FALL 2024 CREATIVE SUPPLEMENT by The Tribune

SUPPLEMENT CREATIVE

"Skittles" / Eliot Loose

“The Caryatids “ & "Alice’s lookout spot" / Platon Megagiannis

Glitter

You wore sparkling angel wings to my house on halloween and they left so much glitter behind.

I’ve spent two weeks scrubbing between tiles but each day new spots r e f r a c t colours across my kitchen. So I called you after.

I woke up yesterday with glitter in my lungs. I sat up in bed and started coughing coughing till it burst from my mouth and I was blue and red in the face.

“Home.” / Bruno Cotler @photosbybruu

I walked to the sink and turned on the faucet but only glitter sprinkled into my glass. A steady diet and I’ve lost 10 pounds. When you picked up the phone I SCREAMED so loud the neighbours called the cops and left town.

“A warning,” they said “Just a warning, for now.”

I stuffed my pockets full of glitter and packed a bag. If it wasn’t for me you’d not have d ropped all that shine. You’ll sparkle together it’s what always was; just collect it after I leave.

Yasmine Guroluk

Lashes heavy with autumn, I contemplate our Rare bird of a day, you call it, As we wait 12 more minutes for the bus A breeze blows chill into our jacket sleeves

And preserves the peace in my mind, The same color of the pumpkins, Holding the world still in amber As it does with ants and half green leaves

Usually, I am nervous for a rare day —Well acquainted with endings, I expect them. Now, we end hungry but not empty, Content with the beauty and whole feeling Of an inimitable moment.

(Dirty hands, soft honey mustard on fresh bread, and the crisp of pear skin)

I am full of this new feeling: Feeling and knowing a memory’s creation whilst Living in it.

October 13, 2024

Girl, wash White poison To disarm Young or On your Under this Can do anything, Stay close, It’s the city, As you carry From your To crinkle And girl, As they Go to bed. That’s just And brush When you’re Don’t go You don’t Here in And girl, For someone Don’t forget So you can

“Late

wash with me, those figs that bleed poison on your palm, and cut soft flesh disarm each fresh fig. Pick not too or else the sweetness won’t explode tongue. Be silent elsewhere but here this july tree, you can sing, girl, you anything, but follow me.

close, girl, don’t wonder, city, see those men? Girl, walk with me carry those potatoes on your stomach, lifting hems your tee, exposing young brown belly crinkle like a raisin in the sun. girl, don’t turn when they call for your skin, yell not your name.

bed. Don’t mind the shots, just a man, I’ll sleep beside you brush dandruff shells from your pigtails. you’re ignorant of your sight words, fight flight fright, go running outside in the night, you hear? don’t wanna be like that girl who caught one playing the park ‘cause now she’s… gone to bed.

girl, when you’re waiting at school with fingers crossed someone to call the shots or call off the shots, forget those white wings I gave you and that throat can quietly fly north.

Mia Helfrich

Web of Nostalgia

Moving away for university is nothing new. The homesickness, new beginnings, and discovery of who you are in a new place is something that has been discussed again and again. What’s never really talked about is the people who live the opposite. The ones who don’t leave the nest and who stay at home for the duration of their university experience.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to go on and whine about feeling left out of the parties and dorm life, because that’s not what this is about. I want to speak about the feeling of being stuck.

Stuck in the city that has been changing and growing while you’ve stayed the same. Stuck in the bed you’ve been sleeping in since you were a child. Stuck seeing your high school classmates who still live in your neighbourhood. Stuck scrolling through profiles to look at the classmates who got away. Stuck in the mindset that you have never changed and will never have the chance to.

I want to start this off by assuring you that I’m not ungrateful. I know how lucky I am to be able to go to school and live at home at the same time. I save more money than other people and get to see my family and childhood friends everyday. Trust me I am grateful for all of that, but sometimes it’s not enough.

Sometimes it feels like I’m trapped in a web with spiders coming at me from every direction. Some look like my old friends who have moved away and are living new lives with people who don’t know me. Some look like the teachers who made me feel smarter than I actually am. One looks like my younger self who didn’t know how futile dreams are. While all these spiders are crowding around me, I’m thrashing in place and attempting to escape. But I can’t.

Because I’m stuck.

Stuck in the web made up of my high school that I pass every day on the way to university. Of the graveyard across from my high school that has become increasingly metaphorical over the years. Of the shopping mall I work at, that I thought was the most magical place on earth when I was a child. All of these places tangle together to form a distorted web of who I am and who I have been.

