an article originally published by Rights & Democracy.] Throughout the world, it is widely recognized that […]
Canadian multinational New Gold Inc. is operating a heavily-contested open pit gold and silver mine in Cerro de San Pedro, Mexico. For over 10 years, the residents of Cerro de San Pedro and the surrounding area have been fighting the […]
Persepolis is an Oscar-nominated film that premiered last year and which I regret not having seen on the big screen. Based on a graphic autobiographical novel by Marjane Satrapi, the author and her studio mate Vincent Paronnaud created a highly […]
Jaspreet Singh drips tomato juice from his lips and sucks on mangoes, in a delicious and intricate exercise in culinary commitment and infatuation.
The place for the artistic statement in film has been sadly replaced by brass and taxes.
The Obama victory was jubilantly celebrated in Washington DC (sometimes referred to as Chocolate City). I was there for the Clinton victory over Bush1, but that was a quaint tea party compared to this wild bumping throw-down. I squeezed myself […]
Apocalyptic Phone Call, 2002 On the phone, you told me you’d found Jesus, that you never really lost him, just strayed, made your way back, and I should read my gospels, all of them, Old Testament and New, familiarize myself […]
Gao Xingjian, playwright, novelist, essayist and painter born in eastern China and self-exiled in Paris, was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1992. In 2000 he went on to receive the […]
"...the British managed the so-called sexual revolution with an ingratiating ease and sophistication."
"Cinema should speak to the mind, to the heart and to the senses."
Animal’s People. By Indra Sinha, Simon and Schuster, London, 2007. On December 2, 1984, the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, leaked methylisocyanate gas into the atmosphere causing the death of over 15,000 people and maiming hundreds of thousands […]
A Conversation Ring … Ring …. Ring …. They called last evening. “We do not want you to do what you are doing.” “It is not just me, there are others” “We know that. You must stop them”. “But they […]
"...uses the universality of the body to explore the tensions created by the collision of East and West."
There were twelve of us in three cars driving from Montreal to Baie St-Paul and I was the only English-speaking person among eleven French-Canadians. We had decided to go whale watching and Baie St-Paul, situated in Charlevoix on the Fleuve […]
Unhung paintings stood stacked against a metal shelf. Inside four walls on Rue Mariette. The easel. Tubes of acrylic and oils. Boar bristle brushes. Black electric guitar in its case. Petunias in window boxes. Narrow pine shutters. A brick and […]
"The people of Nepal never stop surprising the world..."
flux fleuve st-laurent i am the river. my ripples shift shaping glyphs. can you read me? the iroquois did – by the glint the sun shot over my liquid lips. poets whose words flood undammed from mad minds, whose thoughts […]
(Every few months, perhaps weeks, there is a major Coal mine accident in China. Environmental issues are not just climate change issues, but health and safety issues for the poor of China and elsewhere.) Rana Bose December 10, 2004 […]
Communist Hot Dogs, In Pursuit of Petula, and A Kiss from Marlene Dietrich The fortieth anniversary of the opening of Expo ’67 unleashed a flood of memories for me. As soon as season passes became available, passes which took […]
We left San Juan Del Sur early this morning, heading for Rivas. The bus waited on the side of the road with a small cafe selling gallo pinto and eggs. There was an old beat up car across the street […]
“James Finnerty started the night with his calm, quiet wit and heart-hurting hopeful lyrics and masterful guitar.” – Risa Dickens, Indyish Click on here to listen the mp3 of “Vermont Song”. Interview below. Vermont Song – Lyrics Two birds […]
Part 1 is contained in Volume 20 No. 1 – ed Only until recently, the fabled term Italophobia emerged and remained in the domain of cultural studies but remained inaccessible to its own people. What were accessible were the snide […]
Planta’s Plaint I had returned to Siderea my ancestral home spending my time hitching rides on stars, swimming in milky ways, zipping in and out of darkness and thoroughly enjoying myself from my vantage point I would drink in […]
Scott Camil in Vietnam, taken from archival footage used in the Winter Soldier documentary. In his life Scott Camil has been shot three times: twice in Vietnam and once by the US government. A well known anti-war activist and […]
Hello children of the planet Cassandra. It is so wonderful to be on a visit here in the earth year 2057 to teach you Cassandranicks about life on the planet earth among the Earthnics in the year 2007. As you […]
Guerrilla Gardening. A Manualfesto by David Tracey. New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC., 2007. The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. — Henry Kissinger. Guerrilla gardening can be summarily defined […]
Mount Royal Park, designed by Olmsted of Central-Park-in-New-York-fame is an oasis of greenery right smack in the middle of the busy island-port of Montreal. From the Saint Lawrence River you can look up at what Montrealers fondly call “The Mountain” […]
