The Envoy 086 - The newsletter of the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance

The ENVOY The official newsletter of the

Canada Cuba Literary Alliance I.S.S.N. – 1911‐0693

April, 2019 Issue 086 www.CanadaCubaLiteraryAlliance.or

April 16, 2019

RE: CCLA Poets Laureate Program Dear CCLA Members: We are proud to announce our CCLA Poets Laureate Program. This idea has been percolating for some time now but finally time and tide allows us to bring it forward.

As you will see the deadline is October 15, 2019. The official

announcement of who will be our CCLA Poets Laureate will be announced no later than November 15, 2019. We hope you will give serious consideration to nominating a fellow CCLA member.

Good luck to each nominee.

For this issue of the Envoy it is my pleasure to bring you our dear friend and brother, Jorge as our new Editor of the Envoy. Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández, otherwise known as Joy, is “THE” main mover and groover for the CCLA in Gibara. He is the President of the Gibara CCLA Chapter called “The Sea Dreamers”. His passion for poetry and gathering people in the name of poetry is

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

amazing. Without him in Gibara the poetry scene would be hiding under a rock trying to be heard over the splashing sea waves.

I had to twist his arm to include some of his poems in this issue. After all what better way is there to get to know our new Editor. I now say to him “You da Boss Brother!” “Usted da Jefe Hermano”.

Call him Jorge, Joy, Jefe or Hermano but don’t call him late for dinner. Speaking of dinner, he and his wonderful wife Michelle – my dear sister – make a wonderful pot of fish head soup. Get your self-invited for dinner and you will soon find out what dear hosts they are.

Because you will be part of the family he might make you wash the dishes.

Dear Brother – thank you for taking on the job of Editor of the Envoy.

Dear All – please send him your poems.

Without your work he will have a sad existence as an editor.

All the best.

Prez Tai

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Invitation to CCLA members for the nomination of “CCLA POETS LAUREATE” Each CCLA Poet Laureate, one Cuban and one Canadian will have a three-year term appointment.

Each listed nominee will have ten of their poems published and each of the two winners, one Cuban and one Canadian, will have twenty of their poems published in “Masterly” The CCLA Poets Laureate Book (English-Spanish)

Who Qualifies: 1 – The nominee must be a CCLA member. All members are eligible.

2 – The nominator must be a CCLA Member. All members are eligible.

3 – A nominator can only nominate one nominee per term.

4 – One must have permission from the nominee before nomination.

5 – The nominee must have been previously published in and outside of the CCLA.

What Should Nominators Do? 1 – The nominator must submit, by email only, a list of the nominee’s previous publications and awards sent as a single MS Word attachment.

2 – The nominator must submit 20 poems by the nominee – new and previously published poems are welcome. Send one file as a MS Word attachment with all 20 poems in the one file – in the original language as part of the nomination package.

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Responsibilities of the Poets Laureate: 1 – The CCLA Poets Laureate will submit between 1 – 3 poems for each Envoy.

2 – The CCLA Poets Laureate will submit poetry to future CCLA anthologies.

3 – The CCLA Poets Laureate will read at CCLA events when they can make it to events.

Deadline for Nominations: November 15, 2019

The Poetry Submission: The poems will be a maximum of 100 lines. Each line will be a maximum 50 characters.

A reminder that the CCLA is not a political organization. Political content will be a consideration in judging.

Send Nominations To: All nominations, Canadian and Cuban, must be sent to both: CCLA Cuban President, Miguel Angel Olive Inglesias: cclacubanprez@gmail.com CCLA Canadian President, Richard Grove / Tai: RichardGroveTai@gmail.com

Note: – Nominees will be posted in the Envoy.

– CCLA Poets Laureate will be selected by the Laureate Committee.

– No Nominees can serve on the selection committee.

– No Nominee can serve as CCLA Poet Laureate two terms in a row.

– There will be one Cuban and one Canadian Poet Laureate.

– The term will be a three-year term appointment.

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

Jorge Pérez was born in Santiago de Cuba in 1961 and now resides in Gibara. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in the English Language and has worked as a professor for thirty years teaching at different levels of education, including the university. His employment experience also involved working as a coordinator at the National Tourism Institute’s Hotel Sierra Maestra in Bayamo.

