TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW

Windsor poet, Windsor Star blogger on motherhood, and writer of Black Moss Press’ Laughing Through A Second Pregnancy (a very engaging and hot-selling memoir about being pregnant again) last night very nervously and courageously got up at a rowdy jazz club in Detroit — a place called Cliff Bells and joined in a story telling contest. She stood up — a glass of chardonnay stiffening her resolve — and talked about what she knows — motherhood, specifically though her own experience of a doctor conducting a vaginal examination. It was a jaw-dropping, and very funny skit, and she had the audience in stitches for a solid five minutes. Cliff Bells is an amazing setting for this in downtown Detroit, and the place was jammed and  hopping with jazz. This was its famous and highly popular Moth Story—Slam, an event that is by turns hilarious, tear-jerking, outrageous and even spiritual, so say the club owners. They state in their advertisement, “The chatter of the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd drops to a hush as the names of the 10 storytellers are plucked from a hat. Each takes the stage to tell a five-minute tale related to a broad theme. Last night it was motherhood, and there is no one better than Vanessa Shields, a Black Moss Press author, to zero in upon this particular motif. She knows it — no pun intended — inside and out. She killed last night! And when she was done, and all through the rest of the night, people were filing up to tell her how much they loved her story. To win this night was big. And to watch Vanessa, Windsor’s own on stage, was delightful. She will move on to the greater contest in September at Detroit’s famous Gem Theatre. All the best with that.

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Here’s a little bit of background on Vanessa. She was born and raised in Windsor, Ontario, where she currently resides with her husband Nick and two children. The product of her mother’s second pregnancy, family has always been very important to Vanessa. “My sister and mom and I were a threesome to reckon with as I was growing up,” Vanessa says. “ We were always uniquely connected to one another.” When she’s not chasing after her kids, Vanessa pursues her passion for creative writing. As a free-lance writer, Vanessa has established a multi-faceted career as a journalist, poet, playwright, and children’s author. She regularly organizes and presents at writing retreats and teaches her own workshops: The Writer’s Process, Adventures in Creative Writing: The Odyssey Project, Memoir Writing Part I: The Courage of Memoir. For the last three years Vanessa has been chosen for the Ontario Arts Council’s Writers Reserve, and is the 2010 recipient of the Windsor Endowment for the Arts as an emerging artist in the literary field.

NEW WRITING FROM BIBLIOASIS

Last night, I was at Phog Lounge in Windsor — again one of the best places for literature and music in southwestern Ontario. I was there for the spring launch of new books from Biblioasis. The one book that caught my attention was a book of poetry by Amanda Jernigan. The poems are rich in imagery, perfectly lyrical and accomplished with unexpected poignancy. And Amanda read them with such grace. Jernigan’s work in Groundwork, as stated by the publisher, is “a sophisticated reworking of European myth on the order of Yeats’s The Tower.” If you get a chance to read this book, don’t hesitate. It is — so says Dan Wells, publisher of Biblioasis—”one of the best books of poetry (he) has seen…”

These are some of the photos I took last night at the reading. The other readers included Mike Barnes and Claire Tacon.

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A POEM FOR CITY COUNCIL

Last night I was asked to appear before city council here and read a poem. I chose to read one about Alexander Bartlet, Windsor’s first town clerk (born 1780). He was also a magistrate. He resided at the corner of Chatham and Ferry Streets in a building that was replaced by the Old Fish Market. The house he owned was moved to a nearby street. For years, I have gone in search of this old Georgian residence. I haven’t located it. I’ve seen two or three that could possibly be Bartlet’s home.