The auditorium of St. James United Church on Ste.Catherine Street was packed with an eager crowd of over 300 persons. The title above was the title of the public event, scheduled to be a discussion on environmental policies and practices […]
I – A Public Place Like A Painting We are all acutely aware that our world is both a big and a small place. There were about 1 billion of us in 1900, but now we are 6 billion. And […]
Artist’s Statement: Naomi Bellos, a Montreal artist working in printmaking, was born in the U.K. She has a Bachelor in Fine Art (painting and printmaking) from Goldsmiths College, University of London and a Masters in Fine Art (film and video) […]
This issue of Montreal Serai is dedicated to the environment which is why it contains facts, probabilities and imagining. We need all three to see the environment, to see ourselves, because the environment is us. Whatever we do to it […]
THIS FAMISHED ROAD a child picks up a glass shard i know he hasn’t eaten in days shocked I tear after him just in time, before it reaches his mouth. I look down to see his empty as hell tummy bursting […]
Standing on the Edge 2006 Looking over the edge Out and beyond her small town The past lies behind her The future around The unknown before her With the road closing in The edge moving closer Yet it is where […]
—> Click on this text to hear Janet Lumb play the “Chant of Maarya”. Interview Q. You are a musician, a sax player, film composer and activist. How do you combine all this? A. They are all for me […]
“Hello. My name is Betty. You don’t know me for I am no-one of import. I live the simple life of a commoner. Until now my life has been one of blundering about, eating egg and chips with the occasional […]
Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny Author: Sen, Amartya Publication date: Hardback, Feb. 2006; Paperback: Jan. 2007 Publisher: W. W. Norton ISBN: 0393329291 The notion of a “clash of civilizations,” first made famous in Samuel Huntington’s 1996 work “The […]
March 14, 2007, Montreal Jaggi Singh, taken from the Montreal Mirror Jaggi Singh, a well-known Montreal-based social justice activist, was released from jail last night on $1,000 bail, to face trial June 22 for violating his previous bail conditions […]
Port-au-Prince, March 2nd, 2007: seeing the arrival of journalists, MINUSTAH troops take leave of a group of angry Cité Soleil residents. Residents stated that UN troops had just arrested their 23 year-old neighbor without a warrant as he was […]
Part 1 – Given the size of this article it will be published in 2 pieces. Part 1 in Vol 20 No 1 and Part 2 in Vol 20 No 2. Dedicated to: To my maternal great grandfather D. M, […]
Racists. (Kunal Basu, Penguin, 2006). While sipping comforting cocoa in the cafeteria of a high-tech Indian hospital that provides health services internationally, my eyes fell on a book displayed on the shelves of the gift shop. Three words caught my […]
Artist’s Statement: We are born in this world to discover that racism has many facets – the religion of one, the colour of the other, the social class, the shape and size of each one of us. At 17 years […]
Cartoon by Susan Dubrofsky Racial disdain and distance goes beyond incidents of hatred on the streets, defiling of monuments, police arrogance and brutality towards minorities or the ignorance-based proto-working class commentary that spews out of AM radio and […]
It was the craziest thing. I was just going home from rehearsal, and I was so caught up that I didn’t even notice that long after sunset the lights were out all over town. An ambulance drew up, and a […]
The view is impressive from the balcony of the Muhsen family’s apartment in Abu Dis. Hisham, a fine arts teacher at Al Quds University, gazes over the rolling hills of Jerusalem, the campus, the valley, and the 8-metre concrete wall […]
Montreal has the distinction of being the most “bombed-out” graffiti capital. “Bombing” in the graffiti world refers to the act of vandalising property with one’s signature or logo. “Bombing”-type graffiti can manifest itself in many different forms, but always happens […]
Lately, opinion writers have taken to labeling everyone who supports the Palestinians, as “Palestinians”. For instance, Canada’s changing UN votes on Israel won’t “impede Canada’s ability to be the “honest broker” the Palestinian community wants our government to be”, wrote […]
I was born in Barquisimeto, known as the musical capital of Venezuela. As a child I discovered that my voice was my best instrument. I was brought up on my country’s folklore music. Then other songs entered my life, full […]
{Montreal Native Canadian artist and Mohawk activist, Ellen Gabriel, through her paintings and drawings, takes part in deconstructing the negative stereotypes that remain towards the first inhabitants of our land.} * * * * * * * * ”Art has […]
By Eduardo Galeano. Writer, Uruguay Translation. coorditrad@attac.org volunteer translators (*) Times of fear. The world is living in a state of terror, terror in disguise: some say it comes from Saddam Hussein, now tired of being enemy number one, or […]
Bhopal , 1984 Night shift: He separates smells with ease Dust of pesticide enfolds him like ivories Entangled in Carbide’s empire my son, the scientist, labors on Outside on famished footpath groundnut fire keeps me warm, I, the night watchman, […]