He is a member of a literary association, Creators Peña Gibara, and Manuel Armando Gómez Fernández workshop. His work has been published in literary newsletters Reef, Villa Blanca, Cacoyugüín, Mar Audaz and The Envoy, the CCLA newsletter. While participating in workshop teaching, the learning of foreign languages, and research at ENALEX, he received his diploma. He has also taken part in national and international events related to his profession, receiving honorable mention and awards in local literary competitions held in the genre of Armando Leyva’s poetry on the Day of Culture in the town of San Fulgencio de Gibara.

Jorge Pérez is a member of the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance and holds the title of Ambassador of the CCLA, Gibara, He is a member of the writers’ group called the Sea Dreamers, members from Gibara´s workshop who write in english and spanish. His book titled “Jorge and the Sea” was published and he also coordinated their first anthology “Marea de sueños: Selección de poesía” – ISBN – 978-1-927725-01-6. He has now undertaken to be editor-in-chief of the official newsletter of the CCLA, The Envoy.

Emails: joyphccla@gmail.com joyph@nauta.cu

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

In the third afternoon of the third Saturday of December 2012, three fine literary minded individuals gather for what has now in the inaugural meeting of the CCLA Literary workshop of Gibara.

Their meeting place is situated 35 km north from Holguin in the White Village of Gibara, bathing in the waters spreading from a calm and sparkling bay and seeping into the surrounding rugged hillside of the somnolent Atlantic Ocean.

We developed the first meeting with three poets in order to establish a Literary workshop that connects our small village to the fraternal Canada in the name of the CCLA. In this meeting we read and took under consideration poems from members of different workshops of the Village, poems which are going submitted to the CCLA newsletter, The Envoy and The magazine The Ambassador.

Nowadays the devoted poets of the White Village of Gibara have been eagerly working on new poems day after day.

Caressed by the Atlantic breeze, we carried out readings and poetry comments about different themes.

Today´s development of different literary workshops in Gibara: ATENEO: Promote and support our local culture with expositions, conferences and contests.

Our bulletin ATENEO is called ARRECIFE (REEF), we also have The Iberian-American group of the poems “Espinel Cucalambé”.

NABORI: A magazine that publishes literary production The Cultural group The Makers (Creadores) - Literary workshop “Manuel Armando Gómez Fernnández” - Literary workshop “ Morena García Urquiola” Literary Bulletin called “Mar Audaz” that promotes, the Literary Creation.

- Literary group “Sea Dreamers” (Soñadores del Mar) who promote poetry, photograph, short-story writing and book launches with the fraternal help of the CCLA.

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Director: Eugenio Ernesto González Aguilera

.

Sea Dreamers Los Soñadores del Mar

Gibara is the marvelous… town of a coastal city... It… hovers in the mist as the hurricane-beaten city that once was. It boasts of being the first place that Christopher Columbus stopped when he discovered the Americas, but then again, so do a few other Cuban cities.

Richard M. Grove Prez Tai

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

NABORí REVISTA LITERARIA Grupo Iberoamericano de CUCALAMBÉ Filial Gibara

la

Director: Blas Arsenio Valdés Bruceta

Décima

ESPINEL

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

A LA VERA DEL CAMINO Sentado al borde presiento del camino: su embestida, y me aterra la partida de la nostalgia del viento.

Me tortura el desaliento de mi esperanza !maldigo! la espiga seca del trigo que no da ningún consuelo, a quien me detiene el vuelo y me impone su castigo.

ON THE ROADSIDE Sitting on the side of the road I can feel the rush And I am scared of the departure Of the wind‟s nostalgia I am haunted by apathy I curse the dry corn ear of my hope That gives me no consolation Cuts off my wings And punishes me.

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

ABOUT THE ENVOY by Miguel Olivé, CCLA Cuban President A new issue of The Envoy is with us already. We thank DD for so many years working to the best of her ability in the editing of the newsletter, and welcome Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández, CCLA Ambassador in Gibara, as new Editor!

This number brings mostly news, updates and poetry to CCLAers: our January 2020 invitation to gather in Holguín Cuba!

Read here the official invitation, but enjoy too this poem I wrote, which is meant as an extra request!

