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Managing Editor: James Dunnigan Fiction Editors: Fionn Adamian, Lilika Kukiela Poetry Editors: g.d. currie, M.W. Jaeggle Promotions Editors: Nina Chabel, Leah Smith Visual Editor: Rafael Finn Design: [tin_factory] Scrivener Creative Review Issue 43 April 2018 Scrivener Creative Review is an annual creative publication based out of Montréal, Canada. For general inquiries, please visit us at http://scrivenercreativereview.com, or contact us by email at scrivener.creative.review@gmail.com Scrivener Creative Review McGill University 853 Sherbrooke St. West Arts Building Montréal, Quebec Canada, H3A 2T6 Printed by Solutions Rubiks Inc., Montréal
Scrivener Creative Review gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided by the Fine Arts Council, the Dean of Arts Development Fund, the Department of English Students’ Association, the Students’ Society of McGill University, and the Arts Undergraduate Society.
Contents Introduction
Fiction
Poetry
3
A letter from the Managing Editor
4
Emily Szpiro: Pygmalia
6 8 9 13 15 17 18 22 23 24 29 30 32
Visual Art
10 12 14 16 19 28 31 35 39
Contributors
36
Alainah Aamir: Coming of Age A. Nash: Containers Jeffrey Alfier: Two Poems Rodger LeGrand: In Line Waiting for Salvation Dylyn Reid-Davies: January Alice Liu: Dopamine Disfunction Patrick O’Reilly: Three Poems David Romanda: This is a Moose Milt Montague: Maya P. James Outhwaite: Ego Adaro with two translations Danijela Stojković: juice Molly Ellen Pearson: chord Landa wo: Moluka Nina Chabel: Water Under The Bridge Aiden Nettavong: The Invisible Eye Chloe Dolgin: Habit and Close Your Eyes kerry rawlinson: A Bird in the Hand Navneet Kaur: Orange Dreams feat. Dawn Avery Leah Smith: Oranges Christopher Woods: Solitudinal Nina Chabel: VIP Seats Emmett McCleary: nightcap Biographical notes Scrivener Creative Review Issue 43 no.
of 400
Copyrights are retained by the artists upon publication. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the copyright holder’s express permission.
Dear Reader, Founded in 1980, Scrivener is McGill’s oldest student-run literary journal in English. Showcasing student work alongside that of established literary figures and contributors from across the globe, it has for the past three decades played a significant role in developing our university’s long standing literary and artistic communities. In keeping with this mandate, the present issue of Scrivener, its 43rd, features poetry, short fiction, and artwork by some of McGill’s most talented writers and artists. We have also had the privilege of publishing work that comes to us from beyond Canada’s borders, from contributors based in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. While Scrivener’s main concern, traditionally, has been its outreach, on campus or internationally, our editorial staff this year has rather turned its collective gaze toward internal matters. Inspired by the designs for literary journals and publishing houses we admire, we have, over the past few months, completely transformed Scrivener’s logo, cover, format and overall aesthetic. Stark, slender-wrought and slimmer than most of its predecessors, this issue will of course appear to be a great departure from the work of previous years. Our objective in this respect was to give Scrivener a new, simple, recognizable face: a design geared toward wide circulation, and which could easily be reproduced and varied upon in future issues. Our editors and contributors, in sum, have woven into this book their utmost dedication and love for art, for this journal, for its community, and for each other. We hope that our work this year will have set a standard for the future of our magazine, so that, at 38 years of age and in its 43rd edition, it may carry on well past its fifties in each. We sincerely hope that you will enjoy the contents of this year’s issue, and that you will continue to follow us—or join us—in the work that lies ahead. Yours,
James Dunnigan -Managing Editor-
Introduction 3
Emily Szpiro
Pygmalia
Miriam hates feeling dipped in a hard candy shell. Yes, she thinks, and there are too many teeth in my mouth and my smile pokes my skin. She can blame her father for driving four other men and a dog into a tree, so she does. Probably, likely, if he hadn’t split that tree in half, she would be cotton candy soft. Her mother is taller than the rest and proud. So Miriam watches her walk past the other widows in the grocery aisles. She thinks that her mother is one option, but the other is in the classroom where little girls ask if your daddy killed mine. Miriam thinks that if she were taller she would nod and hang her gaze elsewhere. Instead her mouth is full and she says sorry sorry sorry.