The poem begins with that search, but tells about the morning that Bartlet heard about the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The poem is dedicated to Bartlet, but also to Thomas Hines who was chased in Detroit on April 16th because people mistook him for Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, who was still on the run. Hines made his way to the ferry docks in Detroit, forced a ferry boat operator at gunpoint to take him across to Windsor. So overwhelmed with guilt over having treated the man that way, Hines offered the operator $5 for the trouble. The story I am telling in this narrative is based in part — with a lot of poetic licence — on the diaries Bartlet left behind. These are housed at the University of Windsor Archives in the basement of the university library. Here is the poem:

The Magistrate’s House

For Alexander Bartlet and Thomas Hines

 

Sometimes I go out

in early morning

cruising up and down Windsor streets

in search of his house

—its sprawling Georgian verandah

the usual sash windows

sturdy front door with transom

and sidelights

They’ve moved it, but not far

I’ve narrowed it down

to two or three —

In a way I don’t want to know

I want to paint my own story

of that that morning: 1865

of the billy-goat bearded town clerk

racing down a flight of stairs

to the landing —

paperboys fanning out into Ferry Street

from the ferry docks

a cold Easter Monday

the boys shouting “Lincoln Shot!”

I see the magistrate’s frown

in the dim April dawn

his voice summoning the boys

to bring him the paper

see him pausing there in the gaping entrance

wondering what went wrong

a civil war across the river

the flight of slaves to his shores

now rumours of John Wilkes Booth

making his own run across the river

That Easter Monday

a sleepy town rouses itself awake

to the scuttlebutts

of a ferry boat captain

who stopped at nothing to spin the legend

of being held at gunpoint

by Lincoln’s assassin

and the magistrate sorts out

the hearsay down by the docks

wind howling up that street

sweeping its way into the

shopkeepers’ doorways

on that spit-gray day

It’s all gone now but for that story

and the ramshackle house

that sits somewhere

quietly breathing

telling no one

the truth

 

 

Canada’s Poet Laureate

Fred Wah, newly appointed as the parliamentary poet laureate for Canada, was in Windsor this week to read at The Capitol Theatre. The event was sponsored generously both by the cultural affairs office of the City of Windsor and the English Department at the University of Windsor. And I was asked to host the event. For me, it was not only an honour representing the city as this municipality’s own first poet laureate, it was also a bit of a homecoming. I had a chance to talk with Wah before the event. We sat in the lumpy up old theatre seats at the front of the room, and talked about the 1960s. Both of us were focused on our careers as poets back then. Or maybe we never thought of ourselves as carving out for ourselves an actual “career,” but poetry some 40 years ago consumed us. It’s what we were reading, and what we were writing. Wah was on the west coast then at UBC working under the tutelage of Warren Tallman and the American poet Robert Creeley. He was part of a group that started a magazine called “Tish.” This zine threatened the conventions of writing in this country, and later George Fetherling would declare it to be “the most influential literary magazine” ever to exist in Canadian literary history. True enough. It spawned a generation of writers whose observations about the world, and about writing, changed the way we put words on a page.

Much later, the legendary Earle Birney would acknowledge the imagination of these younger writers, and would set out to rewrite many of his time-worn poems, the ones that first catapulted him into fame. Birney’s mentor became the young and energized bp Nichol. It was like W. B. Yeats turning to the inspired youthful Ezra Pound.

But there we were. I sat beside Fred and we talked about that period. We both recounted stories of going to see a skeptical Birney who scanned our writing. We had brought samples of our poetry to him, and in both instances, we believe they were never read. Both of us were quickly dismissed and sent on our way. We had a good laugh over that experience. We also talked about hitchhiking across the country in the 1960s, and I told him how I was stopped in Swift Current, the place of his birth, and was stuck there for two days. I couldn’t get a ride out of the town, until a preacher pulled up — very reluctantly but overcome with guilt for abandoning me — and drove me to Calgary. I always say he saved my soul — so to speak. Wah, for his part, was hitchhiking east with his wife, Pauline, and got a ride in a sports car. In those days, I was living in Toronto, and Yorkville (“The Village”) was crammed with hippies. The old Riverboat club in those days featured Gordon Lightfoot and Joni Mitchell. In those days, I was hanging out at The Book Cellar and The Village Books and reading all the poets whose books were being printed at Coach House Press. I was also devouring all the work in the “little magazines” that came out of Toronto and Montreal and Halifax. I was also being introduced to writings by Gary Snyder (“The Beats”), and Ginsberg, and of course, Jack Kerouac. But it was these Canadian poets on the West Coast whose work fascinated me. I was drawn to the Tish writers like George Bowering, Lionel Kearns, Robert Hogg and Fred Wah. They were experimenting with writing and pushing the boundaries. I always likened them to the Romantic poets — Wordsworth and Coleridge — publishing The Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Though that book’s immediate effects were modest, it is regarded today as marking the beginning of the Romantic movement in English Literature, and the landmark event that transformed the way poetry was written.