Waves To my friends of the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance A wave of CCLA friends rolls in every January they flee from the gelid winter from the round-the-year hectic lifestyle they come looking for the warmth of our sun-bathed beaches they come to follow the pace of the Cuban soul.

But most of all my friends come to be with CCLA Cubans to be with ALL Cubans.

The warmth they seek is best felt in our hands in our hearts in our smiles and hospitality, the pace they want is best revealed in our spirit.

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

It happens every January the wave of CCLA friends merging with Cuba‟s waves with people‟s waves rolling, rolling, rolling in hugs and laughterand poetry as intense and overwhelming as the waves of the sea.

And that much everlasting.

Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias CCLA President in Cuba & The Ambassador Editor-in-chief

OFFICIAL CCLA INVITATION TO CUBA JANUARY 2020 Hello, dear CCLA friends!

Our next CCLA trip will be two weeks in January/February 2020. Date to be announced soon. We will meet in Holguín at the Mirador Resort looking north over the jungle canopy! We meet every year with a large or small grourp. The last Holguin group meeting was January 2017, during the presentation of the third book of the Bridges Series. It is about time we gathered again, as many of us as possible, to continue the CCLA tradition. This is our big year of cheerfully closing the 2019 celebrations for the fifteen years of the CCLA.

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Please contact our Cuba President Miguel Olivé by email at cclacubanprez@gmail.com and migueloi@uho.edu.cu and let us know if you are interested in this year’s trip. Winter is harsh up in Canada, so what better way to fight it than packing up and coming down to enjoy our warm beaches and resorts, and above all the warmth of us friends meeting and sharing and reading poetry doing workshops, doing day trips and bonding more time?

Tai says I am an “eager beaver,” but then I have my female alter ego in Adonay, Manuel Velázquez´s wife. She is already planning what we will do. Adonay is an excellent everything-planner and hostess, so don´t miss this opportunity!

Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias CCLA President in Cuba & The Ambassador Editor-in-chief Adonay Pérez Luengo CCLA VP in Cuba and “Executive Secretary” Tai: writers@hiddenbrookpress.com Miguel: cclacubanprez@gmail.com&migueloi@uho.edu.cu Adonay: adonaypl@nauta.cu (for short note, no attachments) & adonaypl076@gmail.com

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

LITERARY GATHERING AT THE HOLGUÍN UNIVERSITY

Poetry fills these early months of the year. This Monday morning, April 10, 2019, it settled in the hearts of students, teachers, librarians, poets, guests, who gathered at José de la Luz Campus of the Holguín University library corner, to confer beauty to the day, joy to them. Professor Galbán, on-campus-and-communityactivities promoter in the university, invited us to a feast of poetry reading, book expo and donation. It was a sharing of spirituality, an encounter with culture, a thing of beauty.

Guest poets Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández, from Gibara, and Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias, a professor from the English Department, talked about the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance (CCLA) and read their poems, published by the CCLA. The sharing was complete with comments from the audience, and poetry reading too!

May these moments come back oftentimes for people´s enlightenment, for minutes of partaking, for a measure of humanity seeking aesthetics and substance in a fountain of words.

Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias CCLA President in Cuba & The Ambassador Editor-in-chief

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Biographical Information K.V. Skene „s work has appeared in Canadian, U.K., U.S., Irish, Indian, Australian and Austrian magazines – most recently in Scintilla (UK,) FreeFall (Canada) The Stony Thursday Book (Ireland), Poetry News (The Poetry Society Newsletter (UK). Tower Poetry (Canada) and The Frogmore Papers (UK) A winner in the 2018 erbacce prize contest, her latest collection, Unoriginal Sins, was published this year by erbacce-press (UK). Also, a winner in the 2018 Cinnamon Press pamphlet contest, her new chapbook The Love Life of Bus Shelters, appeared in March 2019.

Yours truly K.V. Skene I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

Samuel Butler

The Importance of Paying Attention to what we are not saying, not doing, not wanting to (beware our beautiful excuses) resolve this diaspora of sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews, sons, daughters, husbands, lovers ...

We look away for just an instant. This is how it happens, why it happens, Thousands of miles apart and so few cards, letters, calls, texts, e-mails ... Yes.

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

I am measuring love, measuring hope, measuring survival – the birdwings in my head taken for granted (as our mother, our father, our childhood was taken ...) for this hour, for the next, but no more.

