S101 Whiteness Is Not An Ancestor - Introduction

My body on a bus stop bench is a place of high drama, writes  poet Alison Braid-Fernandez in her poem, Blue Dot, which is included in the Montreal Poetry Prize 2022 Anthology.

Alison Braid-Fernandez is a Canadian poet who has lived in Prague, Vancouver and now London, England. Her work is informed by the legacy and environment of these unique locales and the relationships she has encountered with individuals, trains and buses, parks, fruit, colours, the devices we live with. Lately she has been writing ekphrastic poems which take their inspiration from art works but also from overlapping influences such as music and the written word. Their influences on the body are at the heart of Alison's poems. 

The ekphrastic references are so complex, juicy and evocative that I decided to list them here as an aid to the listener in my fascinating interchange with Alison. Enjoy.

Blue Dot: after Dorothea Lasky, Animal, essays

Ekphrasis Yourself, Jennifer Nelson, Woodland Pattern Book Centre, woodland pattern.org

Embracing Confusion, Bryon Cherry, woodlandpattern.org

Light Upon the Body, after Adrienne Dagg, Luncheon in Room 206, Bau-Xi Gallery

Moving Continents, after Leonardo Cappiello, Chocolat Klaus, Library of Congress

Nectarine Heart #1 after John Wilde, Boxed Fruit #1: A Nectarine, Milwaukee Art Museum

Oranges, after Erin Armstrong, Between Two Minds, Bau-Xi Gallery

Alison Braid-Fernandez's first chapbook, Little Hunches was published with Anstruther Press (2020.) She is presently working on a short story collection, Look Both Ways and Other Stories. Visit her website to learn and read more. 

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The world is made up of stories, many of which remain untold. History told from the point of view of grand achievements, harrowing deeds, or significant events omits the effects of history on personal lives, family, and community.

The childhood memoirs of Jadzia Prenosil and Elizabeth Herejk couldn't be more different, yet each illuminates the hardships faced by families following World War 2. Each memoir has been realized through new models of self-publishing.

Elizabeth Herejk's memoir, From Kendal to Canada: An Adventurous Spirit follows her childhood growing up in Kendal, a small market town in Cumbria, England, her interesting nursing career in Canada, and her varied retirement activities. Elizabeth regards From Kendal to Canada as legacy work written for her family and friends with emphasis on her European heritage. Life in Kendal was austere, a story of self-reliance and ingenuity at a time of food shortages and other privations which inevitably follow war.

Jadzia Prenosil's memoir, My Childhood Behind the Iron Curtain details an even grimmer post-war life. In 1968 Russia invaded Czechoslovakia and Jadzia's mother died unexpectedly. In the aftermath of this double tragedy her father remained in Europe and Jadzia and her sisters emigrated to Canada, sponsored by an aunt. Jadzia was seventeen. A brutal beginning to life in a new country.

Jadzia wrote this memoir in memory of her beloved mother and sisters for her family and friends in Vancouver. It illustrates how love and strength of family can endure great hardship.

Both authors self-published their memoirs through new publishing models which make this sort of project possible.

In her conversations with the authors, Ingrid Rose discusses the process each went through in bringing their memoir to fruition.

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Kat, the protagonist in Jane Callen’s novel, Bernini’s Elephant,  leads the reader on a dark adventure of transformation. This tale of murder and redemption is set within contrasting environments in Canada and Italy with lush descriptions of Vancouver, the coastal wilderness of Vancouver Island, and the high art world of Florence and Venice.

“Genre-defying. Callen draws us deep into the vivid art world, conjuring the life and legacy of a young Italian painter and his muse, an older lover with a poisoned past. A literary mystery spanning two continents; the moral stakes of human desire create an intelligent and utterly absorbing read. A sensual, richly detailed glimpse of Italian architecture, art, family secrets, and above all: the struggles of love.”
—SUSAN DOHERTY, author of A Secret Music, and The Ghost Garden

Bernini's Elephant was published by Guernica Editions in May 2023. You may order it from the publisher or your favourite library, bookstore or online source.