When her mother says - your father is dead, Miriam says - is the dog dead too, and her mother says - we’ll get a new one.
Miriam grows too big for her skin and feels her face get hard, her cheeks overspent and her sharp little teeth calcified. No one talks to her or her mother. Her mother’s gaze never lowers while Miriam looks only at spaces between walls thinking would I fit there? But her elbows are whittled into white daggers. Everything about her is a pearl without lustre, a nacreous shell flattened into sheet metal. Miriam can only stiffen and push her ribs into her lungs.
She might say - please do not make me carry this. She might say - we have a new dog now. Her mother says - do not grovel, Miriam, we are not the progeny of mendicants.
Miriam walks down the street and sees the road unfurl like a never-ending tongue. She feels the air leave her lungs. She makes a metaphor. What is this? She sees the hands of plants stick pitifully through the railings and thinks: yes, that is one option but the other is something pushing past a grave. She knows she can choose which to see in this illusion, and yet she cannot see both at once. Her mother dies but Miriam hears her. Her dead mother’s halo moves in waves and particles, sometimes crashing against Miriam’s mind, sometimes touching her ear. Every night she peels the hardened skin off the soles of her feet. In the morning she finds another layer. The candy veneer has coated her body again. The dog dies too. Miriam gets another one and moves away.
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Miriam looks for women in stone and hopes to hold an unmade uncarved thing but finds instead only women who are long and tall and have green eyes that say did you kill my daddy? Miriam splits open trees hoping to find nymphs but finds only the carcasses of four dead men and a dog hidden in the trunk, curled like embryos. That night she writes please do not find me to be the heir of my father – you can take a scalpel and cut all of me apart so long as you do not search for him within me. Her mother said – Pygmalion found perfection in marble but you can find it just as easily in a fruit bowl. Miriam twists leaves off trees. She is made and makes, like her mother before, and her mother before that, and Miriam thinks it is no small thing to unmake. To unmake lineage. To end cycles. To stop buying dogs. She finds a hangnail and peels a layer of her skin off. The new layer underneath turns bright pink. It’s not quite cotton candy soft, but Miriam whispers patience patience. Soon she will kiss herself alive.
Szpiro 5
Alainah Aamir
Coming of Age
1. I decide we are passerby trains It makes it easier to compensate For the wickedness of time For the childless grandfather Or the woman with curly hair.
We are two ends of Parallels – no, Drifted so far out, we no longer see each other Just traces, p e r f o r a t i o n s
I tread on them, each blank space a sleepless night We laughed once at the prospect of hell And sucked in our breaths
2. Quietly, the way you turn away from me As we draw the line
a colourless spectrum intersecting lines
as the floor gave way
between moving and staying.
We decide we enjoy the midpoint to commitment A swallowing supernova where time halts Where we are children with clean, empty hands.
We build a halfway home Unequipped to feel Currents race through our infertility.
I exit the home you modeled with each beautiful movement – A landmark short of permanent A step forward for you and Two back for me.
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3. Your shadows breathe galaxies into existence around me as I journey through my solitary orbit.
I stay.
Meanwhile, you sleep on A perfect colossus, bastard Child of oblivion and indifference I never learn who you take after.
Aamir 7
A. Nash Containers
Once, while holding a jar filled with ocean air, her mother taught her about containers, singing
The unrelenting wideness of the world determines our selves outside the box though, there is room to move freely when we find ourselves inside the right
This reminds her of dripping grandmother’s silver chain slowly into open palm, letting the coldness blossom like nightshade.
As a girl, the moon would splash against her bedroom walls— later she’d watch her daughter reach to grasp that same light.
She inhales the silhouettes and city lights that swallow darkness and imagines that the stars are somewhere close by, doing the same.
The ballerina spins her listless dance to a long forgotten song as she pulls the tarnished chain from beneath her painted slippers.
Tomorrow she’ll hand the necklace to a white stranger in a black suit then choose a lacquered wooden bed for her sleeping daughter.
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Jeffrey Alfier
Morning Arrangement for Kazimierz
How easily my dismal budget rendered a cheap room near the river that shoulders the city. I wake to one lamp, dim as a smuggler’s tunnel.
Dust drowns the floorboards. A narrow vase is a fist around desiccate flowers. The stairwell has a slept-in smell, the grippy reek of booze.
My burner’s flame hisses water to life. On the radio, Stravinsky is coated with static and voices in the hallway sound like distant surf.
