Write On! Contest 2020 Poetry Winners & Honourable Mentions
8th Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2020 Poetry First Place Winner Susan McCaslin Persephone’s Nook Winter. Persephone is scrunched up in her underground book nook reading, writing The nib of her pen scratches away Fingers that pecked at the old Smith Corona, play the new Mac So many mismatched technologies layered in body and brain still flowing through her fingers green ink, green font entire alphabets singing “Please release us” Words on air underground tunnels sub-terranean streams trickle, tickle up her spine It is not yet Mother’s Day though she mothers sound would love, be loved as crone revitalized kick up her heels in a field once again gathering narcissus and rue She rues nothing something ventures falls back into shade awaiting the prodigious human turnaround that may or may not come
8th Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2020 Poetry Second Place Winner Angela Rebrec And their works shall follow For Ellen Whatley When Brahms awoke with the downy feathers of his requiem floating, falling out of hazy half-sleep, his mind divided into measures and movements — mourning a mother or Robert’s long road toward madness or for love tangled in a trellis of guilt — the exposed soprano voice drifted down like a plume as sorrow sometimes does, flies into a room and perches unbidden in the darkest corner. When we sang his requiem would you have guessed how his mass would move us toward comfort? The sorrow that separates is our own: a three-note motif sung by your beautiful voice now leaving our little choir of warblers and sparrows, heading east to your new city, a permanent migration to a terraced garden where fruit is plentiful my small and pretty bird. Like Clara on the station platform we watch the plane recede as a hawk flies to its nest — then submerge ourselves in distraction, sing as prolifically as she performed. Before waking, Brahms heard music as feathers ruffling, his requiem for transitions, how it begins and ends with the word blesséd, the way friendship remains a downy feather, the way it floats across a milk-white sky.
The lines in italics attributed to Georg Friedrich Daumer, borrowed by Johannes Brahms for his Ein kleiner, Hübscher Vogel from Liebeslieder-Walzer, op. 52. no. 6. Title borrowed from the last line of Johannes Brahms’ A German Requiem.
8th Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2020 Poetry Third Place Winner Angela Kenyon Traffic I was thinking no not one more thing I was thinking did she have to be here my mother, rigid in the passenger seat crying how terrible as if we had hit a child not the rear bumper of a car. I was thinking she would drive me mad and then there would be two of us mad mother and daughter. They said things would be easier once she lost all traces of herself in the shadow world of dementia. I was thinking random act of kindness when that car tried to make a left on Gaglardi from the wrong lane. Perhaps it would bring me luck if I let him in. Presumed it would be bad luck if it came—the thought so impure in its motive. I was thinking the driver of the other car was impossibly young. I tried to remember myself young, my body, my voice, almost another person. I wanted to weep for all I had let come and go so casually—lovers, cities, songs. I was thinking you little shit for the way he stood outside my car window with this superior air as if I were a stupid old woman with a stupid old woman beside her. He was shouting What were you thinking? I was thinking I was incapable of thought exhausted as I had become tending my mother three doctor’s appointments in as many days. He was shouting show me your licence as if I lacked the capacity to grasp his words.
I was thinking this is how my unravelling begins. But as the sun lowered itself toward the sea my mother stepped out of the car, skipped quickly across the grass verge to stand under maple trees as they shook their gold leaves loose. I was thinking how the light played in her silver hair as she twirled in a circle, her arms wide I followed her, feet on the earth, wind in my ears I danced, laughing with her in that timeless garden before the traffic started up again.
