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YOUR CART

10/28/2019

Poetry: cassidy Mcfadzean

THE END OF THE WORLD WAS ANTI-CLIMATIC
 
Bees waxed apocalyptic

Change came in drones

Cryptocurrency mining hurled the earth’s temp

over its two degrees stronghold

The permafrost thawed     Iced Capps capsized
 
Ancient seeds sprouted primordial strains of disease

We were plagued by ennui

Gave thanks our daily laundry
 
to the teens practicing necromancy
 
We battened the escape hatch
 
Lowered false flags to half mast

Missed the last lifeboats
 
Setting sail off lost coasts

Cassidy McFadzean's new book is Drolleries (M&S 2019).

10/22/2019

art: jessica joy Hiemstra

ARTWORK BY JESSICA JOY HIEMSTRA
​POEMS BY KATHRYN MOCKLER
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DESCRIPTION
Part of a series of cathartic reactions to Kathryn Mockler's #thisisntaconversation poems: searing, pithy, moving and funny snippets of writing that put a finger on our collective nerve around climate crisis. Kathryn and I decided that we wanted to donate 100% of the proceeds from these prints to Shades of Hope Wildlife Refuge, a registered charity based in Georgina, Ontario. Licensed by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Canadian Wildlife Services, SOH serves the GTA and areas throughout the South Central Ontario corridor. Their mandate: to nurture and rehabilitate injured and orphaned native wildlife with the goal of releasing healthy animals back into their natural habitats.

Prints are available for purchase from this series, and 100% of the proceeds go to Shades of Hope Wildlife Refuge.
Jessica Joy Hiemstra likes what Paul Klee once said about art – that one eye sees, the other feels. Jessica works in a variety of mediums on many kinds of surfaces - from watercolour and thread on paper to acrylic on acetate to plastic bags sewn into canvas. Jessica’s also a poet and designer. One of the things people often ask Jessica is “what’s the difference between all the things you do?” Jessica doesn’t distinguish much between her mediums. She just chooses the best medium for exploring whichever question, concern or exaltation is most pressing to her in the moment - from delight in the body to sorrow and anger at how poorly we care for our world and each other. Sometimes she uses words, sometimes pencil, sometimes paint.  A selection of Jessica’s work is available as limited, signed prints in Jessica’s online shop.
​

​Kathryn Mockler is the author of four books of poetry and six short films. She is the Editor of  Watch Your Head, Canada Editor of Joyland Magazine, Publisher of The Rusty Toque from 2011-2017, and she teaches creative writing at Western University. She has a poetry chapbook written in collaboration with Gary Barwin forthcoming from Knife | Fork | Book (2020) and her debut collection of stories forthcoming from Book*hug (2121). She is working on a TV series pilot called Yardbird.
 

10/18/2019

Poetry: Nisa Malli

PRAYER FOR HOMESICKNESS
 
We brought tetrapacks 
of scents so our children 
 
would know the smell 
of summer rain 
 
on earth, video to show them 
what life looked like before 
 
and after the heat boiled
the rivers and soil was never
 
truly damp. In gravity 
just loose enough to trip us, 
 
our children lost their parents’ 
hooked-necked gait, their fixed 
 
hip-flexors, their fixation 
on shielding themselves 
 
from the sun. They grew
leggy and light-kneed in this light
 
world, grew out of their 
hand-me-down flight-suits. In their new 
 
home, where there is no 
way back, we wanted them 
 
to know what it means to come
from and to a place.
 

 
WE SPREAD OUR MILITARY MISSION
 
in a thin serum of science, sent
our soldiers into the desert
 
with dictionaries, our exobiologists
armoured in exoskeletons. In movies,
 
first contact is almost always
a surprise: the alien
 
among us, unveiled by inhuman
behaviour; the ship shimmering
 
into rush hour. Ours had the formality 
of a late-collapse climate 
 
summit: everyone avowing commitment
to shared cause and collective 
 
consternation, the real debate 
ducked into side rooms and under-
 
mined by ceremony. All the safety
protocol of first dates or hiking
 
in bear country: begin
in daylight, in public, pull rank
 
on the audience of predators pulling 
their tongues out in hunger.
Nisa Malli is a writer and researcher, born in Winnipeg and currently living in Toronto. She holds a BFA in Writing from the University of Victoria and has completed residencies at the Banff Centre and Artscape Gibraltar Point. Her first chapbook, Remitting, was published by Baseline Press in 2019. ​
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