Beyond the window, the new day is backed by the low sun, a scatter of Gothic arches, footfalls, and starlings.
I watch the hunched gait of an aged woman hurrying to a tram. She is off to her stall at the Old Market, to sell hand-knit scarves.
I see her there each day. What light there is rolls in negligent grace over the ambling shoppers, and over her back, bent to the years like benediction.
Alfier 9
Fragment: Summer Walk in Pristina
The night falls open to far-off music, to the ancient streetlights’ anemic amber, and the pungent breath of summer heat.
A widow I’ve known for decades brushes crumbs from the kitchen table handmade by her husband.
She once drank lavishly with friends in the parlor room that stays unlit now. Her Skoda sits outside with stolen wheels.
A soldier debarks from Kosovo station. I knew he was her son, fog drawn over him like the sea, his uniform dark as dusk.
I’d of called out, but his head was down, and he shed the street through a tavern door, to men clinking bottles with laughter.
In a second-story window of Hotel Lyon, a woman sees me watching her unstrap her bra. Her fists slam the heavy curtains shut.
Two welders repair an iron balcony. In the blue glare of acetylene heat, sparks fly past me like flares at sea.
Votive candles kindle a cathedral window. The moon leers behind alder trees. Nightbirds I’ve never seen cling to dark branches.
Alfier 11
Rodger LeGrand
In Line Waiting for Salvation
Chest to back for eternity. An endless line on an endless subway platform waiting for Godot or to go next? Shuffle-foot forward every millennium or so. Lines. Our straight line across a curved world, into a vacuum state of energy spiked through the largest atom, the universe, or the smallest atom? Lines. A line of geese clunking across the morning. Curved red line where her favorite dress meets her thigh. Vein line beneath wax paper skin. 29 Powder blue horizons falling down the page. A line of thought, line of sight. One line breaks off, blends into white space and dangles for a breath. Then another? Is that the answer? Continue putting everything in line? One line, then the next. Highway lines painted over and painted again. Soup kitchen lines, ladled up and marching into battle. A line of thread dangling from a shirt sleeve. The line from Freeport, IL to Jupiter’s eternal tornado. A line of poetry, a line of cold mud shaken off a boot. Silence between two people after a lifetime together, the way a fault line opens and fills with rain.
LeGrand 13
Dylyn Reid-Davies January
None of you —curious flesh swells around the spike of the hammock as in the tradition of the shredded grey willow— could change anything.
To the apple tree, the fruit is merely a means. And the deer and the badger and the crow could all perish and the tree wouldn’t be the wiser for more than a hundred years.
And the moon turned over, lolling its tongue out along with you in the unchanging yard, and the shredded grey fruit trees sleep for no time that quite matters
in the dark glitter of snow an escape route makes itself known —sprint the month, sprint the next month too repeat for the rest; sleep standing— a row of flakey brown bulbs begins to quietly die and no one will ever be the wiser.
Reid-Davies 15
Alice Liu
Dopamine Dysfunction
“Three languages, two internships, and a chem-weap antidote That’s a hell of a resume. Thou shall go far,” you wrote I smile and look down on my five-figure student debt Your optimism strikes me like junk mail addressed to the dead1
Chicken Soup of the Soul, inspirational TED, that dude at Gerts Think you live in a pity-worthy nightmare. They are saints-by-hearts Too bad they ain’t got a pea-sized octopus pigeon brain: The light at the end of the tunnel is the light of an oncoming train2
Waterproof jackets, leaky by nature Aldo sprayed boots, melt on top of the heater Put them on and relish heaven’s water of regret When you walk through a storm, you get wet3
Balloons floating against the ceiling Gossip can’t get more exciting Down that drink, kiss that guy, spray that house, ignite Overhead a rainbow appears, in black and white4
Spent an afternoon on a picnic meadow Thought sunshine could disperse that shadow How dare you, your smile ever merrier We all stink once we reach the interior5
Climbed up the rocky steps west of Chester A tug at my lips, this couldn’t get any higher No euphoria from coke, heroin, or pickle dills The cloud base is low on the Clwydian Hills6
notes 1. From “Depressed Beyond Tablets” by Half Man Half Biscuit 2. From “The Light At The End Of The Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train)” by Half Man Half Biscuit 3. From “Turned Up, Clocked On, Laid Off ” by Half Man Half Biscuit 4. From “National Shite Day” by Half Man Half Biscuit 5. From “Took Problem Chimp To The Ideal Home Show” by Half Man Half Biscuit 6. From “Depressed Beyond Tablets” by Half Man Half Biscuit
Liu 17
Patrick O’Reilly Rames
This word comes from a place where everything falls apart, everything rots to the skeleton after a long abandonment. This word comes from a place where everything breaks. The bow reaching up from the black sand was hand-fashioned by the old man hunched in the kitchen corner, rubbing himself on the stovepipe, which ’s smoke gets all tangled with fog, which is everywhere.
