Devour: Art & Lit Canada, issue 017 – Summer 2023

www.WetInkBooks.com

ISBN – 978-1-989786-97-0

ISSN – 2561-1321

Issue 017

Devour Art & Lit Canada

Find some of Canada’s finest authors, photographers and artists featured in every issue.

Mike Gaudaur

Front Cover Image

The mission of Devour: Art and Lit Canada

is to promote Canadian culture by bringing world-wide readers some of the best Canadian literature, art and photography.

Devour: Art and Lit Canada

ISSN – 2561-1321 – digital

ISBN – 978-1-989786-97-0 – paper back Issue 017

Summer 2023

5 Greystone Walk Drive Unit 408

Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M1K 5J5

DevourArtAndLitCanada@gmail.com

Poetry Editor – Bruce Kauffman

Review Editor – Shane Joseph

Indigenous Curator – debora ᑌᐠᕑᐊ puricelli ᐳᕑᐃᐨᐁᓫᓫᐃ

Photography Curator – Mike Gaudaur

Front and Back Cover – Mike Gaudaur

Editor-in-Chief – Richard M. Grove

Layout and Design – Richard M. Grove

Welcome to this 17th issue of Devour: Art & Lit Canada. As usual we are bringing you some of Canada’s most talented writers, poets and photographers.

We hope you will tell your international readers about this all Canadian Magazine.

We are looking for a prose editor to provide one or two short stories or excerpts, or micro prose or novel exerpts with a short intro for the Summer and Winter issues.

We welcome Mike Gaudaur as our Photography Curator and debora ᑌᐠᕑᐊ puricelli ᐳᕑᐃᐨᐁᓫᓫᐃ as our Indigenous Curator.

See you between the pages. Richard M. Grove otherwise know to friends as Tai

Issue 017

Devour: Art & Lit Canada 5

Mike Gaudaur

Devour Art& Lit Canada

Content

Features:

– Feature Artist – Doug Jacob – p. 8 – 12

– Canada in Review – Editor – Shane Joseph – p. 13 – 23

– Canada Coast to Coast to Coast –Photography Curator – Mike Gaudaur – p. 4, 6, 24 – 29

– Feature Photographer – Rick Walau – p. 30 – 33

– Poetry Canada with Photographs – p. 34 - 57

– In Memory of Peter Dalglish – p. 58

– Poem and a Preamble by John B. Lee – p. 60

– Melanie Horner Ceramics – p. 62

– ᐃᐦᑭ / IHKE / MAKE –Indigenous Curator – debora ᑌᐠᕑᐊ puricelli ᐳᕑᐃᐨᐁᓫᓫᐃ – p. 64

– A Review of Devour – Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias – p. 68

Self Portraits

Feature Artist, Doug Jacob

Here is a rather condensed version of my 'art life'....

In 1981, a year after high schooI, I opted to take a one day per week life drawing class at OCA. This was a great experience for me.

I furthered my studies in my 20's by enrolling in an art program for gifted students at the high school. It was here when during my semester in life drawing that I showed a knack for portraiture. Since then, I have remained focused upon portraits in acrylics, chalk pastels, conte, graphite and pen and ink among other media.

I've had many opportunities to partake in art shows including a one man show on Queen St. W. at 'The Show Gallery', a two man show at 'The Press Club', group exhibition at City Hall lobby, a place now gone called, 'The Yellow Door'.

I have also taken to the streets of Toronto where I've painted charcoal portraits to good response.

Because I also have a strong pull toward music (I identify as a singer) I often neglect one discipline while pursuing the other - back and forth.

If you are interested in a portrait his fees range between $50.00 –$250.00 depending on the medium used and the size among other factors. He will work with photos though would ideally prefer a live sitting.

Contact him at – dougieintrouble@gmail.com

You can find Doug at – https://www.facebook.com/dkjacobs1

And at Instagram at – @artbydougie

Two Portraits by Doug Jacob

Two Portraits by Doug Jacob

Two Portraits by Doug Jacob

Canada in Review

Review Editor

Shane Joseph

Book Review Editor’s Note

Welcome to our summer reads. The summer harvest of reviews is usually not as abundant as the winter’s is, given that our reviewers are busy at cottages, lying on beaches, or hitting golf balls (as I am tempted to do, instead of sitting in my garret typing this note), and the fall avalanche of new book releases is still to come. And yet, we do have some notable selections in this issue.