Going on With While chestnuts are constellations of white candles

I fling my window wide to the nightjar‟s solo

let the gibbous moon slacken its taut string

fall through gravity‟s familiar

syllables lose shape, shrink shapeless as a winter overcoat after the owner has stepped out I want to be wise to new ways of being

although the old are not saying I must

add to the sum of what is

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

become part of it

or why

like a child they know how to be in this world and love it without getting lost.

By itself reality isn’t worth a damn. It’s perception that promotes reality to meaning.

JOSEPH BRODSKY

An Ascension of starlings all or one unwinding pure syllables of sky a shape shifting and mind unfolds where only movement exists together in a singularity of senseless beauty or ornithological event god‟s truth as usual within the churning the birds

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

and I are all that matters at twilight

X etched overhead expropriating the intimacy of dusk of 747s joyriding the exhausted blue on their way to Montreal or Mumbai or jet lagging an expanded twilight going a little fuzzy at the edges line by line sky precipitates an atmospheric exposé before the stars appear X-r

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

CROSS ROADS I am standing in the Middle Of the cross roads I must continue walking I have to choose my way: I know one will take me to heaven Another will take me to hell There‟s one that will take me to Paradise And another will take me nowhere.

How can I choose If there are no Signals?

Which will I take Not knowing my Fate?

SAVE MANKIND Knowledge is a treasure We must give to others; Where there is darkness We must make it bright.

Nature gives us sources To fight thirst and hunger; Peace and Love can bring us The most needed Light.

Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Biography -Short

Lisa Makarchuk

lisamakarchuk@sympatico.ca

Love of poetry, doggerel and rant began for Makarchuk in a rural school she attended in northern Saskatchewan. She co-coordinated the First International Festival of Poetry of Resistance and coordinated the third one. She has written news articles, worked in radio, translated works and published a chapter in a collection of essays in Cuba Solidarity in Canada, edited by Nino Pagliccia. Her issue-oriented poetry is found in anthologies such as Things That Matter, in e-zines and The Envoy. She was one of four poets, two Canadian and two Cuban, in the CCLA‟s Bridges Serie

Letter to a Friend – 1965 Lisa Makarchuck Hesitating and waiting it ought to be simple for we are universal in our wants and our needs in also admiring humanitarian deeds

But here I am not of the West nor of the East but of both and the world belonging to all

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

not belonging to one there‟s no backward look no regret no second thought on how I‟ll live listen clearly, dear friend my life is not of me to give listen well and you‟ll hear napalm-flamed children screaming near Haiphong Viet Nam Prisoners being stalked by fear in South Africa while mothers weep over starving babies who sleep in the Andes for no matter where my command is to care whether Black, native or gay or fighters for a just new day they‟re my brothers and sisters to them I belong these are my values imperative and strong

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

I am, as well of Canada as you are of other shores can bonds from all this ever be forged?

Where Goes The Light Where Goes The Light? where goes the light when it‟s switched off? can we catch it after it‟s shone enough and store it in pockets to bring out when we laugh?

we enter deep caves with lanterns of light where does it go when it‟s in full flight? does it come back to play hide-and-seek bouncing off stalactites circling the stalagmites darting „round crystal, limestone and fluorite or cowering away in deep fissures of calcite? perhaps hiding away in flora of laurel or chasing amongst the recesses of coral? when OUR light goes out, what is its fate?

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

in ideas and thought does it stay behind cracking and brightening the closeted mind? does it enter music of spheres or poetry of rhyme resonating in lyrics, haunting, sublime?

in the quickened beat of a stricken heart still racing from loss, sorrow and grief reliving the memory for which it pines reaching for light nestling deep within each to emblazon the world and continue to shine.

ON MY WAY TO THE VILLAGE Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández Bewitched by the beauty of a dreamy landscape I breath pure sensual air perfumed by the unknown aromas, I listen to arcane weeping from the trees of the woods, their branches feeling the playful tickling of a caressing breeze I trek among sharp dog-toothed caves their mouths angry, hungry. golden creek waters flow lapping slowly with delight at tempting mint-flavored green slime. livestock roam lazily free on the vast meadow.

