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1/10/2021 POETRY: GILLIAN JEROMEFAREWELL, MY SEA — poem for the Salish Sea The morning the quake hit the city I swore I’d ride full gallop into that sea never look back. I listened to Jay-Z, shoved tiny nectarines into my satchel, and fled West past the Prime Minister who stood at the corner of 4th and Trutch disguised as a Dutch milkmaid with rosy cheeks. Kits beach was furious. But I found my pony di Esperia standing in my dory and so put myself upon her and we rowed – At Howe Sound a gang of dinghies shepherded by muscular oilers slicked up around us. In their faces the coast was a Shrinky Dink. Dogs and cats galore were chucked and dunked into the floatsam. The masked activists who had lain their bodies down beneath bulldozers at Burnaby Mountain flung themselves straight as arrows off the Sea-to-Sky cliffs. Pony and I, in those first days, small in our boat, shared our raisins and stale Triscuits with pirates from Fort McMurray who stabbed each other up for their last rails. All of the city’s private property was now public, but useless, floating as it was, in shit. None of it, not the iPhones or Jaguars, the Hunter boots or toy giraffes imported from France, now bobbing maniacally in the water, mattered. We shared stories and whatever raisins were left. Alanis Obomsawin, sitting around our campfire beside Pauline Johnson, asked what colour the sky was. St. Kateri Tekakwitha, Ike and Tina, Joan of Arc, Marco Polo, Snuffaluffagus— they all came galumphing back. Buffy St. Marie. Neil Young. Louis Riel. We all sat around roasting raisins – all of us intermittently marooned on an unidentifiable Arctic island at Great Bear Lake. The sky? We hadn’t looked at it. Babies cried. Laura Secord handed out milkshakes. Georgia O’Keefe stood as still as a petroglyph, entranced by the horizon. We’d come too seldom to the ocean. We were too busy with the 21st century. But eternal return isn’t infinite. Not everyone comes back, nothing lasts. My pony refused to do the dirty work and her brackish eyes were glassy. On her way to the slaughterhouse, years ago, standing in a dark box car, despondent, she felt the sudden hospitality of a man’s arms around her neck. Turns out those arms were Nietzsche’s, crash-test dummy, beloved by thousands of boy students of philosophy the world over, lover of blood and birds and horses. When, after more Arctic transit, we moved from ice cap to ice cap and watched off the coast of Greenland the final outburst of the tide flower up and die, we stopped so that Pony could peer into the oily face of the sea. *This poem was published at New Poetry (ed. George Murray) in 2018. Previously published at New Poetry (ed. George Murray) in 2018. Gillian Jerome is the author of a book of poems, Red Nest, which was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and won the ReLit Award. She co-edited an oral history project, Hope in Shadows: Stories and Photographs from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, which won the 2008 City of Vancouver Book Award. Her poems have recently appeared in GEIST, Hunger Mountain and New Poetry. She teaches literatures and writing at the University of British Columbia where she has taught full-time since 2004. She serves a teacher-mentor in the Poetry in Voice program and teaches sexual health to teenagers. Born in Ottawa and raised in Orléans, Ontario, she lives in Vancouver with her daughters, Rory and Micah Sophia, and their silver-eyed unicorn Geneviève Hugo.
8/8/2020 FILM: MILLEFIORE CLARKES
SOLASTALGIA
View on Vimeo (Closed Captioning Available) Short, Lyrical, Dramatic Film Millefiore Clarkes - Director / Emma Fugate - Producer 13 mins 2019 www.solastalgia.ca Solastalgia (/ˌsɒləˈstældʒə/) is a neologism that describes a form of mental or existential distress caused by environmental change. When the panic over global crises threatens to engulf her, Ava embarks on a vision-quest to put things in perspective. SOLASTALGIA from Millefiore Clarkes on Vimeo.
SOLASTALGIA is a lyrical film that explores the anguish that climate change and a global state of uncertainty can impart upon the human psyche.
Ava, (played by Rebecca Parent) a mother of two young children, is bombarded throughout her day with news of global disasters. Over the airwaves, on the internet, overheard at a grocery store - cataclysmic stories of the effects of climate change steadily erode Ava’s inner peace. She acutely feels the burden of guilt for her entire species. She worries about her children's futures. Her mental health is unwinding as she searches for solace and a new perspective. This film is a dreamscape set to the formidable poetic verse of Tanya Davis (former poet-laureate of Halifax). It is a poetic gesture to the vast timeline of the earth and humanity's small but significant place within the web. SOLASTALGIA is a traditional drama that utilizes non-traditional, stock and archival sources for some of its imagery. It blends a straight-forward narrative with a surrealistic journey underpinned with a musical score by Philip Glass, Russell Louder and others. Funded through FilmPEI Film4Ward program.
Millefiore Clarkes is an award-winning filmmaker from Canada’s smallest province, Prince Edward Island. Through her company One Thousand Flowers Productions she produces a variety of media work: short and feature documentaries, music videos, drama, experimental shorts, and video installations. She recently received the DOC Institute’s Vanguard Award for her work as a documentarian. Her most recent work is a short lyrical, dramatic film SOLASTALGIA that explores the theme of climate grief. It won Best Canadian Short at the Silverwave Film Festival.
She has directed three documentaries for The National Film Board of Canada: THE SONG AND THE SORROW, BLUE RODEO - ON THE ROAD, and ISLAND GREEN. THE SONG AND THE SORROW won Best Short Atlantic Documentary at FIN - Atlantic International Film Fest, Best Documentary at Silverwave Film Festival, Best Atlantic Doc at Lunenburg Doc Fest, Best Mid Length Documentary at The Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, and was a Top Ten Audience Choice at Available Light Film Festival. Her films have screened at festivals across Canada and the US and have been broadcast on CBC and Bravo! Her experimental short December in Toronto is featured on Vimeo’s Staff Picks, and her music videos have won a number of awards. She is passionate about making films that connect us to one another and to nature. |
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