Canada’s greatest living poet, John B. Lee, tries to uncover the life of mystery man Joseph Willcocks, the treasonous Canadian who defected over to the Americans during the War of 1812, in his history of Joe King, while Tom Taylor gives us a fictionalized version of that same war in Brock’s Spirit. More Canadiana comes in the form of a fictional re-creation of the legacy of our reviled Residential School system by indigenous author Michelle Good in her gut-wrenching but redemptive novel, Five Little Indians.

Moving out to the international field, Britt Wray’s sobering non-fiction book about climate change, Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis is a visceral journey through this looming global phenomenon, a wake-up call to the deniers, and a message of hope to those in distress. Finally, rounding off on a lighter note, is Jennifer Robson’s romance novel, Coronation Year, set at the time of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953; with the only other crowning since then being King Charles’s, this book will provide a good contrast between the two royal events and a glimpse into how society has changed during the intervening years.

I hope you enjoy these reads.

Happy Summer Reading!

Shane Joseph, Book Reviews Editor

Title: Brock’s Spirit

Author: Tom Taylor

Publisher: Hancock and Dean

ISBN: 9780986896149

Number of Pages: 351

Published Year: 2023

Reviewed by Gail M. Murray

We first meet our young hero, Lieutenant Jonathan Westlake, carrying Laura Secord’s wounded husband down from Queenston Heights. “He (Westlake) had a gash in one leg that had been tied off. The bloodstains on his buckskin shirt revealed he’d been in the thick of the fighting. Perhaps eighteen or nineteen, he was average height with blond hair, sturdy…with striking blue eyes.” (p19)

Taylor believes as a writer of Historical Fiction, that we look for the gaps. A young man had helped Secord so why not create a fictional hero who embodies Brock’s spirit of bold action and the relentless pursuit of justice in this actionadventure tale.

Taylor’s meticulous research and historical accuracy, bringing Canada’s past to life, is a given from gripping battle scenes to food, clothing and attitude, creating a sense of time and place.

Lieutenant FitzGibbon, Peter and Alexander Fraser, Chief Norton, Dr. Chapin and Reverend John Strachan are taken from the historical records. Feisty young Lucy, Westlake’s love interest, and Sergeant George Puffer, the brutish turncoat and Westlake’s nemesis, are fictional creations that add heart and drama to the larger conflict of the war. Vivid descriptions enthrall as Westlake and the British forces slip quietly into the church and slit the throats of the sleeping Blue Coats. Visceral descriptions of wounds, rope burns, and Laura’s bloodied feet, escalate the realism. At times, I cringed.

Intimate love scenes with auburn haired Lucy, not only demonstrate Westlake’s tender side but serve as counterpoint to thunderous artillery fire, bloodshed, and unrelenting killing.  I especially like how Taylor develops the gentlemanly and

honourable relationship between Westlake and Llewelyn, the young American officer who captures him.

Although fifth in the series, the novel stands alone. Westlake’s training with the great Shawnee Chief Tecumseh is alluded to as well as his appointment as Canada’s first secret agent by the revered military hero, Sir Isaac Brock.

Laura resurfaces at the close of the novel. Overhearing American officers billeted in her home planning an ambush, she escapes behind enemy lines walking in slippers twenty miles through forest and swamp to save FitzGibbon and his soldiers from massacre.

Taylor lives in Whitby near The Lynde House Museum; a locale mentioned in this novel and has launched some of his books there.

All the novels feature Jonathan Westlake who became Canada’s first secret agent in the first novel -  Brock’s Agent. Westlake reminds me of Hawkeye the American woodsman/scout from James Fenimore Cooper’s  Last of the Mohicans.

