Little Blueprint Pick-Me-Up: The Winter Issue

The Winter Mini-Issue Volume 15, Issue 2.5, November 2015

EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief Carina Rampelt editor@blueprintmagazine.ca

Production Manager Anthony Haslam productionmanager@blueprintmagazine.ca

Literary Editor Breanna Kettles literaryeditor@blueprintmagazine.ca

Art Manager Amanda Scheifele artmanager@blueprintmagazine.ca

Promotions Manager Alexandria Schneider promotionsmanager@blueprintmagazine.ca

Web Editor Lydia Mainville web.editor@blueprintmagazine.ca

Brantford Manager Vacant

brantfordmanager@blueprintmagazine.ca

Brantford Art Christina Manocchio brantfordartintern@blueprintmagazine.ca

Intern Erica Parnis

ADMINISTRATION President, Publisher & Chair Bryan Stevens Executive Director Lakyn Barton Advertising Manager Care Schummer Vice Chair Abdiasis Issa Treasurer John Pehar Director Rafey Sattar Director Thomas Lillo Community Director Angela Foster Community Director Fred Kuntz Community Director Gary Doyle Corporate Secretary Emily Crump

The Winter Issue

Winter is coming.

You can feel it in the air. An energy, almost.

Something wild and frantic—something clean and cold and free. It’s the first few flakes of snow tumbling through yellow streetlamp light before melting on damp pavement. It’s cold rain and confounding shifts in temperature. It’s dead leaves, and dead leaves, and grey skies, and your favourite toque brought out of summer hibernation.

In the midst of all the grey and the damp, we here at Blueprint hope to warm your spirits. So get cozy, grab a hot drink, and get ready, because it’s going to be one awesome (sleigh) ride.

The Blueprint Editorial Team

Cover Art by BENJAMIN SCHEIFELE

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CONTACT Blueprint Magazine 75 University Ave W Waterloo ON N2L 3C5 p 519.884.0710 x3564 blueprintmagazine.ca Advertise care.schummer@wlusp.caom blueprintmagazine.ca/advertise Contribute submissions@blueprintmagazine.ca

I prefer Winter... when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show.

ANDREW WYETH 1917-2009

COLOPHON Blueprint is the official student magazine of the Wilfrid Laurier University community.

Founded in 2002, Blueprint is an editorially independent magazine published by Wilfrid Laurier University Student Publications, Waterloo, a corporation without share capital. WLUSP is governed by its board of directors.

Content appearing in Blueprint bears the copyright expressly of their creator(s) and may not be used without written consent.

Blueprint reserves the right to re-publish submissions in print or online.

Opinions in Blueprint are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Blueprint’s management, Blueprint, WLUSP, WLU or CanWeb Printing Inc. Blueprint is created using Macintosh computers running Mac OS X 10.5 using Adobe Creative Suite 4.

The circulation for a normal issue of Blueprint is 2000.

NEXT ISSUE The Romance Issue On stands February 2016

CONTENTS

VOLUME 15 ISSUE 2.5 NOVEMBER 2015

POETRY

LITERATURE

Winter Wonder(Waste)land

Dear Humanity

AARON THOMAS

An Outing

MARIA KOUZNETSOVA

Winter

REBECCA ALLISON

Winter’s Slumber VICTORIA MACEDO

ASHLEY HYND

Winter Wonder(Waste)land AARON THOMAS

Cold, as is the reaches from the nether; The breach of warmth, The tarnishing of green.

Oh behold, the blankets of rest; May the ground below rest for a while.

Oh thy, my sun; radiating!

The powerful ember in the sky You once grew life But now no seed sprouts under your guise.

Instead, your powerful rays weakly shine upon a field of white.

Whiteness and nothing but; A disfigured landscape, Void of all other shades and colours.

I call to each flake.

Are you one of beauty or crass?

Bring forth a world covered in polar rage.

Construct your icy prison; For I am your prisoner.

Bring forth with you, the echoes of stillness; The notions of an end.

BENJAMIN SCHEIFELE

㄀㄀ 圀椀氀氀漀眀 匀琀爀攀攀琀Ⰰ 圀愀琀攀爀氀漀漀 一㈀䨀 ㄀嘀㘀

An Outing

MARIA KOUZNETSOVA The sun shines down; it’s making me see spots.

So trust your skis, they’ll take you through the snow; This silent snow absorbs resounding thoughts Which echo lonesome dog cries far below.

‘Tween scattered trees we blaze our two-lined path And up hills, down hills, ‘round hills we do glide; To choose which way to turn, we use some math.

Our fearless leader guides us as we slide.

Our faces frozen, trying not to stop, We come to the hardest part: the biggest hill.

The climb is tough, but when I reach the top, I am as free as wind, which blows at will.

As I look out o’er fields as white as day My heart proclaims, “Dear world, remain this way.”

LYDIA MAINVILLE

Dear Humanity

ASHLEY HYND

Dear Humanity, I take extreme offense to the socially accepted discourse surrounding my current reputation! I am not all ‘gloom’ and ‘doom’ and ‘hibernation’ and ‘frost’! I am capable of warmth and compassion and love! I bring out the best in you. Connect you. Pull out your kindness with those ugly wool sweaters and the laughter they invoke. I bring out your co-operation! With snowmen building and hot cocoa making and Christmas carolling… but do you ever recognise it? Noooohhhhoooooooo! I am still not good enough for the species who spends the other three seasons destroying the earth! Yet I am the one you associate with bitterness? Storms? Stillness? Death? I am NOT the salted grey you impose into my landscapes. I am the angels that you make upon my back.

Sincerely, Jack Frost

KOURTNEY REICH

Winter

REBECCA ALLISON

A season by any other name. Ideals. Crystals dripping from branches. Light dancing across refractive diamonds. Frozen collections of Dihydrogen monoxide. A state. Temporary in form.

Constant in memory. The call of a lonely blue jay breaking the white desert. A soloist on a vast frozen stage. The call for but one more vocalist.

Winter’s Slumber VICTORIA MACEDO

As the wind blows gusts of crisp air, Howling through the window sills, You will find us here.

As the snow falls, flurries of crystals, Decorating the branches of the old maple tree, You will find us here.

As the sun dies early, And the moon rises soon, You will find us here.

Here is where holiday cookies are baked, Where gingerbread is decorated, And where hot cocoa is topped with mini marshmallows.

Here is where friends and family are gathered, With open hearts of laughter and thanks, And where cold winter days turn into warm winter nights.

Here is the space, or place rather, Where hibernation exists.

Here is our home, Short-lived or everlasting, It is where we are found.

Live in it, Love in it, Eat in it, Sleep in it.

ERIC DEWAR

As the wind blows gusts of crisp air, Howling through the window sills, You will find us here.

ANNABELLE HOFFMANN

AMANDA SCHEIFELE