11/20/2021 POETRY: DAVE MONTURETHE LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Good intentions aside, Nations’ names mispronounced plough depth patronization Indigenous and foreign students invited into their halls of subtle intellectual and academic racism
These are the rules of engagement: Marking rubrics for the administrative convenience of tenured procurers feeding student wood fibre into their Colonizing breakdown mill Minds sawn, baked and kiln dried to be sorted into standardized dimensions graded, degreed and certified suited up in priestly robes to satisfy today’s commodities market.
(To the memory of the Kamloops 215 little ones) THE MUSH HOLE RUBRIC Having been administered a psychological caning and made to feel among “The Other,” in our own homeland. Citations not quite in order Not fitting into the paint by number linear boxes Regurgitating the same old same old This is how you will surely lose marks boy… Such are the metrics of compliance and obedience "Mush Hole Rubric" previously published in Mad Canada Dave Monture, Bear Clan Mohawk, is a retired part-time student who grew up on the Six Nations Reserve. He is a fourth year student in Honours Creative Writing, his second degree at Western. He has participated in readings with Writers-in-residence Margaret Christakos and Alicia Elliot. He has opened for a guest reading of Poetry London. He has contributed to recordings of the Indigenous Writers’ Circle for Radio Western. In 2019 he was a recipient of the Dr. Valio Markkanen Undergraduate Student Award of Excellence and a Head and Heart Fellowship. Most recently, he has contributed to Mad in Canada, Science, Psychiatry and Social Justice. He is a member of the Indigenous Writers’ Circle, an independent Indigenous creative voice, at Western. He is working on a novel, poetry and flash fiction. He recently returned to painting. 11/19/2021 POETRY: YVONNE ADALIANA CITY STREET I swim thru the tunnel of stately maples on old Barclay Street where smart cars fart beneath protective leaves. A luminous green sky that forms a canopy over the grey green river of a shape shifting street. Even here their instinct is to protect. To give and give and give. Born in England Yvonne has spent the majority of her life being an actor coast to coast in Canada. She now lives in Vancouver B.C . A passionate activist since her days on the front lines of protest against logging in the Carmanah Valley on Vancouver Island in the eighties, one of the first of such successes , she believes that climate change is the most urgent issue on the planet and mourns the loss of every tree .
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