With needle-nimble fingers, he twists himself a cigarette. The paper’s crackle is the same white crackle as the wood burning in the stove. The dry lichens work well, they catch fire and hold it like little novas, like a heart reading a horror novella
where a near-old man nudges the prow of his boat through Mistaken Strait. The sky is dark, dark, blue. Mist lazes across the deck, and as the hull grinds against a ridge of ice, his torch stumbles over the ribcage, the rames of an old shipmate. The ribs beckoning from the snow. Cold wind strumming harp on the ribs. The racket of breaking, of cracking, of halving the neighbours’ battens over his knee, and piling them on the fire.
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Headache
Heaven might as well be a migraine, all fluoride light and brass. This morning the blasting caps in my eyeteeth decided to go off. Now that ache has smoothed to a steady footfall of soldiers plodding home under my brow.
All afternoon I lay motionless as an Ulsterman, the sensation that some moment soon my brain might give-birth to-death; I watched the bomb-blossoms on back of my eyelids celebrate that victory.
And I was dry, so dry I swore legionnaires were scaling their way across my tongue, the day trailing after them like a soiled flag stuck to the heel, the shadows of cacti strung out into rickety diagonals where the sun was blazing in a sharp gate shrill as brass angels playing my Last Post, their broad black wings twisting and bludgeoning.
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Trinket
I need a lift to the clinic, I say, I’ve shot myself in the foot, again. You step on it.
O’Reilly 21
David Romanda This is a Moose Please refrain from throwing cans of Coke at the moose.
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Milt Montague Maya
Warmed by a gently smiling sun Our national sport plays out Crowds cheer the teams On to certain victory
Crowding home plate The fiercely growling batter Pounds her bat into the ground Shouting imprecations at the mound
To intimidate the nervous pitcher As she winds up‌.. and Hurls the next pitch Forcefully at‌..
My little baby My delicate princess Now suddenly a tigress wielding an all powerful bat
Montague 23
P. James Outhwaite
Ego Adaro
Wiþoutenfurþ disesperaunce,1 Ywonden bit me peramour.2 Souredow3 pierce like Long launce Þru fleisch, rebis, to me cor, Pyned me cald sawle wiþ dow raughe. Her oste a pyx aspectuall,4 Ladee ymete in montreal.
O! swych routh of me distresse, Got casten doune, dedle flair. Got woot þe goodly gentilesse, Allase ystonden, stutten, stare, Þe ladee wiþ blacke pik5 herre. Ȝyes briȝt grene, etheryal, Me gostley quene of montreal.
Her bodey swyche gosteley mete,6 Þe herte, ywoot ne need to flei7 Gentilite & kynde grete, A beaute me sowl for to beye,8 O, nolite me tangere!9 Fasten fro gostley and flesch al, Parfyt ladee of montreal.
Choslyng gren for lestinde feste, Spiritus los10 þe oste blede Blod mixt watre arise þe ȝeste. Siuen gren siven frome þe mede, Fynde her noȝt in þe sam lede, Maken gostely lof pinakel, Her gren fairest of montreal.
Y car noȝt yf sche careþ noȝht. Ywis, et ne þe gostley leve. Y, þe bran11 þe world hav forgoht, Sche, dignyte þe erþe weve. Þe daye doth faste, and so þe eve, Midniȝht come as byttrest gall, Ladee ymete in montreal.
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notes 1. A term that contrasts with the spiritual. 2. A common trope in medieval literature is the question of whether one should accept the Eucharist with an ‘unpleasant disposition.’ 3. ‘Leavened bread’, also known as ‘pasta amara,’ was used as a medicine to purge illness. Sour dough was also a term used to criticise those who consecrated the Eucharistic host ‘unworthily’. 4. This term is most frequently associated with astrological texts. 5. ‘Pik’ has a dual meaning, signifying both pitch and also a type of plough. 6. Medieval slang for the Eucharist. 7. A term used in surgical manuals to indicate incision. 8. Common parlance for leading a soul to Heaven. 9. John 20:17. 10. ‘Los’ explicitly relates to the pain of being away from Christ and the Holy Spirit. 11. ‘Bran’ is a term that has a number of meanings that can be somewhat detached from one another. For farming, bran either refers to seeds that will not grow, or withered grain. In medical texts, the term is used as something of a catch all to indicate dried flakes of human bodily matter.
