Write On! Contest 2016 Poetry Winners & Honourable Mentions
3rd Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2016 Poetry First Place Winner Chelsea Comeau Second Coming Let him come on the wings of the killdeer, so at first we are fooled. Let him come to the breakwater, the line of stones that holds the city in, where darkness is the sound of wave, foam. Let the first thing he sees be plastic toys beach pails turned over, bubble wands in the shape of damselflies bright things abandoned for supper. And let it be tonight, when we are perched on a bench at the breakwater’s end, pocked with salt, beneath the moon’s yellow wax. Our faces upturned, perfect.
3rd Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2016 Poetry Second Place Winner Alan Hill To My Children I was half eaten when you met me. What I wasif you really want to knowyou will have to piece together play detective to find look under carpets, in old boxes sift through newspapers and mold forgotten pots at the back of fridges to pinch at my frozen fingers squeeze them back to life. It is easier for me. I see myself as I was, in your quickness body tone the tuning fork hum of being young. To you I will always be old somewhat unknowable suspiciously historic like the Titanic or Betamax something odorous that you must move away from to become your own scent, yourselves. I am that old house
that is passed everyday that once demolished, nobody will remember. That is just ok, the way it must be. Have your time, make room, leave only crumbs.
3rd Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2016 Poetry Third Place Winner Juliane Tran Medication A child said, What is a pill? And my answer must first be Silence, a summing of ears in the room, How attuned they are To the small weights of truth and innocence We daily palm and fumble. And perhaps this is the pill-A hush before a great leap, A compromise between purity and survival. When I open my mouth I guess the pill is Not candy, not the touch And release of sensory pleasure, Not food, not the redness of your cheeks And scrapes. I say, The pill is a metabolite, handling the truth Like a glass paperweight. Or the pill is a crystal, storing Then breaking open some minute piece of light Like your keen eyes which glimpse the pill, Your curiosity welling up from a fresh spring, Your peals of laughter which swim vivid as carp Up my ears’ canals To make starbursts in my brain. The pill is a borrowed moment we hope Will blossom forth into more moments. Together we make the medicine That follows The pill.
3rd Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2016 Poetry Honourable Mention Annette LeBox Attachment Sometimes I wake in the night and imagine you’d died and for the briefest moment feel the pain of your absence, an absence felt like a rupture in the chest, clot of some thing that hadn’t held, loose thread of spider silk, so fine that a breath might fling it into the air, out of the reach of love, out of my reach reaching towards yours, the relief — hand in your hand — your sleep-nested breaths, rise and fall of your chest, the way swallows dip their wings in sky and scribe alphabets of light above wind-tossed pines, holding onto time and memory. When we first met, your hair already gray, your face sculpted in tenderness. Who’s to say how long we have left? Or which of us will go first? Imagine wind without sky to contain it, trees without roots to bind them. Forests drifting over lakes blindly. Ask aspen why it needs wind to startle its leaves into song.
3rd Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2016 Poetry Honourable Mention Franci Louann Berliner Suite, A Shaped Poem the Jewish Memorial is plain, grey, rectangular— low-lying structures of dull, dark cement (coffin-like) repeat in different sizes spread over acres two thousand, seven hundred, eleven pieces I’ve not come to celebrate war won’t go to concentration camps never again—I know enough— I’m a pacifist, on a Berlin bus I remember Martin Niemoeller’s words—when they came for the communists, socialists, trade unionists, the Jews he said: I did not speak up, and when they came for me there was no one left to speak I’ll look for memorials for the others— gypsies, Roma people; gays and lesbians the differently-abled and incurably-ill Catholics, and Lutherans like Niemoeller the tour guide reports—at one time when Protestants were persecuted in France they were safe in Berlin— every fifth Berliner was French… the painting in our hotel room shows a ship carrying the city’s towers— all the spires, old and new, are included— it’s a clear day, an even keel, calm water but my early morning stanzas come as coffins, long dark shapes in the night…
3rd Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2016 Poetry Honourable Mention Lilija Valis My Bio My bio is long - do you have time? OK, I’ll shorten it. Of course, there is no auto – it’s all bio. Once you decide to use words, you step outside yourself. I took my Sanskrit with me when I fled India, listened to Rumi’s poetry in Persia – recognized it when I heard it again, centuries later, I sailed north on the Danube with my child after the Turks took over Greece (I kept my Greek name), travelled with St. Francis of Assisi – watched him make friends with the wolves, heard my grandmother sing when she was pregnant with my mother – she often sang when she worked, grateful to be alive, after invaders killed others in the village but spared her because of her blue eyes and dark hair, I tasted the honey my mother ate when she carried me in her womb, our family left as Russian planes dropped bombs on our home in the pale gold fields of farmland, I headed north out of the Broken American Dream to escape fire and blood in the streets… When I exchanged vows with the man I loved I took on his history of a people who lost their freedom in the ambition of others – love befriends danger. We danced at the free concerts in the Golden Gate Park the summer fog stayed away from San Francisco. Dark clouds are gathering at the horizon again. I still join St. Francis when he walks along a country road, but now it’s the birds who preach… Every place I go is crowded with relatives I never met. All bios offer and leave out essential information – mine is no different.