8th Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2020 Poetry Honourable Mention Barbara Carter life after death of course there’s Jesus and his god-ish offspring Elvis at the 7-11 Morrison stalking Pere La Chaisse oh and the original Madonna two millennia gone now appearing on cheese toast and post-diluvium walls I know true believers who swear to god that Tupac and maybe Biggie mete out poetic justice in Mexico but my favourite resurrectionist is Jim’s neighbour Victor Noir whose phallic metal is rubbed raw by hopeful childless spinsters they tried to wall the poor guy off (priapic exhaustion) but the womb-sad women kept coming, vaulting and tunneling my niece mounted Victor for a selfie and now that religion’s stock is dropping we still seek the afterlife in vampires and zombies in holograms at Coachella and I, riding my white couch into images and tropes my pulse beating strong and steady can’t fathom the miracle of death after life
8th Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2020 Poetry Honourable Mention H. C. Phillips Rebellion in the Night Attack inaction; to repel against ion’s concentration equilibriation step to the beat, ’n’spark this night a network, our concatenation: Concentrate on the nation, as an act, alert, act in answering of; answer to address the aim in arrest, address the rest, and dress in ache; band-aids that bare, borne; barred in aid are the bereaved. So spins an empty barren baroness, all we are set to inherit, blackened or bleached; what act against brushes up against burning and buying? Bound back in answer to bereavement: bend, beat, bet. To the beat, bargain again. Blame not this broadcast; brush out knotted networks. Brush through. Brush up, into, and call all to care this catching night. Born: as act against, into. Care to call this caught up thing for what it is; and care and care and ache, ensnared. Cause this care and ache ensnared, catch it up, catch it in, catch within. Box and bow and brush. All comfort contrasts control; cures carved out of cuts, as (bi)cycle spins (news)cycle. Clue in to colour combed out, bleached to cover cracks. Chase ache through all that bare and bloom and blame. Dash, dart, creep and crawl – Count, 1-2; count, 3-4. Words’ work a waltz, to cure or crate –
package, to ship and share – create noun, count ounce, and denounce. This bared blooming blaming dresses the dye; camouflage. Dye-damaged, we dance.
8th Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2020 Poetry Honourable Mention Alan Girling Lasagna The woman smartly hatted & dressed with the dish of lasagna in her lap was sobbing trying to contain her tears for public transit’s sake so I asked was there anything I could do though it was clear there was nothing to do but listen: to her story of the people she’d baked it for the people not her friends who never would be her friends even after the party even with the lasagna she just knew it to be the case. It could be she saw me eye the dish I didn’t say how good it smelled or she may have sensed in me something truer than false because when we reached the next stop and the doors opened she gave me a fixed look shy piteous glistening and placed the dish in my hands nodded once then stepped off. That evening the talk was of the wisdom of eating a stranger’s food but I knew from her look a kindred thing that some things given and with grace received no matter who how or where mean communion and further
consummation and I felt for the moment along the clogged fissures of my heart that no one needed to taste this woman’s lasagna more than I did.
2020 RCLAS Write On! Contest BIOS: Poetry Winners & Honourable Mentions Susan McCaslin resides in Glen Valley east of Fort Langley. Her most recent volume is Into the Open: Poems New and Selected (Inanna, 2017). Her prize-winning poem “Persephone’s Nook,” will be published in Heart Work, forthcoming from Ekstasis Editions in 2020. An artisan-created chapbook, Cosmic Egg, is due out through The Alfred Gustav Press in June 2021. Susan initiated The Han Shan Poetry Project in 2012, a successful effort to help save a rainforest near her home along the Fraser. She has been fascinated by the Demeter-Persephone myths since the early seventies. www.susanmccaslin.ca Photo Credit Mark Haddock
Angela Rebrec is a writer, singer and graphic artist whose work has appeared widely in journals such as GRAIN, Prairie Fire, EVENT, the Dalhousie Review, Pulp Literature and NationalPoetryMonth.ca 2020 Ode to the Small. Her writing has been shortlisted for several awards and contests including PRISM International’s Nonfiction Contest. Angela’s most recent art can be viewed online with Chicago’s Woman Made Gallery. She currently facilitates writing and expressive arts workshops for kids and adults of all ages. Angela lives in Delta, BC with her husband, three children and dog on unceded Musqueam and Tsawwassen lands.
Angela Kenyon writes poetry about family and the messages received from the small events of life. She also has a persistent imagination so writes both short and long fiction. She grew up in Manchester, England but has lived in Vancouver East with her family for almost forty years. A 2014 graduate from The Writers' Studio at Simon Fraser University, Angela is now retired from full-time work and enjoys having the time to write and to explore the neighbourhood on her trusty bike with its wicker basket and rusty chain
2020 RCLAS Write On! Contest BIOS: Poetry Winners & Honourable Mentions Barbara Carter was drawn to White Rock in 1984 because of its arts community and its seaside location. Born in Toronto she has lived across Canada finally finding a home on the west coast. She is a part of the extensive network of writers on the Semiahmoo Peninsula. She is presently working on a memoir, Growing Up Army, as well as collaborating on several projects fusing poetry with the visual arts and jazz. An arts advocate and educator, musician, mother, lover of all things creative, and coddler of two little white dogs, she rises every day with anticipation and curiosity.