The War of 1812, Canada’s war of independence from the United States, began June 18, 1812 with Queenston Heights, its decisive battle, and continued until February 18, 1815. This novel takes us behind the scenes to fighting at Beaver Dams and Stoney Creek (on the Niagara Peninsula) and culminates with the Governor General‘s orders to Major Nelles and Westlake to ride to Montreal. “Remember that big push from the Americans I warned you about? You’ll finally get to see Montreal.” The adventure continues…

Tom Taylor is a Canadian writer who graduated from York University, majoring in history. He once served in the militia with the Toronto 7th Artillery. He resides in the Greater Toronto Area. Brock’s Spirit is his fifth published novel.

Like Keats, Gail M. Murray seeks to capture the essence of the moment. Her writing is a response to her natural and emotional environment. Discover Gail’s poems in Written Tenfold, Blank Spaces, Wordscape, Arborealis, and The Banister. Find her creative non-fiction in The Globe and Mail, Devour: Art & Lit Canada, Trellis, Heartbeats, Renaissance, NOW Magazine, Blank Spaces, and Our Canada.

Title: Coronation Year

Author: Jennifer Robson

Publisher: William Morrow

ISBN: 9780063074149

Number of Pages: 400

Published Year: 2023

Reviewed by Gail M.

Murray

On April 23, 2023 Harper Collins launched three authors’ latest fiction at an elegant High Tea at The King Edward Hotel, Toronto’s first luxury hotel circa 1903. In the cream-coloured Sovereign Room, amid glittering chandeliers and crisp white tablecloths, Canadian author Bryn Turnbull first introduced then proceeded to interview Pam Jenoff, Janie Chang and Jennifer Robson as two hundred fortunate readers’ sipped Lavender Earl Grey tea while nibbling savory finger sandwiches and scones with Devonshire cream and lemon curd.

As Robson was introduced, the audience roared applause. Ever gracious she smiled and replied, “Home town girl”. Her latest novel, Coronation Year, available April 4, 2023, is already a best seller. She’s scheduled to be interviewed by Steve Paikin for his celebrated news show, The Agenda.

Robson began writing Coronation Year in 2020, when Charles impending coronation wasn’t even a blip on the radar. A wonderful stand-alone piece, Robson extends themes touched on in previous novels such as everyday life during the Blitz in Goodnight from London as well as promoting women as artists and journalists and life in post war London as seamstresses create the queen’s wedding dress in The Gown

It is 1953 as England strives for economic recovery amid the optimism of the impending coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Robson reintroduces magazine publisher, Walter Kaczmarek, Kaz, as well as intrepid reporter Ruby Sutton. Through her fully flushed out fictional characters, she engages the reader. Hotelier Edie who has been struggling to keep her hotel, The Blue Lion, afloat welcomes the coronation as an opportunity to charge premium rates for rooms on the parade route, Northumberland Avenue. Robson cleverly reminds us of the impending coronation intertwining the event with the lives of her main characters living at the hotel Edie, Jamie and Stella, as we become involved in their personal struggles.

We are with Stella, a young Italian Jewish photographer, from the moment she photographs the queen being crowned from inside her perch high in the abbey. Jamie Geddes a young artist and bi-racial man, born in Edinburgh of a Scottish father and East Indian mother and who served as a munitions specialist diffusing bombs during WWII, still suffers nightmares while dealing with constant racism and bigotry. A sweet romance develops between Jamie and Edie. He sees her silly side along with her loneliness.

We are privy to the pressures of running a small business as Edie copes with not only financial issues but the day-to-day problems of boilers, rationing, and quirky boarders. Two elderly aristocratic ladies offer comic relief or annoy you. Robson balances serious topics with humor and touching private moments.

Robson mentioned the healing power of art. Jamie is an artist, commissioned to paint the golden coach pass by. His preparations demonstrate not only his talent but his strength of character. In a secondary romance between Stella and Wen, they connect in The National Gallery over their Jewish experience as they appreciate Rembrandt.

Robson injects an element of mystery and intrigue. Someone is sabotaging Edie’s efforts, sending hate warnings to the newspapers and cancelling reservations. There’s even a red herring or two.

What sheer delight as Robson imagines Her Majesty‘s visit to The Blue Lion, portraying the dignity, warmth and grace of the young queen after an edge of your seat bomb threat.