2016 RCLAS Write On! Contest BIOS: Poetry Winners & Honourable Mentions Chelsea Comeau is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in the Claremont Review, Quills, and CV2. In 2011, Amber Tamblyn chose her poem as the winning entry in the BUST Magazine poetry contest. In 2014, she attended the Banff Centre's Writing with Style Programme with Lorna Crozier, and attends poetry retreats with Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane. In 2015, she was the Canadian winner of the Leaf Press Overleaf chapbook contest. She is currently the poetry editor of WordWorks magazine. Alan Hill is a proud resident of New Westminster. He has been published in North America in CV2, Canadian Literature, Vancouver Review, Antigonish Review, Event, Sub-Terrain, Poetry is Dead, Quills, Words Works (BC FED of Writers), Impressment Gang, Cascadia Review, Switchback, Reunion - The Dallas Review and in a number of anthologies and in the United Kingdom in South, The Wolf, Brittle Star and Turbulence. His second full collection, The Broken Word (Silver Bow Publishing), was published in 2013. He is currently working on his third book of poetry.
Juliane Tran is a Vietnamese-American poet and entrepreneur. She was born in the San Francisco Bay Area and has lived in Houston, Texas, where she launched businesses in academic counseling and fashion design before returning to the Bay Area. She is at work on publishing her first chapbook of poetry, having received a deal as a top-five finalist in the Weasel Press chapbook contest.
2016 RCLAS Write On! Contest BIOS: Poetry Winners & Honourable Mentions
Annette LeBox is an award-winning poet and author of five picture books and two YA novels. Salmon Creek (2003) and Peace is an Offering (2016) won the BC Book prize for Illustrated Literature. Her poetry has appeared in more than 45 literary journals. She is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio from SFU and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC.
Franci Louann (nee Fran Workman) lives, writes and rewrites in New Westminster. As co-founder of Poetic Justice (2010) she is proud of its continuance, now co-hosting with James Felton. Franci has received awards from RCLAS, World Poetry and WIN. Her latest prize for poetry was second place in the Burnaby Writers’ Society contest. The greatest number of her poems were written about Argentina. She loves writing fresh bios. Lilija Valis, author of Freedom on the Fault Line, has two CDs out, one solo and the other with two musicians, Enrico Renz and Lawren Nemeth. She performs her work at various literary, musical as well as political/philosophical international conferences in Vancouver and Bellingham. She also hosts poetry events. She is a member of Canadian Authors Association, Pandora’s Collective, Royal City Literary Arts Society and Writers International Network.