Outhwaite 25
I, Plowman
trans. g.d. currie
O, my mind! So dispirited, where No offense to Love dares rise. Instead, sour loaves of longing spear Through flesh, ribs, my heart, as I Knead my matter in cold ritual, and sigh. May she be host to my unleavened soul, Lady I met in Montréal. Oh such despair! Yet my distress God casts down: mere mortal care. Only He knows lasting gentleness, I am made to stand, stutter, stare At the lady with furrow-black hair. Eyes bright green, blossoms ethereal, My ghostly queen of Montréal.
Were her body raised for all to see, That wonder of surgeons, a heart to show Gentility, kindness, most natural beauty— A beauty that leads my soul to know I may yet ascend— touch me not! Oh, I fast from lesser fare, plain and spiritual, Lady exalted o’er Montréal.
Destined for everlasting feast, chosen grain Becomes Eucharist, as body from spirit goes; Yeast quickens in blood or water. Take pains, Follow what is sieved from the meadow, You won’t find her in the fields below. She the wafer praised above all, Her grain fairest in Montréal.
Careless I shall be, should she care not. Then, As now, sacrament kept from soul diseased. I, dry husk the world has forgotten, She, such dignity as Earth may weave. I fast as day goes, and so the eve, Midnight comes as bitter gall, Lady I met in Montréal.
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Against the Grain
trans. James Dunnigan
All that it is to me, I take no bite of love, the bread of it a lance in me from rib to heart—cold dough to swallow. All her aspect hosts the world to me, she whom I met in Montreal God parts the bread of me in her, he who knows grace, who pulls my breath from me. I stand and stutter, stare at her she with the green-glass eyes and road-dark hair, she rules me, she from Montreal. What ghostly meat, the heart that carries her, that split would barely feed the priest. For grace would drag me from the earth—You will not touch me—I will fast from all, lady of Montreal. Ordained for the eternal feast, broke from its stalk the soul sheds water, blood and flour. From the meadow-winnowed grain you could not winnow her who rises in the highest, fairest grain of Montreal. I don’t care if she doesn’t care I eat no wholesome bread, chaff in the mill of things whom everything forgets. She from the woven earth weaves in the husk of me. She is from Montreal.
Outhwaite 27
Danijela Stojković
juice
nectar is time sticking to mouth roofs held up by columns soon to show the marigold blush of corinthian adolescence
nectar is time slamming against the tail end of a liquid’s desire to spill freely but time is curious about viscosity that supine gushing leisure
nectar is time with a shadow, with smell confession emitted and consumed with equal indelicacy is a blush launched into materiality, tripping on itself without a fold or a crease – another word for this is palimpsest.
nectar is time indexed by need no container, fleshy or translucent, is hollow.
Stojković 29
Molly Ellen Pearson chord
(after Yves Klein)
algae blue
a moorhen nursing its undisclosed blue in the river
poisoned god throat
sure of itself bedded down in its own blueness
tampon blue used blood winnowing down its long scarlet spool
pubic blue
blue that disturbs me
fingernails sprouting
beginning endless forms
that blue exactly
hyacinths forcing their way from the body leaks ambergris
blue space blue halo of earth seen from space diminishing song
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Landa wo
Moluka 1
Moluka yayambo2 At the hour when the baobab goes to sleep In the celestial waves a muloki3 mourns his nose His sorrow drifts onto the palm nuts An anxious mother her heart oozing blood in a ballet Sings a toneless lullaby At the crossroads of a dreamed existence The hope of this mother is an atheist balafon Harmonious sounds and rancours thrown Between the living and the dead protectors of the clan A son and a father died boar hunting The village honours nature.
Moluka yamibale4 The mamba sloughs while praying, the mongoose looks on The mamba as probable dessert. It drools with desire On a dried bark mattress of hunger. It climbs into The mystical douka,5 litter of the Spirit of the woods The mongoose plunges into the green wave
Moluka yamisato6 Not this loincloth which on my loins hides a puny body Still less the work of this stonecutter of Mbigou No-one can illuminate my vein of speech Which slips under the bark of the mango tree or under my bruised skin.