Robson transports us to another time with ordinary people living in extraordinary times in this sensitive, captivating and highly absorbing story. Highly recommended.

Jennifer Robson first learned about the Great War from her father, acclaimed historian Stuart Robson, and later served as an official guide at the Canadian National War Memorial at Vimy Ridge, France. A former copy editor, she holds a doctorate in British economic and social history from the University of Oxford. She lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and young children.

Like Keats, Gail M. Murray seeks to capture the essence of the moment. Her writing is a response to her natural and emotional environment. Discover Gail’s poems in Written Tenfold, Blank Spaces, Wordscape, Arborealis, and The Banister. Find her creative non-fiction in The Globe and Mail, Devour: Art & Lit Canada, Trellis, Heartbeats, Renaissance, NOW Magazine, Blank Spaces, and Our Canada.

Title: Five Little Indians

Author: Michelle Good

Publisher: Harper Collins

ISBN: 9781443459198

Number of Pages: 304

Published Year: 2020

Reviewed by Shane Joseph

An unvarnished account of Canada’s shameful colonial past and its treatment of the Indigenous that, had it been known at the time, would not have qualified “our home on Native Land” for the frequent title of “the best country in the world to live in” by poll after poll, and lured millions of new immigrants, me included, to her shores in the last half a century.

Who are the Five Little Indians? Damaged children, plucked from their parents at the age of six and held in a residential school called The Mission in rural British Columbia in the 1960s, and who either escape or are kicked out on their 16th birthday to make their way in the unfamiliar world outside. They are:

Kenny: He is always running, either trying to escape the school—at which he succeeds after many recaptures and beatings—or running away from family and loved ones when he is on the outside, for as much as he loves them, he is unable to love himself.

Lucy: The girl who loves Kenny, no matter what or how frequent his peregrinations. She is kicked out of the Mission at 16 with a bus pass and twenty-five dollars, and the name of another student in Vancouver as her only toehold into the outside world. Despite this rude re-entry, she graduates from nursing school to build a normal life for herself and daughter Kendra, Kenny’s offspring, hatched during one of his fleeting visits.

Howie: Originally from Saskatchewan but kidnapped by police while celebrating his sixth birthday at an aunt’s home in B.C. Howie gives as much as he gets, and once older, beats the abusive “Brother” for his pedophiliac acts, landing in jail as a reward. A life of crime is his legacy, until Clara, the caseworker comes into his life.

Clara: The steady but militant one who skirts danger by joining the armed struggles of the Traditionals (those who agitate for Indigenous rights) against the

Sellouts (those Indigenous who sellout to the Settler). She helps fellow students released from the Mission, operating on the principal of “Keep Indians out of Jail.”

Maisie: So sexually abused by “Father” at the Mission that she has to have a lookalike older man perform similar degrading acts on her when she is on the outside. Her dual life of hotel cleaner by day and sex slave by night consumes her in guilt, leading to the only relief available – drugs, lots of it.

There is no grand plot here, just the recounting of how these damaged souls recover their lives over the next 25 years on the outside, plagued by recurring nightmares of life on the inside. Some make it and others don’t. The recounting is naturalistic, amounting to many quotidian events like working, child-raring, housekeeping, even partying. They have developed weaknesses that threaten to derail them: Kenny’s restlessness, Lucy’s naivety, Howie’s hair-trigger, Clara’s avoidance, Maisie’s self-loathing.

While the five Indians’ stories are rich in poignancy, the writing is far from rich. I fault the editors who could have done a better job of elevating the text. Echoing pronouns, casual sentences, and scenes out of place in time, pepper the narrative, impeding flow. If this book won so many awards, I assume it was more for the explosive and politically significant nature of its content rather than for the elegance of its presentation.

By accepting traditional Indigenous healing offered by the mystic woman, Mariah, as the way out, Clara is able to come through the cycle of hurt. We hope many others caught up in this horrible legacy will follow her example, and that we can put this shameful chapter of Canadian history behind us.

Michelle Good is a writer of Cree ancestry and a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. She obtained her law degree after three decades of working with indigenous communities and organizations. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at UBC, while still practising law, and won the HarperCollins/UBC Prize in 2018. Her work has been published in magazines and anthologies across Canada.