And so earlier this week, Canada’s poet laureate candidly talked about those university days when he and Bowering and Kearns were mimeographing Tish. He smiled at the question if he and the others had “a clue” as to what they were doing as young writers back then in  the mid-1960s. He acknowledged they couldn’t know they were changing the world. They were in the moment.

On the other side of the county, however, I was reading them. For me, it was exciting — it was different, it was challenging, it was unique. It opened my eyes.

Photos below were taken by Jason Rankin.

JOHN WING AT PHOG LOUNGE, WINDSOR, ONTARIO

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It was one of the best nights for poetry in a long time, and it happened  at Phog Lounge, perhaps the finest place for music and poetry in southwestern Ontario. Tom Lucier hosted a group of local writers, as well as the great and ever-funny poet and comedian John Wing. Leading off the night was Kate Hargreaves, a young poet and up-and-coming book designer who works with Black Moss Press and edits our on-line zine Offside. Her work is evidence of some of the best writing to come out of the University of Windsor creative writing program in a long time. She was followed by the enigmatic Vanessa Shields, whose book, Laughing Through A Second Pregnancy, was published by Black Moss last year. She read from a possible book of new poems. Vanessa was followed by Peter Hrastovec, an old friend, a lawyer and a fabulous poet. I have been after him for years to put together a book of his work. He is finally publishing some of it. And that night, he read a piece from The Windsor Review, the Filth issue that John Wing guest edited. Peter is a new writer on the scene, and his first book should appear in the fall. The featured reader that night was John Wing, and he had the crowd in stitches. But one poem in particular caught my attention, and it was the serious tone and intention of the work that sent shivers down my spine. Here was a master at work. Here is John Wing’s poem:

MEMORY

This is my memory,

my archive of wind and aroma,

a relic box the size of Mexico City.

Everything is arranged just so

idiotically. A blind man

runs this library.

My eyes are closed

but I’m not asleep. My memory

isn’t tired. He wants to play.

Six years old,

awake in the mid-night,

searching for my father,

and afraid I might find him.

Going from my bed

to the bathroom in the black,

running into rogue pieces

of furniture. Chairs and bureaus

surround me, the room shrinks

to the size of my chest.

I gasp my way back to bed

and scream until my father comes

in a burst of light, showing

the room as it should be.

Maybe I never got up at all.

Just a dream.

This is my memory:

Down the lane, Mary Jane, I smell

the stove in my mother’s house.

And the numbers, cucumbers, come

to me.

96: Ty Cobb, stolen bases, 1915.

101: Don Hutson, touchdown receptions – career.

58: Hank Greenberg frightens Ruth, 1938,

the year before Hitler invaded Poland.

Numbers aren’t events

that someone standing

next to you saw differently.

I am singing to a child.

Her face is pink, her eyes closed.

She reacts to sound only.

I am singing ‘Jerusalem’

softly in her ear.

Someday, in a church somewhere,

she will hear this song

and feel so strange.

She was born two minutes ago.

We’ve just met.

This is my memory:

I turn down a side street

and find everything I ever broke

accidentally or smashed on purpose.

Almost every lie I ever told cringes up

and this is more than awful, since

nothing ices the blood more than a lie

you can’t remember.

And my father’s face is high above me,

holding me as I try to skate. I am safe

between his giant Dad-legs, steadied

by his big black Dad- galoshes.

Now his face is not so high, though

still above mine. I must be older here.

He is angry and offering me his chin

Take your best shot. I wonder

if I could take him down with one punch,

break his sarcastic jaw. I am furious

but my arms refuse to call his bet.

Finally he snorts and leaves.

It is as close as we will come to blows.

I think I could beat him now.

I’m older and smarter

and he’s in a wheelchair.