Comments from our judge, Alan Girling First Place Second Coming by Chelsea Comeau Powerful and original imagery, mystery that bears reflection and surprise are for me key elements in a strong poem, and Second Coming has all three. We have a prayer here and it does what a prayer does not normally do, right from the start— praying to be deceived. It raises so many questions and as a reader drives me forward. Then, the defensive tension of the breakwater and the evocative image of an abandoned seashore, and again we wonder why, as if the poet seeks salvation but doesn’t want it to be easy for anyone. The poem itself is not easy but it stays with me. It ends finally on a very satisfying note, though I can’t say I know entirely what I just experienced. It bears reflection. Second Place To My Children by Alan Hill To My Children is clear as a bell and at the same time complex in its tone and emotional impact. We are in allusive fairy tale mode, just right for the child listeners, bringing the bittersweet regret, love and acceptance, even self-pity, common to the parental experience. What charms more than anything is the wry and self-deprecating humour it’s all wrapped in, startling and vivid. Parents will see themselves here, non-parents those who raised them, and both will laugh and maybe gain perspective. I enjoyed it very much. Third Place Medication by Juliane Tran A poem titled Medication gives me pause. Medication is something I don’t want, hope I don’t need. It’s invasive, and in a poem with this title I might expect a dose of right thinking, not a message that empowers. But this one takes me there as only a fine poem can. We turn through a series of speculations that attempt to answer a child’s question. The question has an answer but it’s far from a cure. On the way, we are connected to the deeply familiar in new ways with striking examples and metaphors. We do learn what the medicine is, but it comes only without a prescription. It’s the key to what’s good for us, like a fine poem. Thank you. - Alan Girling https://rclas.com/awards-contests/write-on-contest/
RCLAS WRITER OF THE MONTH
Lozan Yamolky
Lozan Yamolky is Kurdish from northern Iraq. She left Iraq in 1994 and lived with her family in Ankara, Turkey illegally as asylum seekers. Lozan worked with UNHCR, Canadian and Australian embassies as an interpreter/translator until she migrated to Canada in 1995. She wrote poetry as early as her preteen years but due to the fear of being judged/ridiculed by her peers & siblings she stopped writing, or would throw her poems away. Her uncle, Serwan Yamolky (composer, singer, and poet) inspired her and asked Lozan to please never stop writing poetry after he found her one day folded up and crying. He listened to her read a poem that she was about to throw away. He was so pleased and begged her to never destroy her poems again. Serwan offered his house as a safe place to hide her poems so no one would steal them. Through tremendous encouragements and being in the company of other amazing poets, she started sharing, reciting and writing new poetry in the fall of 2013 through the Holy Wow Poets Canada in Maple Ridge, Poetic Justice in New Westminster, various poetry clubs in Vancouver, social media poetry pages & groups. A freelance interpreter working with refugees and new immigrants and others speaking Kurdish & Arabic, Lozan is a mother of two preteen boys from her first marriage. Newly married to her husband, Harry Braun in a ceremony atop Grouse Mountain where they met again by accident 19 years after they dated in 1995, and life had moved them apart. Fate brought them back together. A true love story like no other; yes you bet that love is the reason behind a handful of love poems that are in her debut poetry book I’m No Hero recently published by Silver Bow Publishing. The book, dedicated to her dear uncle, launches at The ACT Theatre in Maple Ridge on October 4th, 2016.
Through The Eyes of a Refugee by Lozan Yamolky
Good, I think that's all I need; well actually it's all I can pack into my bag. Dad said each one of us is only allowed one bag. 'It's going to be cold out there', he said. Oh he also said we are leaving for good. I couldn't wrap my head around those words; I could not comprehend what it meant. Where else could we live? We have no other home. I wasn't worried, dad always protected us and mom always made sure we were cared for, fed and clean. Why should I worry? I recall packing silly things like handmade cards from friends, my Walkman and a notepad to journal, oh and I remember packing earrings; don't ask me why, it's a girl thing. After dad returned from the hospital with our wounded brother, the rush was on to finish packing and leave. Mom was packing food in every possible spot inside the motor home, I even noticed her packing food I didn't like, ‘yuk, I will never eat that no matter what’, I arrogantly said to myself. Our parents were angry and shouting at us and at each other 'don't bring too many things. Let’s go! Let’s go!’ I shrugged off their words trusting that nothing bad can happen. We have a motor home, we can sleep, eat, use the toilet, cook and even stay warm. Boy was I up for the shock of my life. I entered the motor home with my bag and counted 25 people inside it plus myself. We rolled out of our driveway, I watched from the back window as our house became further and further in my sight. Voices of people filling the streets got louder as dad slowly drove by. We are running away as the powerful army of Saddam Hussein is battling to take back the liberated zones of Northern Iraq that was freed during the Kurdish uprising just days after the Desert Storm ended.