Shane Joseph is a Canadian novelist, blogger, reviewer, short story writer, and publisher. He is the author of seven novels and three collections of short stories. His latest novel, Empire in the Sand, was released in the Fall of 2022. For details visit his website at www.shanejoseph.com

Title: Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis

Author: Britt Wray, PhD

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Canada

ISBN: 9780735280724 (hardcover)

Number of Pages: 287

Published Year: 2022

Reviewed by Anna Nieminen

Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis by Britt Wray is, deservedly, a much reviewed and acclaimed book. In the spirit of the many anecdotes that bring Wray’s research to life, this review takes a personal approach to discussing the help and “robust hope” that can be found in its pages for those of us who are feeling climate distress.

Generation Dread is an unsettling, fascinating and compelling read that invites us to engage with our emotions to gain insights into the “psychological underpinnings and outcomes of the planetary health crisis, as well as its various dimensions of injustice.” It has introduced me to research and stories about the power of denial, including defences like numbing and disavowal, which is helping me to moderate my sometimes, frantic sense of urgency with something more like patient persistence. As a creative climate communicator and activist, I have felt energized and deflated, compassionate and infuriated, hopeful and fearful. It is reassuring to understand that this “toggling” is part of developing “existential resilience.”

I have learned how psychosocial factors intersect with system-level “bubbles,” extractive mindsets and ways of living promoted by neoliberal policies that obscure the harms caused by unsustainable consumption. I feel heartened that eco-anxiety “works like an antidote to the culture of uncare” when it is attended to, contained, and processed with community support. I feel resourced by climate cafes, workshops, webinars and podcasts hosted by some of the authors and practitioners Wray references. The Gen Dread newsletter on Substack has been an enriching community space for coping and inspiration.

Generation Dread, interestingly, uses the metaphor of the potential power of billions of people understanding their “eco-distress as super-fuel” for shaping a

Issue 017 Devour: Art & Lit Canada 20

future beyond our dependency on fossil fuels and entanglement in systems of oppression including colonialism and racism. Already on a journey of reckoning with my privileges as a white settler on Indigenous lands, I was primed for learning about “what communities that have long lived under existential threat know about surviving dark times.” I deeply appreciate Wray’s cautionary reminder about de-colonization and reconciliation as a Canadian myself: “Partnership evokes allyship and should be approached thoughtfully and with care if it is not to be just another form of extraction.”

Generation Dread begins with Wray’s gripping story of reckoning with her ecoemotions as she and her husband faced a dilemma: would they bring a child into the climate crisis? Book and baby gestated and were birthed in tandem. Wray, whose first book Rise of the Necrofauna (Greystone Books, 2017) dealt with de-extinction, refocused her research on the rise of eco-anxiety including distress about the sixth mass extinction. I have been reinventing myself as a climate-aware facilitator since the deadly BC heat dome of summer 2021. When I worry that some of my project work is a bit weird, I remind myself that it is because of weird weather (to put it simply) that we need all kinds of efforts for engaging everyone.

Wray has this advice for those who don’t identify with climate distress: “As you read the following chapters, see if there is anything stirring beneath the veneer of calm. If it makes a sound, get down low and bring your ear to its mouth. We need you to hear what it is saying.” Generation Dread is a vitally relevant and empowering book that takes you on a visceral journey with “some mixture of stomach and heart” to guide your way to finding your place in the life-protecting work that is “all of ours to do” in our warming world.

Britt Wray is a writer and broadcaster researching the emotional and psychological impacts of the planetary health crisis. Born and raised in Toronto, she is the Lead of the Special Initiative of the Chair in Climate Change and Mental Health, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences of Stanford Medicine.

Anna Nieminen is a climate-aware facilitator and creator of the Embodied Climate Justice Fitness (ECJF) project where she offers activations, features poetry, and blogs about climate change and climate action. She has been engaged with facilitator trainings from the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA) and is a member of CPANorth America.

