Return to My Native Land (with apologies to Aime Cesaire)

I have been travelling and experiencing the world through the eyes of my childhood and the “now”. The city I return to is not the city of my childhood and teens, nor the city of my twenties and thirties, where the excitement of women’s liberation, the furious exchange of ideas, politics, and philosophies at the…

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Chile: Forbidden to Forget…

I was first introduced to the world of Chileans in exile, in the late 1970s, as adults and children fleeing political repression, torture, kidnapping, political rape and murder, arrived in Canada. In fact, Chile had not been know for mass migration until the political banishment of left and progressive sectors under the Generals. Chile’s self-image, shaped…

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A fall gallery

A series of drawings celebrating autumn in all her glory!

Pachacutec

This is a seven part poem I have been working on since my work, studies, and travels have taken me to South America and Cuba. I have long been fascinated and moved by the strength of peoples who manage to hold on to their cosmologies in the face of terrible odds such as kidnapping, enslavement,…

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We Lived Happily during the War

One tries to hang on to hope, in spite of the onslaught. Poetry, art, music, dance, theatre, and even sometimes film, can offer us someting in that direction, give us a glimpse of that blue star. This year has been filled with changes in our political landscapes, fear and trauma among many who have been…

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Journey

nothing but the need for friendship reduced, quest now stripped of myth how difficult not to remember the colour of eyes how we ran to and from such passions there was a time i thought i must not know you but outside the rain howled your name could not forget, would not, how could i?…

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2 O’Clock

a yellow butterfly flew past brushing bougainvillias with dreams of rain now the grass is solemn does not dance a shadow grows longer upon the limewashed wall somwhere near by, children ae singing to capture even half this beauty in the palm of the heart from A New Remembrance, 1993, Copyright Kaushalya Bannerji

Indigenous Uprising on Columbus Day

I am a strong supporter of the movement throughout the U.S. and Latin America and the Caribbean to stop celebrating Columbus Day.  Critics of the pro-Colombus status quo signal to the cruelty and harshness of Spanish empire-building and by extension, European and British colonization efforts in the Americas. Genocide of indigenous persons,  the wholesale buying…

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A Walk in the Park

We went to the park the other day. Storing up the sunshine of these beautiful days while we can, like squirrels with their nuts. The ups and downs of the meadows and trees, the glint of the sun on the tiny river and all around, little inhabitants of our world, scurrying to save stores for…

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Denial is Not a Policy! Climate Strike 2019

Today I marched in the climate strike with millions of people around the world. I marched because I breathe, eat, need water, have increasing love and appreciation for the natural world, and hold the lives of the world’s citizens in the highest regard. I have been appalled and sickened by the astronomical levels of pollution…

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Patiently Brown: Misadventures in the medical system # 1

I am always being told what to do. Like many people with poorly understood disabilities and conditions, I have heard every possible advice that people’s grandmothers,  parents, aunts, doctors, naturopaths, second cousins, and their neighbours might possibly have to offer.  Headache. Oh, just do this, and it will go away. My aunt/doctor/grandmother used to have…

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Autumn

Today’s piece is sharing some poems which have been part of our English poetry canon for centuries and decades. Some I had to study in school, and thus happily rediscovered in adulthood. My mother suggested me a beautiful poem by John Keats, Ode to Autumn. I share it below. A beautiful cadence of the English…

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Snowscape

SNOWSCAPE The landscape is still-born Birth  of winter brings blood to the snow someone is not walking but standing awkward space the corner of December Breaths are frozen leaving the pale orifices of mouths  as though they were not inanimate  Moving  away fleeing the refuge of bodies And someone wanting the comfort  of another thinks…

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They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds

Ever since I saw the phrase, “They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds”, I have been so moved.  I am a part of so many communities that have survived burial, in the manner of the phoenix.  We are resilient and resourceful like seeds that are nourished by hope instead of fear,…

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The Harvest Moon

Last night, I glimpsed the harvest moon, red and full. This is the time of the year when the days grow shorter, the wheat and vegetables, apples, and stone fruit are harvested. Soon the nights of pumpkins and souls will be upon us. Autumn also brings the delight of jumping on crinkly fallen leaves, and…

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