Our blind 90 year old grandmother was delirious due to what we called (the forgetting disease) was confused, screaming and shouting since she could not understand why she was in such a small space with so many people. Our wounded brother was injured fighting the army. He was pulled out of the hospital against doctor’s wishes due to the risk of amputating his leg but dad had to choose between taking him with us for a chance to live, or leave him behind where the army was destroying everything in their path as they gained back territories. From the crowded streets on the mountain roads, to children crying, cold weather, mud and even hail on the outside to the awful smell of our brother’s decomposing massive leg wound and through grandmother's screams, nothing could have prepared anyone for this. 'This is not happening' I whispered while trying to sleep with my knees to my chin. There was no room to stretch my legs anywhere for many nights. Everywhere I looked there where people by the thousands on foot passing by our windows. The voices of parents desperately calling names of their lost child are a haunting sound that can never ever be forgotten. We were in the midst of a massive, an absolutely massive traffic jam and it moved like a slug. For the first few days nobody seems to take a break accept to bury the dead or give birth on the side of the road. Our dad could not have a moment of shut eye during the first few nights as every hour the line of cars moved a few feet. I hated being there displaced with no home, no hope but to keep going until we can find safety; a new home perhaps? Nobody knew, not even my dad who knew everything. He didn't know where we're going or where we will end up or even if we would have a home to return to, all that mattered is we were heading to the Iranian borders to seek asylum. Our Kurdish fighters (Peshmerga'h) tactically retreated and joined us; they gave us the devastating news. The army has full control of all major cities and the Iranian government not only closed its borders on refugees, they shot at anyone crossing their razor sharp barbed wires. Now, if my story leaves you torn and bewildered, imagine being there! ------------------------------------------------------------------- copyright Lozan Yamolky
Enduring Abuse As A Refugee by Lozan Yamolky
I grew up shielded from knowing anything about sex. Seriously I knew nothing nor was I allowed to ask. I figured it all out all by myself; I watched mom and dad! Settle down, it’s not what you thought perverts; my folks hardly showed affection towards one another however once in a while – once a year, I would notice dad stealing a kiss from mom’s cheek. A few weeks later she’s pregnant. So, all I need to do is not let any boy kiss me on the cheek. At age 20, I broke off my 3 months engagement because he kissed my cheek. I rubbed that spot so hard I almost broke my skin. Oh man I cried. Good news, I found out later I was not pregnant after all. At age 22 I worked in Ankara, Turkey. At the time, to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, my family & I were asylum seekers being processed to migrate to Canada, to the Turkish authority; however, we were no more than illegal residents – just another damn Iraqi bunch to weed out of here. Shhhh, don’t tell them we are Kurds because we would be in a lot more trouble. Working every day was frightening; each day I thought was the day they will catch me, tear up the asylum status papers, put me in a bus, and hand me to Saddam’s government as they have systematically done to other refugees. We were told many Iraqis and Kurds that were sent to the borders were executed by the Iraqi army. Besides that threat, my boss – a friend of my father who did us a favour and hired me, started to make unwelcomed sexual advances towards me at work. He intentionally isolated me by giving me duties in separate space alone where he would be there himself. I was taught in order for a girl to keep men away from harassing her; she must keep her head down, speak politely to them and not make eye contact. It did not make sense, I was confused, I did what I was supposed to do yet that man wouldn’t
stop bothering me - in fact he got worse each day. I was uncomfortable, I felt awkward, scared and alone. I could not just quit; our family of 8 had no other income while we were illegals there. One day I asked him politely to stop it; ‘it is very uncomfortable’, he got angry; tossed folders around and reminded me I was an illegal resident here, with just a few words from him to the right people, my family & I can be tossed to the borders. Then he touched my cheek as I cringed and he questioned me, 'why can’t you be nice to someone who’s so nice to you? Huh?' The day came that I dreaded; he kept me late after work and promised he would drive me home after I finished my work. ‘Don’t worry, I know where you live, remember your dad & I are friends?’ On a cold dark December evening, he unlocked his car doors for me to get in. I was shaking on the inside but I had no other option but to accept his ride. During the long ride, he kept trying to rest his hand on me and I kept squeezing myself away from him towards the door hoping this ride will end soon. This man was about two and a half times my age, his wife was pregnant and he had a little girl. In a dark path away from the main road, he parked the car. I had no idea where we were. I asked him to please take me home; my family is worried sick by now. He said ‘I just figured you out. You have never been with a man before. You have no idea how this is turning me on. I will only drive you home if you let me touch you. If you refuse, you are on your own get out of the car and walk’. I froze in fear. He suddenly turned his body towards me, pulled me towards him and attempted to put his mouth over mine. I crossed my arms tight over my chest; tucked my chin to my chest and sucked my lips into my mouth and bit them hard. He said, ‘stop resisting or I will leave marks on your body that you will have to explain to your family later’. I begged him to stop. He said ‘trust me, once you get used to this, you will begin to enjoy it’.