Title: Joe King

Author: John B. Lee

Publisher: Hidden Brook Press

ISBN: 9781738914500

Number of Pages: 106

Published Year: 2023

Reviewed by Shane Joseph

I wondered why John B. Lee, eminent poet of Canada, chose to write a non-fictional account of the traitor and less-than-desirable personality, Joseph Willcocks. I found the reason at the end of this rather short book, where in an essay on Peacock Point and its eponymous villains who were intrinsically linked to the War of 1812, and where Lee has a cottage, the author mentions that his desire to find out the history of the land he lived on had led to uncovering the facts behind the myths and to the writing of this book.

Joseph Willcocks is an old Tory from Ireland, driven to Canada by family debts. Handsome, athletic, and a ladies’ man, he soon makes the right moves, thanks to cousins who are already established in Upper Canada. And yet, full access is denied without connections, in this colony run under the new shopkeepers’ aristocracy comprised of a largely Scottish cabal. Letters he requests from home to prove his loyalty to the Crown, never arrive, and Willcocks is forced to live on his wits. He also appears to have a loose tongue, is impressionable in his political convictions, and is given to fighting with peers. He soon loses his job with Peter Russell, Chief Administrator, over an impropriety with Russel’s half-sister. On the rebound, he solicits the Chief Justice to obtain a sheriff’s job. He opens a newspaper, but comes under the influence of the Whigs and their pro-democracy bent, an ideology frowned upon by the new Governor Gore who is intent on cleaning out these insurrectionary elements.

What drives Willcocks over to the American side comes through a series of events as Canada and the United States lurch towards war. At first, he bravely acquits himself for the British by enlisting the indigenous tribes of Grand River, and by supporting General Brock at the Battle of Queenston Heights. But being repeatedly ignored by

the elites who run Upper Canada, the shutting down of his newspaper, being fired from his sheriff’s job and thrown in jail despite getting elected to the legislature, and witnessing the suspension of civil rights in a colony trying to maintain control of a populace torn between place of birth and ideology of conviction, finally breaks his loyalty. In April 1813, Willcocks is trading on the reputation of a zealous British patriot, yet in May of that year he is fearing arrest; what happened in-between is not clear. Given the character that the author paints however—based on records assembled from a myriad of historical sources, including Wilcocks’s diary and papers—I think our man, seeing the war go badly for his side by 1813, and, given his proclivity to seek personal advantage without the benefit of connections among the Upper Canada aristocracy, jumped ship.

Willcocks becomes a thorn in the British side, thereafter. His crew of Canadian Volunteers fighting for the Americans, torches the town of Newark (Niagara), and takes command of Fort Erie. His end comes fast and ingloriously, and could have warranted more detail. What is more detailed is the account of the drawing, hanging, and quartering of the eight British defectors at Burlington Heights (Hamilton), an event reported from many angles in this book, and at which trial Willcocks is also convicted in absentia.

Lee paints a picture of Willcocks with an assemblage of historical material, supplemented with his own poetry and essays. And yet, dry history falls short, for it tells you what happened, but not how it felt. And the convoluted politics of the time, which is different from what exists today, is a gap for the non-academic reader. Who was Willcocks really, what drove him? These details, alas, are still lost to us, despite Lee’s valiant effort to resurrect this part of Canadian history in digestible form.

John B. Lee is a recipient of over eighty international awards for his writing. He has more than seventy books published to date and is the editor of twenty anthologies. His work has appeared in excess of 500 international publications. Called “the greatest living poet in English” John lives in a lake house overlooking Long Point in Port Dover, Ontario.

Shane Joseph is a Canadian novelist, blogger, reviewer, short story writer, and publisher. He is the author of seven novels and three collections of short stories. His latest novel, Empire in the Sand, was released in the Fall of 2022. For details visit his website at www.shanejoseph.com

Canada Coast to Coast to Coast

Photography Curator

Mike Gaudaur

It is my pleasure to introduce Mike Gaudaur as our new Photography Curator. He comes to us with a vast knowledge and experience. He has over fifteen years of experience as a photography instructor and an Adobe Photoshop Certified Expert. He teaches workshops in photographic technique and image editing strategies.