This is my memory:

Listing the names of all

the women I slept with.

Names were always my problem.

By mid-page, I’m reduced to entries

like, ‘the redhead in Saginaw’.

Baseball names are easy.

Why is that? Charlie Root threw

Babe Ruth’s called shot.

Tracy Stallard – Maris’s 61st.

Al Downing – Aaron’s 715th.

If only women could pitch.

All my cities are here.

Paris, emaciated sidewalks,

tramp tramp tramp the boys

are marching. The whore-market

on St. Denis. Tramp, tramp, tramp

the girls are marching, too. Some fresh,

some way past their best before.

Dijon, the open air market,

booksellers next to sausage-makers

next to trinketeers.

Buy a tiny Eiffel Tower, in case

you ever live in a house ugly enough

to display something so boorish.

Sarnia, where I was born.

The Red Deer of the east.

The ghost of oil and cough drops.

Key West, where I walked the streets

Hemingway and Tennessee Williams

walked. Thank God they never met.

Ernest would start off with his usual

man-to-man gambit, ‘How about you

hit me as hard as you can and then

I’ll hit you as hard as I can?’

And Tennessee would counter with,

‘How about you fuck me as hard as you can…?’

This is my memory. My unpaid guide

across the river. My thrusting past.

Axe-cut steps in the icefall. Eagle

arrowheads glittering over an ancient

kill-field. A woman’s hand on my naked

skin. I am sixteen and could supply

an entire city with electricity.

This is my memory, phone numbers

and phonics, facts and faces, Galileo

and Gale Sayers. If anyone comments

on how cluttered it is, I say, ‘I have

a system.’

My eyes are closed,

but I’m not asleep.

Close, though.

My memory is drifting off,

sighing a final image.

The golf course at first light,

sky-purple, the clink of cart

and spiked shoes,

the silver-washed grass.

My father’s swing – the first swing -

full of hope, and off we go,

father and sons, dark shoeprints

into the wet green distance.

October/November, 2009

Across Canada

GREATNESS IN POETRY

Colleen Thibaudeau Reaney has died. She passed away Feb. 6. You may not know the name. Some say she was the most under-appreciated poet. Her son says she was London’s greatest poet. But the fact is that poets all across this country knew this gentle and funny and sensitive writer from London, Ontario. And they got letters from her. They got cards, and broadsheets, and sometimes she might telephone … And if you haven’t heard of Colleen, then you should go and find her books. Colleen was a poet, a storyteller, a mother to writers everywhere. She worried about others and sent remedies through the mail. She also dispatched poems and Christmas cards. And she readily welcomed you to her house on Huron Street in London, Ont. I first went there in 1967 or 1968 after a reading I done with a number of other poets. We were all just starting out as writers. Young, brash and arrogant we all were, and we figured we knew everything about the world. Then we stepped into this colourful house one summer night for some wine and cheese. Colleen was effusive, engaging, the living, breathing “real” poet. The words she spoke were exciting, different, tinged with an edge that told me this woman wasn’t someone who scratched out the occasional line, but was someone whose life was lived with that deep lyrical impulse. That’s also when I met her husband, James Reaney, one of Canada’s greatest playwrights and greatest poets. I didn’t realize then I would get to know both of them much better. James and I worked on a play together, and we collaborated on other projects, and in the midst of all this, Colleen once came down to stay with us at this one-room schoolhouse we owned near Coatsworth. She had an amazing presence in our lives. Always encouraging. Always insightful. She talked a hundred miles an hour, the stories brimming with bizarre characters, down-to-earth details that sometimes would baffle and confound, but always entertained. She was a gem. She was a poet right to her fingertips.

What follows here is her son’s blog. It says it all:

BY JAMES REANEY, LONDON FREE PRESS

Once again, I have sad but not tragic news about our family. My beloved mother, Colleen Thibaudeau Reaney, died this morning at University Hospital. Mom was 86 & recovering from a stroke.

Her last hours were peaceful & quiet with a beautiful morning unfolding behind her. Thanks to everyone for their love & support. Mom knew you were there for her.