Visit Jane's website to learn more of her writing and current projects.

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GOODBYE TO LAMPEDUSA

It is what they say
because the sea does not have footprints
to see where others have ended their journeys,
and today—this incandescent afternoon—
they tell you to follow
the path of the wind,
follow it to where the water leads you
as a new merchandise arrives
with a parcel of goodbye.

Goodbye is what they tell you
as your final parting gift, so close
your heart to unholy thoughts
about the waves.

Nigerian poet Salawu Ọlájídé  joins host Ingrid Rose to discuss his chapbook, Preface for Leaving Homeland.
Ọlájídé is a Ph.D candidate at University of Alberta with a passionate interest in de-colonization. "Goodbye is a migrant word",  Ọlájídé says of the title of his poem, Goodbye to Lampedusa.
Lampedusa, an island off the coast of Italy known for fishing and tourism has welcomed many African migrants in the past. In autumn 2023 the resources of this generous island were overwhelmed by Africans fleeing war and poverty, “We find people at sea – on boats and in the water – and we rescue them,” Pietro Riso, a local fisherman told Al Jazeera. “At times, we find bodies in our nets.”
Ọlájídé is also passionate about preservation of Indigenous language. "When I see Nigerian writers writing in English receiving national awards, I recognize an implicit gesture of exclusion going on as well. I wonder what kind of awakening could greet Nigerian literature if more indigenous voices were included in these literary spaces." 
from a 2021 article, On the Politics of Language in Nigerian Literature, Ọlájídé Salawu Examines the Colonial Grounding of the Country's Literary Industry.NOTE!
Transcriptions of the poems in this episode will be available to view on the Writers Radio Listen page while the program is on air and with our Podcast.

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Epigraph to Holy Magic
Let wise men piece the world together with wisdom
Or poets with Holy Magic
Hey-di-ho

Wallace Stevens

Each chapter of Holy Magic has a colour palette. Each poem reflects a vibration of that colour. Many of the poems contain epigraphs of other writers or artists. Each section captures the mood of its colour. Archeology of Orange for instance, A Glass of Bitter Ale, Bluebirds.

It is a rainbow of a book.

In 2022 Priscilla Long released a book, Dancing with the Muse in Old Age, about thriving in old age. She is eighty.

Priscilla writes, "The book explores the old-age time of life of more than one-hundred dynamic elders—mostly but not entirely creators in the arts, both well-known and little known, both able-bodied and disabled. Their inspiring stories model for us all how to live in old age. The sections, “Composing Our Lives: Old Age” at the end of each chapter will help readers consider and better plan for a satisfying old age."

Priscilla Long is a Seattle-based poet, writer, editor and a longtime independent teacher of writing. She has been an activist in peace and social justice movements. She serves as founding and consulting editor of HistoryLink.org, the free online encyclopedia of Washington state history. She writes science, poetry, history, creative nonfiction and essay, and fiction. She has written a guide to creativity, Minding the Muse, and a how-to-write guide, The Writer's Portable Mentor.

Her books are available for order through libraries, bookstores and online.

Holy Magic was published in 2020 by Moon Path Press for which it won the Sally Albiso Poetry Book Award.

Dancing with the Muse in Old Age was published in 2022 by Epicenter/Coffeetown Press.

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Title: The Passion of a Poet
Episode: P075
START: January 01, 2024
ENDS: January 14, 2024
Length:  33' mins
Host/Producer: Ingrid Rose

Poetry is the hinge between the artist, having that moment, and the reader or listener, having their own moment in the silence of the first breath, after a poem. A poem is a medium, that says, "here, have this" it can do this, because it is compact. Because it carries you, like a magic carpet, across meaning. Because its intent is fleeting.