Then he suddenly stopped and squirmed in his seat and said, ‘look what you have done to me? You are making me want to do something I will regret later’. He forced me to give him my left hand. I turned my head away. He forced it lower and lower towards his crotch and made me feel something hard below his fat belly. He said ‘this is what happens when a man loves a woman’. I had no idea what was going on at that point or what that hard thing was that he made me feel. I thought for sure he had a metal rod between his legs and he will use it to hit me with it because I am resisting him. I started to shake and cry asking him to please please let me go home. When we arrived I buzzed for my dad to come downstairs outside the building where I lived. I straightened my hair and my clothes. Dad came downstairs looking worried but when he saw my boss, he was relieved and smiled. My boss explained to him work had kept us late and I was ‘such a good girl helping him’. My dad thanked him for bringing me home and shook his hand then they both hugged saying goodbye. The next morning, I went back to work.
------------------------------------------------------------------- copyright Lozan Yamolky
#halloweenpoetry
#creepy #eerie #RCLASmembers
Click on VIDEO to hear Candice read her poem!
Nasreen Pejvack
Why Do We Not Question? Why do we not question the people who are governing our day-to-day life? If we do, is it effective enough? Perhaps we need to be more united in pursuit of examining offensive decisions or judgments our leaders are making: from our missing women (which our fearless leader announced “was not high on his radar”), to hungry children, to lack of support for our single mothers, to budgets, taxes, students fees, and so many other internal issues within the country; and on from there to the choices they make, on behalf of us, regarding concerns and affairs with other countries around the globe. For instance, what do we make of the mystifying events following the death of Saudi Arabia’s King? Why don’t we ask our governments of the western world why they all ran head-over-heels to Saudi Arabia, or called or telegraphed, to offer their condolences to a country that abuses its citizens (mostly women) daily as a natural and acceptable phenomenon? Ninety lashes on the back of a woman because “she must have provoked the man that raped her; it was her fault.” A thousand lashes to a man in prison because he wrote a blog that the authorities did not like. The
dictatorship and brutality of the Saudi government has been the talk of the world; who doesn’t know that their woman cannot drive or vote. I do not want to endlessly tally up the inequalities and injustices of that country, but our government’s tally does not even add up to one!! Because of that ill-fated oil and its treasures, they make deals with them anyway; in spite of how they treat their own citizens. Are our governments blind-folded or open-minded? If open-minded, then why is Cuba criticized as a dictatorship; an odious government which has taken democracy away from its people? For over fifty years the people of America and others have gone along with this sentiment. Through over fifty years of sanctions why have our questions and protests changed nothing; have they not been effective enough? I never understood what was meant by “they do not have democracy.” What kind of democracy do we want for them: American democracy? There are many questions to ask, but let’s take a look at Cuban life: 98% of the people are literate, and people have free education which provides the skills and knowledge that their country needs to improve; Cuba has a wellestablished and effective pharmaceutical industry for serving the needs of its people; Their organic farming attracts people from all around the world to learn from them. Ahh, maybe they are talking about the rundown cities and all those old cars... But wouldn’t over fifty years of widespread sanctions run down any country?
Maybe Cuba does have some restrictions on their people, but
can we in any way compare that with Saudi Arabia? There are neither sanctions on Saudi Arabia nor any restrictions on working with them. Why? Now that the Cuban borders are opening, let’s see what American democracy will do for Cuba. Meanwhile Mr. Obama runs to Riyadh to offer American condolences; and perhaps sign a few new contracts? Why do they persist in ignoring the fact that they are trading with one of the most backward governments on earth, if not simply to maintain access to their wealth.
WORDPLAY AT WORK FEEDBACK & E-ZINE SUBMISSIONS
Janet Kvammen, RCLAS Vice-President/E-zine janetkvammen@rclas.com Antonia Levi secretary@rclas.com
Open Call for Submissions - RCLAS Members Only Poetry, Short Stories, Book excerpts, articles & lyrics are all welcome for submission to future issues of Wordplay at work. Theme: New Westminster. To be included in an upcoming special feature. DEADLINE OCT 21.2016 Nov 2016 Issue 39 DEADLINE OCT 15.2016 Dec 2016 Issue 40 DEADLINE NOV 15.2016
Submit Word documents (include your name on document) to janetkvammen@rclas.com
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