Mom would never agree when I called her “London’s greatest poet” — but she never told me to stop repeating the phrase. She had said to stopstopstop about some other details of her life, such as her gallant charge up to Irving Layton. The Montreal sage had sneered at academic poets (ie. my late father) just once too often at some reading in the 1960s. If that story of poet v. poet vs. poet isn’t quite true, it should be.

My sister in Vancouver remembered mom as the great one while we shared the news this morning. We thought of mom’s many greatnesses . . .poet, story-writer, soulmate, sister, daughter, in-law, community leader, NDP lifetime member, Acadian exile, wit, raconteur, letter-writer & much more.

Mom was/is London’s greatest poet (my dad always said so, too) & I am grateful to so many of her champions like Jean McKay, Stan Dragland, Richard Stingle & Peggy Roffey for helping me see her greatness.

Toward the end of her life, mom came to resemble both her parents . . . her scholarly, reserved & distinguished Markdale father Stewart and her dynamic, distinguished and extroverted Belfast mother Alice. She was born on Stewart’s birthday (Dec. 29) & he always said she was his best birthday present. (My parents were also married on Dec. 29, 1951.) Her mother was a brilliant bridge player & Elgin County’s most ferocious Liberal. Mom inherited neither passion. Mom & her mother argued about politics over the decades, CCF-NDP vs. Liberal, without truce or either asking for quarter . . . until they found a common foe, Brian Mulroney. Mom & grandma were delighted to discover they both detested the PM. They would still disagree . . . about which of the two worthies detested Mulroney more. Alice & Colleen, we miss you both!

The shock will have to wear off a bit more before I can recall Mom in truer detail. She was remarkably generous . . . here’s an anecdote from 2007 I complete forgot until this morning when our friend Mr. Google showed me how Mom’s generosity made her instantly identifiable, even if she were only being misidentified to her amusement as “an elderly lady.”

There was a v. sweet letter to the editor in Saturday’s Free Press (April 2007) from Gloria Williams, who had just returned to Sydney after being here with Team Australia for the world synchronized skating championships.

Gloria’s letter thanked the John Labatt Centre for its sympathy and kindness to the team following a boating tragedy in which skaters, judges and friends had died.

She also wrote this: “Another gesture from an elderly lady who approached us in the street confirmed my thoughts that the people of London have warm hearts.

“As the event was about to commence, we did not have time to get her name or address, so are unable to thank her for the thoughtfulness she showed. This lady had purchased postcards for each of the girls and also stamps for as many as she could afford.

“This gesture, along with that of the John Labatt Centre management, only confirms the caring nature of the people of London, Ontario.”

At least two people instantly recognized this “lady” (quotation marks necessary, in my view) as the giver of the postcards and the stamps: my mother, London’s greatest poet Colleen Thibaudeau Reaney (age undisclosed, mom has been counting backwards in recent years), and me, her loving son.

Yes, it was she . . . the Acadian exile on Huron Street . . . and someone who has made acts of spontaneous generosity a life work.

For the record, mom was v. touched to be remembered in this way and somewhat amused & bemused at being described as) elderly and b) a “lady” – she is truly a woman of the people.

She also stresses that the skaters were far more generous than she & gave her a wonderful pin & brooch (kangaroo and koala bear respectively, I think) as keepsakes. She is a little embarrassed that she only rounded up two stamps to go with the postcards

But there is no denying it. Mom, you are a beauty.

Gloria Williams, thank you. And best wishes to Team Australia, a truly classy and brave band of sisters.

Mom, goodbye.

Globe and Mail

Judith Fitzgerald has put together a wonderful piece on the work that was recently previewed in Descant’s Winter edition. Take a look at this. It is really about my good friend, Pat Sturn, who passed away in March 2011. She was an amazing photographer, a great inspiration to me personally. Read what Judith has written.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/in-other-words/

Introducing a talented young writer from Essex, Ontario

 

 

Samantha Wauthier, known to everyone as “Sam,” is 17. She wrote her first novel,Nova and the Ashbeavian Wolves when she was in Grade 7. She later re-named it  The legend of Ashbeavia. Sam came to see me with her writing, asking for advice. I was taken aback at how talented and prolific a writer she is. This is someone who is going places. She is gifted. Her imagination knows no bounds. I was struck by her desire for further education is to study Paleontology and Creative writing. A curious blend. But a look at her writing will tell you all about this. Sam says: “Ever since I can remember I have had a fond intrest in both writing and dinosaurs. My favorite book is a The Goblin Book, by Hilari Bell and my favorite author is Sherwood Smith. I love most types of music but some of my favorite artist are Lady Gaga, Chopin and Adele.”