URGENCE Lorraine Simms has been painting professionally since 1991. Her work is represented in many private and public collections, including the Canada Council Art Bank and the Musée du Québec. She has taught painting and drawing at Concordia University and […]
I lose people. They die in ways that are incomprehensible to me. Making their entry in an almost gentle and unsolicited way, they exit brutally, inappropriately, usually suddenly. They mark my existence and are the worlds and songs and reflections […]
[Rawi Hage is a Montreal writer. Born in Lebanon, he immigrated to Canada in 1992. His work has appeared in Mizna, a literary journal in Minneapolis, and Al-Jadid, a magazine in Los Angeles]. A call rang out over the whole […]
[Mark Kingwell is the author of several book including In Pursuit of Happiness. His essays have appeared in Harper’s, Utne Reader, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Observer, the National Post, and the Globe and Mail. The following […]
[Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at University of Ottawa] In Yugoslavia, the IMF has become the steadfast financial bureaucracy of the western military alliance, working hand in glove with NATO and the US State Department. The International Monetary Fund […]
[NOAM CHOMSKY is one of America’s most prominent political dissidents. A renowned professor of linguistics at MIT, he has authored over 30 political books dissecting such issues as U.S. interventionism in the developing world, the political economy of human rights […]
History never confesses. “Guyana cannot be allowed to slip into a state of ethnic division or social polarization. Every leader, organization and citizen has a duty to prevent a widening of the gulf.” I recently read an account of the […]
It’s Day Forty-seven, the bombings continue and “tragic mistakes” and “regretful errors” too and ruined life hourly trickles out of Kosovo and defiant Belgrade amid the rubble keeps on saying No and “we are sorry but we’ll go on pounding” […]
I think I went looking for Julie because I was tired and hungry. It was miserable Wednesday night — dark, rainy, cold, and I had my hood pulled up, even though it dripped water down my neck. The gang had […]
Tempus Fugit Yes. It was true. There was no doubt about it. The telltale signs on the grass and leaves and asphalt were visible from her third-floor balcony. She took a big gulp of air and her nostrils confirmed what […]
Serai Sands A decade slips by A millennium approaches And we return To search for new Serais For blinded and stunned travellers… Collectors of treasure boxes… Each grain taken away, one by one Till there is just one left In […]
INVISIBLE BOMBAYS We left somewhere a life we never found, Customs and gods that are not born again… –Dereck Walcott. You in your blue lattice houses Should not listen to streamers of my steps Maps of my arrivals and […]
Icons of a well-weathered life I have taken to brushing my cheek Against the silky smoothness My babies! Of your first Christmas snapshots I have taken to running my fingers Through your brushed and shining hair My first-born! Staring back […]
CUTTING THROUGH THE CONSTITUTIONAL SMOKESCREEN Serai: Madame Parent, since you have seen so much and participated in so much that has now become Quebec’s past, could you describe your aspirations as a Quebecer from a broad, historical perspective? Parent: I’m […]
To: Ken Chubb CBC Television Re: Television Drama Series Writing Workshop for Professional writers with experience in another medium, Mr. Chubb, Thanks for the invitation to apply for a position in the upcoming T.V. writing workshop. But after reading the […]
As I sit to contemplate a count-down to war (D-38) I can’t help but be fragmented. Not in my persuasions but in my analysis. More than ever this is a media war. A long build up. National interest. Daily coverage. […]
Discovering a New Word After being punched up, bruised and bloodied, South Shore black businessman Francis Ojo was thrown into a police cruiser and made to repeat three times: “I am a nigger.” The Station 33 cops who repeatedly beat […]
Dr. Rita Shakuntala Nowry, a family physician in obstetrics has been in Montreal since 1967. One of the pioneer women doctors from a South Asian country, she is a well known figure in the community. She has been on the […]
As Serai started out originally in hard copy, below we have collected a few of the many covers and cartoons from our past issues. Most of these covers were drawn/designed by Vanessa Chio or Mehdi Naimi and the cartoons were […]
This e-zine’s been around for as long as there have been e-zine’s on the web…or so it seems. Since 1995, as an e-zine and since 1986 as a hardcopy magazine. Twenty years, non-stop. Check out what happened in ‘86… of […]
[MICHAEL MOORE, along with free-thinkers like Noam Chomsky, is the conscience of America. He directed the film Roger and Me, and hosts the weekly show THE AWFUL TRUTH on Bravo TV. -ed.] Progress is our mistakes understood. Merleau-Ponty Dear friends, […]
Night crawls in and Banksy and his urban warriors sweep through town…or maybe a distant village. They appear in Los Angeles, in Disneyland, in the Museum of Modern Art, in a display of ancient Chinese Art and on the ugly […]