H.C. Phillips studied physics before moving from Australia to Canada, where she took a hiatus from academia to focus on writing. Now she both writes and studies neuroscience. Her background motivates the combined explorations of reality’s nature and perception in her writing, where she particularly enjoys turning ideas over to uncover a new perspective. She has previously been published in Lines+Stars, emerge16, and The Write Launch. Most recently, her piece “Return Instinct” was published with Columbia Journal, online.
Alan Girling writes poetry mainly, sometimes fiction, nonfiction, or plays. His work has been seen in print, heard on the radio, at live readings, even viewed in shop windows. Such venues include Pif, The Ekphrastic Review, Blynkt, Panoply, Hobart, The MacGuffin, Smokelong Quarterly, FreeFall, and CBC Radio. He is happy to have had poems place in four local poetry contests and to have a play produced for the Walking Fish Festival in Vancouver, B.C.
2020 WRITE ON! CONTEST COMMENTS FROM OUR POETRY JUDGE MEG STAINSBY 2020 Poetry Contest Winners
First Place: Susan McCaslin – Persephone’s Nook Second Place: Angela Rebrec – And their works shall follow (for Ellen Whatley) Third Place: Angela Kenyon – Traffic 2020 Poetry Honourable Mentions Barbara Carter – life after death H.C. Phillips – Rebellion in the Night Alan Girling – Lasagna First Place Persephone’s Nook by Susan McCaslin I am drawn to this poem’s confidence and clarity. It is spare yet multi-layered, moving deftly between Greek mythology and modern technology as it renders a fresh image of Persephone as a writer, as someone whose “pen scratches away” during winter. The poem speaks in clean, concrete images—such as the “green ink, green font” of her work; such as the “narcissus and rue” that await Persephone, should she choose to return to the world above ground. It presents a Persephone who “rues nothing,” is watchful and patient. Second Place And their works shall follow (for Ellen Whatley) by Angela Rebrec This poem is rich, its imagery ornate and complex; its relatively long lines and balanced stanzas are measured and full. The speaker communicates a deep affection for and loss of a beloved friend, couching the experience in an extended conceit about Romantic composer Brahms’ love for Clara Schumann. There is a formality and a touching deference, or respect, offered by the speaker towards the friend. And I found myself taken with the fluidity with which the poem blends images of music with images of birds—songbirds, feathers, flight. It is an accomplished poem that ends on a satisfying, perfect note. Third Place Traffic by Angela Kenyon This poem grew on me with every read. Formally, it moves us over eight stanzas, each opening with a repeating phrase, through the chaos of thoughts and emotions that might flash in front of one’s eyes in the disorienting seconds after a car accident. The narrator rehearses a series of answers to the demand from the other driver, What were you thinking?, taking us through exasperation, generosity, loss, anger and more. She is stopped and we feel trapped in the car with her. We don’t realize we are holding our breath as she reels and reaches for answers—until she releases us, and herself, back into life, into motion, with a beautiful final response.
Meg Stainsby was born in North Vancouver, raised two daughters in Langley and taught English at Douglas College, New Westminster, from 1992 to 2010, when she moved into administration. Meg holds three Master’s degrees and is now working on a doctorate in Creative Writing (memoir) through the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (Lampeter, Wales). She has published scholarly work on Middle English poetry and reviews of Canadian fiction and memoir. Her creative non-fiction has been a finalist in the Durham Region Writers’ Community Creative Non-Fiction competition, and for the Malahat Review’s Constance Rooke Creative Non-Fiction Prize. Meg has just moved on from marina life, after ten years on a floating home in North Vancouver, and is living in Vancouver’s West End.
Our June Summer 2020 issue https://issuu.com/rclas/docs/june_2020_ezine_issue_75 featuring winning Fiction by V.J Hamilton, Trish Gauntlett, Lynley Lewis, Alvin Ens, and Doris Riedweg.