I thought I would share this excerpt of yet another book she has written.  It is one about all the farm animals on her family’s farm near Essex, Ontario. This is the first of these stories to be published, on-line of course. Sam’s lyrical portrayal is from the point of view of these little creatures, all penned in the first person. Fascinating. Maybe reminiscent of Orwell’s famous satire, Animal Farm.? Not exactly, but there are some very profound underlying statements being made. Listen carefully. She has given me permission to use this piece. Please welcome Sam Wauthier.

Bandit

 By Sam Wauthier

I was a fluke. It is as simple as that, I was a mixed breed or a mutt as the humans would say. My father was a yellow Lab and my mother was a shepherd. I, in my own defence, believe that I got the best traits of both breeds in the simplest terms I could be called a blond shepherd. My glossy coat was the color of faded wheat and my eyes were a deep sorrel brown. I have had many owners, all of which I was loyal too. And yet each and every one of them with the exception of the last passed me onto the next without a second glance. I wish not to discuss my early life if anything I wish to forget it.

I do feel it necessary to start with the family that my life ended with. One night a strange and unfamiliar man entered my domain, his scent was odd. He was a tall male human with dark hair and pale skin. His voice was hoarse and cracked as he spoke careful words with my master. They exchanged words for quite some time, now and then they would stop talking just long enough to reach out and touch me. The male human reached out, his hand was rather large but surprisingly gentle. I watched with great intent as he nodded to my master. I did not know this at the moment but it was suddenly made clear that I was for sale and my master was the seller. What had I ever done to him that had made him want to rid his world of my presence?

My new master and hopefully my last brought me home to live with him and his beloved family. The dark of the sky created a hue of shadows and cloud. The whole of the house smelt of new and in my own words inexperienced scents. The house was rather clean and the children were sleeping on the couch. A young female and two males slept soundly. I wished to smell them to remember their scent and so I padded closer to them.  The wet of my black nose touched the warmth of the little girls arm; she appeared so fragile and tiny. Her hair fell about her in tangles, I watched as her careful eyes fluttered open to meet my own.  Her drowsy blue eyes snapped alert, she spoke with much excitement within the tone of her voice.

“What is his name?”

The tall man who was now my master patted me on the top of the head as he responded to the young girl’s question.

“Bandit.”

Maybe a year after my coming to my new home I realized that they loved me, the children, the mother and the father. They were not like my past owners for they cared deeply for my health and well-being. They were kind to me and fed me well, I followed the children almost everywhere they went. Human children were such active creatures and I was their protector. I loved them so deeply, sometimes in the dead of the night I would sneak out of the back room where I slept and walked swiftly up the narrow wooden steps of the house to the second floor to where the young children slept. Sometimes I would jump up on the soft of their beds and curl up beside them.