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Moluka yaminei7 The father, the widower, merchants planted on the hill Reference points for the donkey which drags its flesh From one village to another carrying the father, the widower The grass runs in smooth acrobatics The pilgrim cricket becomes a farmer It sings beside the stream It drums in the fields Its hope, its strategy, its dreams, sweet flavours The grasshopper dances the Congolese rumba The dance step of the dying is known It is the dance step of the child of light Warrior of the clan, last survivor of the initiation Next patriarch at the end of the ancients
Moluka yamitano8 Among the roots a caterpillar coos In total obscurity the butterfly stretches softly It takes up the ballet of birth being constructed In the white smoke it embraces pirouetting existence
Moluka yamotoba9 Now the blue flame gives birth to yellow sparks No tam tam dances on the river Niari It watches the eponymous ancestor gnaw its tobacco A hurricane crosses the square of the earth village MalĂŠfice The girls hesitate to sweep the royal court When a storm roars with pleasure
wo 33
Moluka yasambo10 The sudden tempest dies down on the bruised earth The Spirit of the woods wakes the plain The genie of the trees marries the withered sludge Done in the way of an infirm gospel
Moluka yamwambe11 The fathers excluded from the banquet of the ancients Weave an altar in wood They will wait for an Ashanti crown
notes 1. Voyage in a pirogue (lingala) 2. First river 3. Malign being who causes death 4. Second river 5. Rare and precious essence of the equatorial forest 6. Third river 7. Fourth river 8. Fifth river 9. Sixth river 10. Seventh river 11. Eighth river
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Contributors Alainah Aamir is a second year student studying English Literature and Political Science. She is from Lahore, Pakistan. Jeffrey Alfier’s recent books include Fugue for a Desert Mountain, Anthem for Pacific Avenue and The Red Stag at Carrbridge: Scotland Poems. His publication credits include Copper Nickel, Meridian, Poetry Ireland Review, and The McNeese Review. He is founder and co-editor of Blue Horse Press and San Pedro River Review. Nina Chabel is an art history student based in Montreal who enjoys photography. Chloe Dolgin is a Cultural Studies & Philosophy student who works in 35mm film. She is inspired by her medium’s deeply tactile nature and its ability to infuse history and life into fleeting, meaningful instances. She loves the thought that it is light which allows her photographs to materialize, and is consequently fascinated by the light and its relationship with the world around her. A Physics and Math Joint Honors student at McGill, Navneet Kaur seeks to portray elements of misery, affection, defeat, assault and ecstasy in art and writing. In her work she presents women as warriors. Born in Amritsar, India, Navneet believes that breathing life into art has the power to heal and inspire. Inspired by her mother and a friend’s style of reading poetry, she hopes to use art to empower, educate, question and heal. Among many other things in life, she enjoys watching sunsets and raising almost unanswerable questions about Physics.
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Rodger LeGrand studied writing at Sarah Lawrence College and the State University of New York at Oswego. He has taught writing at the University of the Arts, Temple University, North Carolina State University, and at the University of Pennsylvania. Currently he is a lecturer in Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has five collections of poetry in print—Seeds (2017), Millions of Ravenous Creatures (2016), Hope and Compulsion (2009), Waking Up On a Sinking Boat (2008), and Various Ways of Thinking About the Universe (2005). You can reach him at www.rodgerlegrand.com. Alice Liu never really thinks she’s good at poetry - or writing in general. She just writes and creates and edits and see what comes out of it. If she ever becomes a famous author, she’ll start avoiding streets at all costs and disappear into the remote hills of England. Emmett McCleary is originally from Boston and studies history and sociology. He traded his stereo for an SLR and has enjoyed capturing quiet moments ever since. I am a new yorker, served in world war 2, college, marriage, business, retirement, back to college, where I was turned on to the world of poetry. 140 of my poems have been accepted by 40 magazines in the last 5 years. I am Milt Montague. A. Nash is a graduate student at McGill University. The winds atop the Stawamus Chief and waves of the Howe Sound call her home.