Our 2020 Non-Fiction Winners will be featured in October 2020 Issue 77.
Under the Water © Deborah
White
I can feel strong hands. Someone is grabbing my legs and under my shoulders, lifting me, pulling me up. A deep voice is speaking. The sound is calm and melodious and I send out a prayer of thanks. They’ve found me. “It will be fine. We have you now,” the voice says. I try to see his face but it blends into a web of colour. The light hurts my eyes so I let them drift shut. I am swaying as they lift me and I imagine being in my mother’s arms, warm and safe. If I strain hard enough, perhaps I can hear her humming a lullaby to me. I reach out for the tune but all I can hear is the cold metal of the gurney as it rolls onto the pavement and the crunching of gravel under the rubber wheels. “We’re going to put you in the ambulance, ma’am. Not long now.” I nod, hoping the paramedic sees and understands it’s too difficult to speak. My throat is on fire. It’s like I’ve swallowed a sharp plastic toy that has shredded its way down my windpipe. I can hear the distant scream of a siren and wonder if it’s from my ambulance. The tang of antiseptic stings my nose. Equipment hisses and ticks all around me. I’m floating in a thick fog. I pry my eyes open and glimpse a man. He’s smiling at me but I can feel his concern coming at me in waves. He seems too young to be doing this kind of work. I grab at his hand, he pats mine and puts it back on the scratchy, wool blanket that is wrapped around me. “Thank you.” I half whisper.
“No need, ma’am. Almost there.” I drift off into a grey place. The gurney hurtles down the hall and people are rushing all around me. I’m gasping for air. I can’t seem to get enough. It’s like Riley, my eighty-pound golden retriever is sitting on my chest and won’t get off. Come on Riley, this isn’t funny. Time to get off my chest. Riley, oh god, my dog. I struggle to sit up but the woman wheeling me down the hall pushes me back down. “Ma’am, you must lie still, please.” She sounds tired and flustered. How many people has she helped today? I can feel them — the people, rather than see them, on beds and in chairs all along the sides of the hallway. Moans and crying fill the air like muzak, humming in the background. “Where’s Riley? My dog.” I grab at the blanket trying to pull it away from my legs. “Don’t worry, ma'am. Your dog will be fine.” I don’t believe her but I surrender to this situation, this disease. Please god, keep Riley safe. I hope my neighbour has him. I drift again and find myself back in the adoption showing room of the local animal shelter, walking past jailed dogs of all shapes and sizes. The chorus of barking and squealing is almost too much to bear. There’s a strong scent of urine. They’re all calling for me to help them. They stare at me, pleadingly, through the bars of their cages. I wonder if I can take them all home with me but I know I can’t. I have to choose one so I stop beside the cage of a small, yellow dog. He pushes his nose through the bars and sniffs at me. A paw reaches between the metal slats and I grab it. In that moment, I know, I have my dog. We’ve found each other. The gurney rounds a corner and I’m grateful for the cool air on my face as we wheel down the hall. My skin feels tight and itchy. I am burning up from the inside out but there are layers of sheets and blankets on me. Don’t they know I’m scorching?
We enter a room and I can tell that this place is for the really sick. It feels shrouded in death, like a morgue. The movements of the doctors and nurses are fast and deliberate, like they are running a race. Their faces are hidden behind masks and shields. Some of them look like astronauts in full gear, ready to step on a rocket going to the moon. I wonder if some of them wish that’s where they were going rather than being here right now. I want to ask why they’ve brought me to this room. I don’t belong here. This is for extremely ill people, not me. I am placed into a corner, beside an elderly man. There are so many tubes and needles going into his arms, it looks like more of his life is going on outside of him than inside of him. He rolls his head, looks at me and gives me a weak smile. I blink back hoping he understands this is my way of greeting. It’s all I can muster at the moment. Two nurses are buzzing around me like flies. First, oxygen and then I’m given the same tubes and needles as my neighbour. I can hear the nurses talking in low tones. Heart rate is low. Oxygen levels are low. Need to stabilize. Seen nothing like this virus. She’s only 52. No children. Extended family in Belgium. Has to fight hard… Time seems to be blending together like stew. Has it been hours or days that I have been here? The light coming through the window has changed and it seems like it’s the morning. I roll my head and look over at my neighbour. He clutches a phone in his hand like it is the most precious jewel in the world. It vibrates and his shaky finger presses the button. I try not to listen in. A woman is talking to him, telling him how loved he is and how much the children want him to come home. Then two youngsters are waving at him and singing Happy Birthday. One of the children is holding up a cat, I can hear it meowing angrily. The children are giggling and calling him “gampa.” They’re begging him to get well. When the call is over, I croak out, “Lovely family.” He nods, his breathing laboured. “You?” I shake my head and close my eyes.