One day Chemo, the Rottweiler that lived just down the street, took things too far. I do realize that his master beat him without due cause and I do feel sympathy for him but it gave him no right to hurt my master’s daughter. I was in the back yard with the oldest boy of the children, George was his name.  The grass in the back yard was long, the simplest shade of dark green. I loved the summer time, for the boy and I would spend hours playing frisbee. The boy would throw it and I would run and catch it, this of course not only kept me active but also was a form of entertainment. I watched as the sun cascaded upon the boy’s dark brown hair to shadow his face. Suddenly I heard it… a scream, the little girl was in danger. Without watching what the boy was doing I bound around the house. Her screams became more desperate, the scent of her fear tingled my flared nostrils. I rounded the corner to see Chemo attacking her. His jagged teeth were exposed; the hair on his back rose. I bolted forward and leaped atop the horrid dog. In an act of bewilderment he quickly got to his feet to assess who I was and how to take me down. I watched for the slightest moment as realization hit him, he recognized me but it was no matter. He was angry and not able to control his rage. I took a few steps closer to the little girl; I glanced down at her to see if she was okay. It was apparent from the blood that stained her little pink sun dress that she had been bitten.  In the few moments I had taken to look over the girl Chemo came at me; I could feel the impact of his jaws against the soft of my flesh. Without realizing what I was doing, I thrashed back at him; no fear glazed my eyes as I protected the young girl. I waited for him to surge forward so not to allow any such amount of space between me and my young master. I sank my pearly fangs into the back of his neck just below his shoulder blade; this ferocious creature brought his weight down upon me and cried out not at my fangs. I released him then so to make sure my master was okay, I heard her whimper which tugged at my senses. I faced Chemo then just in time to assess his charge; which was directed towards the female. His wildly spun sorrel eyes seemed to plead for help as they strained against the pulsing red veins violating his vision. I Surged forward and thrust my widened and sharp jaws to clamp about the soft of his exposed throat. I added a mass amount of pressure which forced my to taste the metallic tang of the oozing fluid from his throat. I applied a slightly tighter amount of pressure which seized his whimpering; I listened to his horrid attempt to breathe. If one was to listen closer it would be possible to feel the rush of inhalation over my jaws. I felt the tension slip from his form and I retracted away from him then; a hoarse growl still stained my throat. The unexpected brawl was over and in response I stood strong next to the little girl and watched as Chemo limped wearily down the cracked road.  I vowed silently to myself that no living creature would ever hurt her or any of my family again.

I fear that with my age I may have to make some adjustments to my nature. I say this half-heartedly for do I realize that humans like to move and change. We were moving out of the city and into the country. I felt quite free as I rode in the back of the black pickup truck. The crisp wind touched my face and ruffled my long golden coat. In the country the air was clean or at least cleaner than that of the city. I tried to glance around at the fast moving vehicles and trees but even the thought of it made my stomach churn. I slumped to the surface of the trucks metallic floor. With every bump in the road my head would lightly tap the floor and bring me back to my state of awareness.  I dozed off now and then; the rhythmic sensation of flying filled my dreams.

Not long after we had settled in at the new property I managed to break the oldest female child’s arm. I did not see her often for she really did not live with us on a daily basis as the other three children, including the youngest female, lived with me all year round. It was a humid and muddy spring day, the heavens were clear from the yesterday’s rain. The children never usually put a chain onto my collar but today I think the oldest male, George, was feeling particularly jumpy. You see it is always been in my nature to come when called on and George decided to call out my name. So in response I ran to meet him at his side, I hardly realized that I was dragging the mass of tangled chain and the oldest female with flaxen and wiry hair behind me. I do faintly remember hearing her call out, in a series of frantic shrieks, for me to stop but I do recall that I did not halt until the boy told me to.  I sat obediently at his feet, my thickly curled tail wrapped about my lower limbs and without hesitation I slumped to my stomach. The mud and filth below my heaving chest felt cool one could say it felt similar to the cool trickle of new morning dew. The kind and gentle mother of the children ran out and detached the chain from my collar. Even with the weight of the eldest girl eased away from my throat I still had to live with the constriction of air as it entered and exited my lungs.  I walked off even as I heard the moans and grunts come from the wounded female behind me. I glanced back at her, it was clear that she was in an immense amount of pain for she was covered in bits of  folded grass and her clothes were stained brown from the moist muck that I had dragged her through.