Aiden Nettavong – Visual Artist Throughout my life I’ve always been fascinated by the way that an artist is able to translate his or her view of the world into art. The process of creating art then to me takes on the purpose of being more than simply being aesthetically pleasing, it becomes a means to connect on a deeper level with the world around me. Through photography and the editing and manipulation of these photos I try to paint the world of my imagination onto the outside world. Through this my art becomes an extension of myself. Patrick O’Reilly is a poet and critic from Renews, NL. His writings have appeared in a variety of journals and magazines, including The Walrus, Maisonneuve, and Qwerty, as well as in In/Words Press’ 30 under 30 anthology. P. James Outhwaite Molly Ellen Pearson is a poet from St. Albans, Hertfordshire. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, where she was the 2016 recipient of the Ink, Sweat & Tears Scholarship. Her recent work has been published by The Laurel Review, Lighthouse Literary Journal and Ink, Sweat & Tears.
Decades ago, autodidact & bloody-minded optimist kerry rawlinson gravitated from sunny Zambian skies to solid Canadian soil, nurturing family and a career in Architectural Design. Fast-forward: she now follows Literature & Art’s Muses around the Okanagan, barefoot, her patient husband ensuring she’s fed. She’s won contests e.g. Geist; Postcards, Poems & Prose, Fusion Art;) and is forthcoming/ features lately in: Moonchild; greyborders, Proverse Press, Reflex Fiction, Boned, Riddled With Arrows, New Flash Fiction Review, Pedestal Magazine, Arc Poetry, pioneertown, Minola Review; Anti-Heroin Chic, HCE Review, Ad Hoc Fiction; Qwerty; amongst others. kerryrawlinson. tumblr.com; @kerryrawli Dylyn Reid-Davies is an art student trapped in a politics student’s body. While they are currently working towards a BA at Queen’s University, on the side they are the co-founder of Alien Pub Magazine and work on varying committees for social justice and human rights advocacy. They can be contacted at dylynreiddavies@ gmail.com for further inquiries. David Romanda was born in Kelowna, British Columbia. He currently lives in Kawasaki City, Japan. His work has appeared in Grain Magazine and PRISM international.
Contributors 37
Leah Smith is almost a 4th-year student at McGill University in Montreal and would remain a perpetual student for her entire life it was possible. She makes art on the side in mostly collage and acrylic. Born in Toronto, but spent her formative years in Los Angeles, she has had her art shown, been published, and is now currently involved in various arts and literary journals at McGill. Danijela Stojković is on the brink of two things; completing an honours b.a. in english at mcgill, and an epiphany regarding seedless fruit. her poetry can be found with The Veg, Graphite Publications, and other corners in her home town, montreal. Emily Szpiro is (almost) finished her BA in English at McGill University. She is originally from Montreal but grew up in Upstate New York, and her previously published works have appeared primarily in The Veg and Radix. When she began her degree, her vision was -2.75, but it is now -5.00, which is a pretty stunningly horrific rate of decay. She hopes to continue reading, writing, and ignoring her optometrist’s warnings that she stop straining her eyes.
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Landa wo is an author from Angola, Cabinda and France. His individual poems and short stories have appeared or are forth coming in numerous magazines, journals and anthologies worldwide, including Afroeuropa: Journal of Afroeuropean Studies, Cultura - Jornal Angolano de Artes e Letras, Blackmail Press, Boyne Berries, Cyphers, Fiction International, Nashville Review, Raleigh Review, Poetry New Zealand, The Alarmist, Weyfarers, Longtemps je me suis…, Landing Places: Immigrants poets in Ireland. Landa wo has won a number of awards including 1st prize in Metro Eireann writing competition 2007, Eist poetry competition 2006 and Feile Filiochta international poetry competition 2005. Landa wo lives in Strasbourg, France. Christopher Woods is a writer, teacher and photographer who lives in Chappell Hill, Texas. He has published a novel, THE DREAM PATCH, a prose collection, UNDER A RIVERBED SKY, and a book of stage monologues for actors, HEART SPEAK. His work has appeared in THE SOUTHERN REVIEW, NEW ENGLAND REVIEW, NEW ORLEANS REVIEW, COLUMBIA and GLIMMER TRAIN, among others. His photographs can be seen in his gallery -http://christopherwoods.zenfolio. com/
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contributors Alainah Aamir Jeffrey Alfier Roger LeGrand Alice Liu Milt Montague A. Nash Patrick O’Reilly P. James Outhwaite Molly Ellen Pearson Dylyn Reid-Davies David Romanda Danijela Stojković Emily Szpiro Landa wo
...and others