I’m jolted by a high pitched sound and there are nurses swarming around me and the man beside me. They’re moving quickly, hitting buttons and turning knobs. Someone is pushing a machine over to our area. I can’t seem to catch my breath. I’m drowning. I can hear the nurses talking in loud whispers. One ventilator. Let the doctor decide. Not our job. I can’t do this. She’s younger, it only makes sense. Call the doctor. We don’t have time. With effort, I lift my hand off the bed. I catch the nurse’s eye and she comes over. “Not me. Him.” I plead. “Please.” She stares at me for a moment and touches my arm. “You are a very brave person.” She turns away and the nurses begin working on my neighbour. I think of Riley and slide, peacefully, under the water.
------------------------------------------------- Under the Water copyright Deborah White
BEIT SHE’ARIM NATIONAL PARK © Jerena Tobiasen Beit She'arāyim (“House of Two Gates”) was an ancient Roman-era Jewish village established at the top of a chalk hill toward the end of the first century BCE. Built during the reign of King Herod, it is located twenty kilometers east of Haifa, Israel.
Early on, the residents of the village dug into the base of the chalk hill, to create burial chambers. The soft chalk made digging and carving relatively easy. The dry environment was also ideal for preservation.
A number of notable individuals were buried beneath the hill, including Rabbi Judah the Prince, a beloved leader and compiler of the major written collection of Jewish oral traditions, known as the Mishnah. He is reported to have lived sometime between 217 and 135 CE. Other notables of the time and centuries thereafter were also buried in temples carved into the hill. When the Mount of Olives was closed to Jewish burials in 135 CE, Beit She'arāyim became a preferred alternative made desirable because of the proximity to Rabbi Judah’s shrine.
Not all were buried at the base of the hill, however. Perhaps the cost was too high. Perhaps the area was simply too active with other burials and some could not be delayed. Chalk mounds existed around the base of the hill, providing other possibilities.
Today, the area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site known as Beit She’arim National Park. Excavation of the site began in 1936. Over time catacombs, mausoleums and sarcophagi adorned with ornate symbols and figures, some even painted, have been revealed. Inscriptions written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Palmyrene and Greek attest to the lives of those who were long-ago buried within. Some temples and burial chambers are opened for public viewing, but not all.
Within walking distance but closed off to the general public are other chambers. Chambers that are difficult to reach because the openings are small - so small that not every adult will fit through them. Those who do fit through the cavity must be able to do so on hands and knees or waddling like a duck. Once inside, however, the ceilings are high enough to stand.
In one such cave, known as the “Cave of the Warrior and his Menorah�, the sarcophagus of a Roman soldier is carved to illustrate his devotion. On the carving’s head is a seven-candle menorah. On the inner wall of the
sarcophagus is the carving of a large clam shell, possibly suggesting time spent at sea. Remnants of red paint suggest that the carvings were originally stained and that, perhaps a mural may have adorned the external base. The carving of the menorah resting on the soldier’s head suggests that he was born a Jew and that he became a soldier of Rome. Perhaps he joined willingly, or perhaps he was forced - one might only speculate. Yet, despite his journey in the service of Rome, he wished all to know that he was not tempted by the beliefs of his fellow soldiers. Instead, he remained true to his Jewish faith.
Beit She’arim National Park is a beautiful testament to the ancient Jewish culture, and the burial sites carved into chalk walls, but, the most outstanding revelations are those found in the restricted areas, with stories not commonly told.
*All photos by Jerena Tobiasen, November 23, 201