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

in the distance, the village lies curled in the peaceful valley where the grass scintillates in sheer emerald hues. the exuberant luminous poetry of a magnetic place turns dark and gloomy prose as it pencils humble homes, walls of ancient oak and withered thatch. no doors locks, no window latches, people bask in the king star´s bloody rays that agonize on a far horizon. when the night finally throws its throud they will light their old bronze lanterns sparking in my eyes a fantasy of tiny moons hanging from the sky. the village is swallowed by a silence pecked by night crickets and sleepless birds, drowned in the night of endless darkness. the peasant sleep, will stay frozen in sleep, resting in an immobility that melt dreams and transform illusions in simple fantasy.

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

FROM THE HEIGHTS OF SADNESS Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández Travelers of heaven Humble beings now sleeping In the celestial empire Tender hearts The terrifying innocence of agony The scarlet rain of distress Without smile Our sorrowful life Your apparition sores from the crypt Spread like a bough of tenderness Across the firmament In your absence you leave us Crowned with inconsolable sadness.

The Fires That Burn Within John B. Lee rafters that heard the plague prayers of dying priest of Paris lie blackening the floors

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

of the cathedral like the forest ghosts of a great fire what seeds there were once upon the earth old acorns tipping their caps into the wind and dream shadows giving the gift of chiaroscuro to the wet green brush the handsome-handed memories of cool filigrees of captured light that gild the leaf all flowering in flame and grief‟s inferno of a fatal red the roaring heat that lifts the vicar‟s voice beyond the falling spire fell as well into the watered stone the vaulting aspiration of a mason‟s age the heart that beats within the cross

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

seems but a worm within the worried wood the golden pyx is leavened with a single tear the cup is mulled with blood that burns the grape and there see how the blue comes bannering through with tattering flags of sky where heaven skims above the ruin as though pressing vaporous thumbs upon the fractured rim like a thirsty child looking into an open well for want of a water face and the tumbling in of a single silver wish

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Lunch Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias Wishing that gulls… John Hamley Nature… holds stories woven and infinite. Sarah Richardson

Seagull scans the ocean menu bird´s eye view first then low-flying reconnaissance wings spread beak ready lining the rippled diamond far from where humans swim splash scare fish away.

It targets a plat du jour plummets beak clamps something resurfaces – contortionist fish lunch.

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Farmer Daybreak

by Alina González Serrano

My farmer parents live near the river they get up very early to sip coffee day after day.

My mother sweeps the yard, dogs bark, hens bicker because someone opens the gate day after day.

It‟s Tino today, he is in with our daily bread for breakfast.

My father finishes the coffee, goes out to yoke the oxen says “Out to the field, let‟s till the land” day after day.

Farmer daybreak at my parents´ day after day.

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

PROFECÍA A LA VILLA BLANCA Eugenio Ernesto González Aguilera

Tu pasado se pierde en la noche de los tiempos aunque la voz del pueblo pueda mantener las viejas tradiciones.

Tu universo se creó del mar, surgió de los barcos y los pescadores hechizados por tus encantos.

Después de tu éxito tu gloria cayó en el olvido y un olvido así es imperdonable.

De nada te van a servir tus ruegos cuando conozcas quien te absuelve y te condena.

Sé que es difícil complacer a todos los que claman, pero te tengo presente en mis oraciones porque aún me cautivas con el esplendor de tu belleza.

MAY 2019 ENVOY-086 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

PROPHECY OF THE WHITE VILLAGE Eugenio Ernesto González Aguilera Your past is lost in the mist of time although the voice of people can keep up the old traditions.

Your universe was created from the sea, rose from the ships and the fishermen who were captivated by your charms.

After your success your glory faded into oblivion totally unforgivable.

Your pleadings are worthless when you know who acquits and condemns you.

I know it‟s hard to please everyone, but I remember you in my prayers because I‟m still charmed by your radiant beauty.

FROM THE EDITOR: IN OUR UPCOMING ISSUES, WE WOULD LIKE SUBMISSIONS FROM EVERY CCLA MEMBER SO WE ARE NURTURED BY YOU! IF YOU HAVE BOOKS COMING OUT, A POETRY EVENT, PHOTOGRAPHY OR JUST NEWS ABOUT YOU, LET US KNOW!!!!!