A beam of white light was all I saw before the van was upon me, I thought myself to be dead. I wondered to myself how the young children would be able to survive without me, their protector. I held on for them, the lights around me faded and I was gone. I awoke in the warmth of the house, it was dark. I strained to see with what little strength I had left; the pain was strong and my body was too achy to move. The memory of the van flooded over me, it also occurred to me that I was alive or at least half alive. How very extraordinary that I have managed to survive, it was as if my whole life was a game of chance and in a sense the luck of the draw. I gather today just was not my day to die, not my day to fade back into the depths of the earth in which I was spawned.  No matter how tragic my life was till that moment I understood not how tragic my life was to be. The truth of my considered fate was not revealed until a years pass. I have finally fallen victim to my destiny, I could not hold on much longer. I peered without feeling at the wooden ceiling of my homing structure; untended cracks lingered in the aged cedar. The scent of sawdust lingered in the depths of my fading sense of smell. A flourish of grey was all that kept me rooted to the reality of my existence. I stared longingly at the chain that lay over my brown collar before setting my face atop my forepaws. I felt all around me become abrupt darkness and this time I did not wake, I could not wake.

St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church and the Radio Priest, the poet in the pulpit

It is Dec. 23. I cross the border on a cold Friday morning. The U.S. Customs are all smiles. Merry Christmas. Best of the Season. The city is waking up as I make my way to Grand Boulevard, past the Fisher Theatre. I’m heading in the direction of St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church at West Grand Blvd. and Rosa Parks. Abandoned. It was built in 1920. On my way there, I pulled over to the side of the road, and a crack addict, a woman of maybe 30, knocked on my window. Scared the hell out of me. I locked the doors. She backed off and stood on the curb and asked me to roll down the window. I opened it a crack and asked what she wanted.

“Can you spare a dollar?” I dug into my pocket and found a dollar for her, and slipped it through the window. She thanked me, and moved on down the street. I continued on my way to the church, and made my way down a broken sidewalk, the entrance covered in overgrown shrubbery. The doors at the back of the church were wide open, and I walked into this massive cathedral, its walls tangled over by graffiti, massive stained-glass windows shattered, and haunting skeletal trees outside shifting with the wind. The place was cold to the bone, and I went about my business of photographing this amazing place.

In the late 1980s, the Archdiocese of Detroit was realigning urban parishes and this one merged with another and was renamed Martrys of Uganda. I am not sure when it closed. But part of its history is that the radio priest Father Charles Coughlin got his start here. He was assigned as an assistant when he was teaching at Assumption College in Windsor. He would cross the border every week to deliver a sermon at this church. St. Agnes was newly built, as a matter of fact, it was only a year old when he started going there. Coughlin had been a priest since 1916, having been ordained at St. Basil’s in Toronto. His first assignment was teaching English at Assumption. It was Bishop Gallagher of Detroit who had heard of Coughlin’s preaching prowess. It was at St. Agnes that he developed that connection with people, and later he would move to St. Leo’s where he stayed for 18 months. Finally five years later he would wind up at Royal Oak, Michigan, 12 miles north of Detroit. By then, Coughlin was 35, and it was there in Royal Oak that he found his gift in radio. But it was at St. Agnes that this fiery priest got a taste for the pulpit and nurtured the eloquence needed to capture the imagination of his followers.

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Fred Wah, Parliamentary Poet Laureate

It was good to see Saskatchewan-born writer Fred Wah being appointed as the new parliamentary poet laureate. Wah is the fifth poet to hold that office. The first was George Bowering, whose roots, like Wah’s, are in the tradition of the American Black Mountain poets. Wah, former president of the Writers Union of Canada, won the Governor General’s Award in 1986 and teaches at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Senate Speaker Noel Kinsella in making the announcement said, ”As a distinguished poet, editor, and teacher Fred Wah is known across Canada for his interest in a range of subjects. Mr. Wah brings forth a collaborative approach and unique perspective to his work inspiring younger poets, students and others both nationally and internationally with his reflections on Canadian culture.”

Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer described Wah’s writing as being grounded in the country’s political and social landscapes. Wah said his work as a parliamentary poet laureate will involve an engagement of poetry as it “represents our homes and migrations, our questions of history and identity.”

I shot this photograph of the poet at the Pause Cafe in Windsor Ontario when Fred Wah was here to talk about his writing.

Check out the Globe and Mail article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/multicultural-obsession-drives-new-parliamentary-poet-laureate/article2278971/?utm_medium=Feeds%3A%20RSS%2FAtom&utm_source=Politics&utm_content=2278971