"Advocacy through story: an interview with Michelle Poirier Brown".

Michelle Piorier Brown: writer, performer, playwright, photographer, and former federal treaty negotiator is a writer with a desire for clarity. What is going on? She asks us to consider.

She describes, You Might Be Sorry You Read This, as a poetic memoir. It distills five decades of living through extreme childhood trauma, learning to live with PTSD, discovering her Cree, Métis roots at age 38 and finding her way through this maze to the page.

Join Michelle and Ingrid Rose, in conversation about personal and public identity and the challenges and opportunities in writing difficult histories.

Michelle Poitier Brown is an internationally, published writer and performer, currently living on the traditional unseeded territory of the silax peoples, in Vernon, BC. She is nehiyaw-iskwew and a citizen of the Métis nation. Her debut book of poetry, You Might Be Sorry You Read This, was published in the Robert Kroetsch Series from the University of Alberta press in Spring, 2022. It was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch award for innovative poetry. In 2023, her chapbook book of poems and photographs, Intimacies, was published by Jack Pine press in 2023.

Adapted from the authors website

Order You Might Be Sorry You Read This,from your local library or a bookstore or direct from the publisher

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Elizabeth Cunningham
Jacinda Oldale
Kate Bird
Kathryn Alexander
Katherine Govier
Mara Alper and Elliott Levine
Sheila Martineau



It’s that time of year again, for those of us in the northern hemisphere, when daylight hours dwindle; it’s dark at five, then four. 

For our annual celebration of this darkening season Writers Radio asked our authors to regale us with pieces written to the theme Belight. The response came from far and wide.

This has become a yearly tradition for Writers Radio. As with our Summertime special we are broadcasting this episode for three weeks, through the busy holiday season.

Katherine Govier of Canmore Alberta writes of seasonal light, beginning with the great opening line, My father was a lizard.

Kathryn Alexander's poems explore the intimate coastal landscape of Port Moody on Burrard Inlet.

Mara Alper of Ithaca New York wrote lyrics for When the World Feels Dark, composed by her friend and former husband, Elliot Z. Levine. The song is performed by Elliot Levine and Julie Hinton.

Vancouver author Kate Bird takes us on pilgrimage in Mexico.

Poet Jacinda Oldale, of Vancouver, BC writes, winter’s burn on my mind at the climax of summer.

Sheila Martineau of Vancouver writes of how Christmas annually restored her troubled parents, Franny and Sparky, to their young love.

Elizabeth Cunningham, of Nelson BC, closes the program with a trio of poems from her book, Watching the Light Below the Storm, published by Ekstasis Editions.

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In Navigating Shitstorms Liz Long turns her childhood trauma into a road trip. Travel with her to Victimtown. Listen to your Heart Voice and take the road to Freedomville.

When Liz Long was six, Lynda, her favourite aunt and babysitter, disappeared. She was nineteen. Although her body was discovered five years later, her case remains one of Canada's longest unsolved crimes. The trauma to Liz and her extended family was incalculable. 

After fifty years of living with fear, depression and the extreme need to control Liz hit the road. In this engaging memoir she takes us on her journey to a healing centre she calls The Place. This inner work leads to an epiphany and she is able to witness the rigid structure she has lived within since her aunt's disappearance. This epiphany arrives with a fully formed idea for a book, a way to help others confront their own problems.

Having spent more than fifty years stuck in Victimtown, Liz knows the terrain as well as any local...Touring Victimtown’s most popular attractions—such as the Guilt & Shame Café, the Control Factory, the Denial Trails, and more—Liz demonstrates that while short visits offer life lessons and healing, extended stays lead to all kinds of problems. This groundbreaking framework to understanding the voices in your head will enable you to

• open healing conversations with yourself and others by equipping you with an accessible language to discuss mental health,
• reframe your shitty inner dialogues by embracing a new awareness, and
• discover your own route to Freedomville by learning to love yourself without limits or conditions.

from the publisher's website

https://greenleafbookgroup.com/titles/navigating-shitstorms

Liz Long lives in Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast, in Canada.