I’m trapped in this web of nostalgia and can’t find the strength to escape. I yearn for a past that is long gone but wish to escape it at the same time. I’m scared of the fact that I’m twenty years old and have barely lived. I feel haunted by my adolescence, or rather, the lack of it. Sarah Toman

Nights” / Eliza Lee

This photo contains 5 exposures of the eclipse of last year as seen from McGill

Despite having one of the world’s longest and strictest mask mandates that lasted 945 days, Hong Kong was late in its Covid-19 regulations in comparison to neighbouring cities. Just 9 months before, chief executive Carrie Lam enacted the colonial-era emergency regulations ordinance (ERO) to ban face masks, outlawing its use in public assemblies as it posed as a source of “public danger.”

The COVID-19 pandemic further politicized the mask, a mandate of its use further demonstrating the government’s gripe on its population, this time in the name of public health. The city’s “zero-Covid” strategy was accompanied by the required use of masks indoors, outdoors, in schools and on public transportation.

The mask is emblematic of Hong Kong’s struggle for political freedom, my series juxtaposing its symbolisms of defiance and compliance. The street photographs were taken my first trip back since the Covid-19 pandemic in July and August of 2022, and aim to represent surveillance in everyday contexts. It demonstrates how the ironic re-entering of the mask, despite the government’s initial resistance, is once again granting anonymity to the population of Hong Kong.

During the 2019 pro-democracy protests, masks became a symbol of resistance, a means to preserve anonymity in the face of escalating government surveillance. The political significance of the mask at this time was indicative of the tension between personal autonomy and state control, echoing the broader struggle for democracy.

This photo contains either 2-3 exposures of thousands of students involved in protesting in support of Palestinian liberation, using medium-format

Hugo-Victor Solomon

@wngyuet

Wong Yuet (Jocelyn Wong)

“The Students, United (2024)”

Hugo-Victor Solomon

Polyadicity (Notes on a semantics class)

Polyadicity: the variability of adicity, according to the dictionary. I asked my coworker. Apparently, it’s what happens When a single word takes many different arguments Kids these days

I’ve heard, some of them are walking around with checklists Openly advertising what kinds of phrases they want inside In my day, we used to keep that information secret Between our brackets, where it belongs

Nouns, I’ve heard (I don’t have any experience with these things, of course) are now getting into bed with two completely different types of adjectives

You’ve got your ablazes, afloats, afoots, and afraids Which have to strap on a copula, or else Alone Bill doesn’t know what to do with himself

And then there’s the marines, the meres, the mocks Which throw out the “is” and cozy up with their nouns But who really cares; the difference is only mere

That’s not all—adjectives have been taking their own complements, too

Each prepositional partner lending its own unique perspective

Bill is angry [that] he didn’t get a raise

Bill is angry [at] his boss

Bill is angry [with] his boss

Bill is angry [about] his raise

Or not. Some prefer to be on their own:

Bill is sick [] Bill is ill []

Perhaps Bill is sick [of being defined by his arguments] Dammit, we’ve done it again.

To his credit, Bill’s been working [on arguing less] I heard he’s going to classes for it

It’s [not easy]

Although, really, Bill only needs one adjective to tell us It’s been a bad day.

“Lifelines for asthmatics “

Daniel Pyo @mima.rt_s

Eva Rajzman @evarzm

Días Peruanos

Ella Paulin

Amy Lang @amegitprop

Letter from the Editors:

The Tribune would like to thank all of those who submitted their beautiful and dynamic art pieces to the Fall 2024 Creative Supplement. The dedicated pho tography, illustration, and poet ry submissions remind us of the power of artistic expression to find beauty and perseverance amid turmoil. We are proud to share this semester’s edition of the Supple ment with the McGill and Mon treal community and hope these works will spark inspiration, awe, and self-reflection, as they did for our editorial board.

Montreal poetry prize:

The Montreal Prize is a not-for-profit, global poetry initiative aimed at connecting poets across national and regional borders, run by the Department of English at McGill University. The current director is Professor Eli MacLaren, and the operations manager is doctoral candidate Martin Breul. The Montreal Prize awards one prize of $20,000 CAD to a poet for a single poem of 40 or fewer lines. A jury of internationally reputed poets and critics selects a shortlist poems, from which a judge chooses one winner. The shortlist is published in The Montreal Poetry Prize Anthology. For more information, visit montrealpoetryprize.com