The first time you hear Rebecca Thomas perform her spoken word poetry, something will happen to you. Your mind will calm as the tide of her voice takes over, the conviction of her words buoying you up until she reaches the ultimate, perfectly crafted finale and her perspective crashes down, challenging you in one hand […]
Literary
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Clarke’s spirit
[image-] Canada’s poet laureate George Elliott Clarke comes home this week to deliver the Cyril Byrne Lecture at Saint Mary’s University. He’ll revisit his creative origins in Nova Scotia, retracing his steps in light of his first book, Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues, published in 1983. The lecture will also include a performance by jazz […]
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The queer history of tarot card readings
To some, tarot card readings are hokey carnival scams or sleepover activities, but for many LGBTQ individuals unwelcome in traditional religious doctrines, tarot readings were and are an inviting way to express their spirituality. Montreal author and professional tarot reader Oliver Pickle wrote She Is Sitting In The Night: Re-Visioning Thea’s Tarot about revamping a […]
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Hurt, hope, healing and the NS Home for Colored Children
“It’s a difficult read,” says Wanda Taylor, the author of The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, a comprehensive history of the structure that stood in rural Dartmouth for over 70 years. The Home was the site of extreme abuse and neglect for hundreds of African-Nova Scotian children in the protective care of the Nova […]
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Raise a glass for Alistair
“All of us are better when we’re loved” is the last line—and resounding sentiment—of legendary Nova Scotian author Alistair MacLeod’s much-loved novel, No Great Mischief. On Thursday evening, literature buffs across the country will raise a glass to MacLeod in an expression of that love. #RaiseAGlassForAlistair is the latest campaign by Project Bookmark, an organization […]
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Clyde A. Wray is paying attention
“Most folks don’t want to feel. I try to write about how I feel,” says accomplished poet, playwright and director Clyde A. Wray, who will read from works old and new at Prismatic. Based in Fredericton, Wray turns fleeting moments into permanent forms by staying open to the world: “All I have to do is […]
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Leah-Simone Bowen takes you into The Hallway
Playwright Leah-Simone Bowen knows better than to plan a quick exit from a reading of her play The Hallway. “People want to talk to me about it,” she explains on the phone from her home in Toronto. “I usually get people saying things like ‘that’s not what [I] expected to happen.’” That’s exactly what she […]
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Review: The Brief Reincarnation of a Girl
In 2006 a four-year old Massachusetts girl died of a drug overdose after being prescribed medication to treat her ADHD and bipolar disorder. A highly public trial followed, in which the girl’s parents were convicted of her murder and sentenced to life in prison. Sue Goyette’s fifth book of poetry takes this story and runs […]
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Half-heard, Chapter 33
It wasn’t until Trevor started crawling on the ground blindly, having an intense hand-covering-mouth crying fit and moaning “Ow, why would you do that” in step with his arrhythmic palpitations and sobs that the crowd became incrementally less and less interested in the scene and leisurely began wandering back into the hazy, strobing house. After […]
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Half-heard, Chapter 32
Audible through the fluorescent strobing party light-hued fog machine murk were huddled shapes chinwagging over the psyche of David Lynch’s oeuvre while passing around Trevor’s vaporizer, joints and a pizza box. Their diarrheic jabbering over the parallels between Manson (Marilyn)’s Mechanical Animals and Lost Highway was arrhythmically punctuated by constant misuse of “bemused” over “amused,” […]
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Half-heard, Chapter 33
Outside under the sickly pale August moon that barely hung over the opening of the canopy of sidewalk trees, soundtracked by the far-away threnody of a disorganized quartet’s unintentionally sad rendition of Hoople/Bowie’s “All The Young Dudes,” were now 80 irrevocably intoxicated party-persons gathered around a full-fledged street-brawl between two guys that held David and […]
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Half-heard, Chapter 31
At his house, he sat in his room and wondered: What else is there to know about the roommates? He’d been listening in on them for months by this point. Wouldn’t learning more about them just make them less reducible to media-constructed paradigms of twentysomething-ites? Wouldn’t all the incongruities, fluff and trivialities that fill in […]