Navigating Shitstorms was published by Greenleaf Book Group in August 2023. It is available through Indigo in Canada, Barnes and Noble in the US and Amazon internationally.

Liz is hard at work on a follow up guidebook. She considers this her life's work. Visit her website: lizlongwrites.com to find out more.

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Keiko Honda is living a successful, busy life as a scientist of cancer epidemiology at Columbia University in New York City when one morning she abruptly loses all strength in her legs.

 She phones a friend to care for her twenty-month-old daughter and rushes to the hospital. Within hours, she can barely breathe. She soon discovers she is permanently paralyzed from the chest down due to a rare autoimmune disease with a frequency of approximately one case per million per year. Suddenly, she’s that one. As Keiko struggles for life, she learns through lived experience the importance of community to healing, one of her prior research interests at Columbia....

Seeking a wheelchair-accessible home closer to nature in which to raise her daughter, Keiko moves to Vancouver, Canada. She starts hosting informal artist salons, forms a mutually supportive group of artists and art-loving neighbours and then, surprisingly, becomes an artist herself. While her illness forced her departure from a career she spent twelve years building, it would ultimately provide the opportunity to live a life dedicated to community, friendship and art, as well as the continually evolving process of self-discovery as a mother, Japanese immigrant, survivor and artist.

—Caitlin Press

Making is Finding
Ingrid Rose and Keiko Honda discuss Keiko's happy childhood, living with her grandparents, the foundation which gave her the courage to re-invent her life.

In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful. As the light creeps over the hills, their outlines are dyed a faint red and wisps of purplish cloud trail over them, I quietly recited to myself in Japanese. My favourite line from Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book (written in tenth century Japan). It comes back to me every spring. 
from Accidental Blooms


Accidental Blooms was published by Caitlin Press in October 2023. You may order it from the publisher or your favourite bookstore.

    “Keiko Honda is sharing much more than a memoir. She is sharing a philosophy of love and care in a time of anxiety and uncertainty. She shares a journey of possibilities when adversity strikes with life-altering challenges. This book is both an evocation as well as an example of ‘seeing with the heart.’ Our world is a better place for Keiko Honda’s generous gift(s).”

    —Bernard Perley, associate professor for Critical Indigenous Studies, UBC

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Tell all the truth but tell it slant.

Emily Dickinson

This Emily Dickinson quote greets you when you visit Seema Shah's website. I met Seema, a Vancouver writer and collage artist, in May 2023 at the exhibition of her work, Unthought Known, at B1 Gallery of The Beaumont Studios in Vancouver.

Seema was a recipient of The Beaumont Studios  Artist to Watch Award 2022 

Seema's creative work, both writing and collage, began after the onset of chronic illness. "Unthought Known" is a quote from psychoanalyst Christopher Bollis which refers to "experiences that reside within us, and that we in some way 'know,' but which we have never 'thought' or been able to put into words."

The exhibition consisted of collages which often incorporated cut up poems. One piece was a book, based on the plight of Humpty Dumpty. 

Humpty Dumpty After the Fall is a collage of Seema's prose and poetry with excerpts from our  zoom conversation.

I hope you enjoy listening.

Carole

Seema's work has been published in numerous magazines. She is shortlisted for the 2023 Contemporary Collage Magazine Awards.

While this program airs, she has work in Paper Play, an exhibition of collage artists at Outsiders and Others Gallery in Vancouver, November 4-25, 2023. She is longlisted for the Susan Crean Award for Nonfiction 2023.

Seema has also exhibited internationally and has an upcoming solo show, Where I Live, Feb-March 2024, at Small House Gallery, a dollhouse gallery in London, UK. The show will feature miniature 2D & 3D works and will be viewable online.

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Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.