“How angry am I? You don’t want to know.” This is Nora Eldridge, a middle-aged third grade teacher, artist and eponymous Woman Upstairs. “It’s important, when you’re the Woman Upstairs, never to think of yourself–but never, do you understand–as alone or forlorn or, God help us, wanting.” Nora is content with her life, is happy […]
Michael Lake
Posted inArts + Music
First Spring Grass Fire
“Mom, what’s a fag?” asks a five-year-old Rae. The answer from their evangelical Christian mother involves, expectedly, images of sin and hell and then the clincher—“and God made AIDS to punish gay people.” First Spring Grass Fire, Rae Spoon’s debut work of fiction, depicts many such instances of a child’s pain and confusion while growing […]
Posted inArts + Music
Cottonopolis
Halifax poet Rachel Lebowitz’s new book, Cottonopolis, opens on a very gloomy Manchester. “Not today’s city, but ‘Cottonopolis,’ that city of smoke and grit and back-to-backs, that burst into being in the 19th century: the city of Mary Barton, the city of child labour, the city’s geraniums on the windowsills of the poor.” Here we […]
Posted inArts + Music
Poetry off the page
HRM’s new poet laureate, El Jones, wants to inspire young poets and engage people to speak for themselves. by Michael Lake “We don’t live in a culture right now that values poetry,” says El Jones. “But poetry has changed.” A press conference at City Hall on June 27 announced Jones as HRM’s new poet laureate. […]