In Canada Mike photographs in the Bay of Quinte area, in and around his Trenton studio and Bloomfield where he moors his sailboat. South-Eastern Ontario is where he grew up and now is shooting weddings and creating custom portraits, specializing in families, high school seniors, and pets. Don’t let that small town Canadian description narrow your idea of who this worldly man is. He is a world traveller with a recent trip to Havana, Cuba shooting intimate street scenes of people and places. Mike is also an avid safari photographer, having lived in Kenya for 15 years.

Here is a bit about what Mike says about his burgeoning interest in photography, “In ninth grade I discovered that my high school had a darkroom. That very day, as I watched an image appear in the developing tray I was hooked. For Christmas that year all I wanted was a camera. The second hand Minolta SLR I received was the perfect tool for me to start learning the craft of photography. Within months I was selling sports action shots to my classmates. By eleventh grade I was a regular contributor to our local newspaper, and the photo editor of the school yearbook. Before graduating I was already being asked to photograph weddings and shoot portraits. Upon graduation I set out to spend a year exploring Europe and the Middle East with my camera.”

Before submerging himself into photography as a career he trained as a teacher. Throughout college and his first ten years of teaching he continued to shoot weddings, portraits, and sports. It was only after taking a teaching position in Kenya that wildlife and landscape photography became his passion.

He continues telling about his path into being a professional photographer by telling me that: “Teaching photography provided me with lots of opportunities to

photograph, develop, and print; to refine my ‘craft and vision.’ The school’s switch to digital photography seemed inevitable so I began to research and learn all I could about the new digital world. Digital capture and processing enthralled me, but it was not until inkjet printing came of age that I was willing to commit to a totally digital workflow.”

Mike has spent the past 12 years teaching photography during schoolterms and photographing on safari during the term breaks. Online trainingand countless late nights of experimenting resulted in Mike developing a fullcomplement of digital skills. After returning to Canada he was able to formalize his training and become an Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop. Mike is a never ending learner, experimenter, explorer. His learning didn't stop with Photoshop. He naturally grew into working with Lightroom, onOne Perfect Photo Suite, and the Nik Software collection. His advanced skills in the digital technology have allowed him to push his photographic style even further.

You can find mike at: https://www.mikegaudaurphotography.com/ or contact him by email at, mike.gaudaur@gmail.com

Mike Gaudaur

Mike Gaudaur

Mike Gaudaur

Montreal Metro, Rick Waldau

Feature Photographer Rick Waldau

Rick Waldau is an amateur Street Photographer based in Montreal, Quebec. He is interested in portraying and capturing the rhythms and people of the city in social moments that hopefully cause one to feel a connection to both his photographs and the people portrayed in them.

You can find his images on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/photorick2022/

And on FB at: https://www.facebook.com/rick.waldau.1?mibextid=ZbWKwL

Rick Waldau <jizo2000@yahoo.com>

A Rick Waldau Selfie

Montreal Metro, Rick Waldau

Poetry Canada

Poetry Editor: Bruce Kauffman

Photo Editor: Richard M. Grove

Bruce Kauffman

“Poetry Canada” Editor each

Bruce Kauffman lives in Kingston and is a poet and editor. His latest collection of poetry, an evening’s absence still waiting for moon, was published in 2019. He facilitates intuitive writing workshops, and hosts the monthly and the journey continues open mic reading series begun in 2009, and also produces & hosts the weekly spoken word radio show, finding a voice, on CFRC 101.9fm he began in 2010.

on either side of emptiness is plenitude and all three each a gift

early spring

a walk outside doesn’t feel like spring

but there is a noticeable green haze as i look across the street and up into the trees hedges and bushes around me showing small clusters of leaves

the grass at my feet calling back to a remembered last summer’s colour

the street i walk on the same asphalt cement neither ever changing its colour and remembering nothing or perhaps too much

café

corner store

writing poetry

sat here 22 years ago almost daily then through all the seasons for several years

here i return after 15 years all the names have changed but structures streets remain

i did not know then i would be sitting here again writing a poem about this space and all that is and isn’t here today

i do not know if i will be here again tomorrow or next week or even next year but i have a certain sense that i will be twenty years on sitting here in this same seat even with a vague memory of some almost forgotten colour

and believing again then that i’ve been here before

Catherine R. Taylor catherinetaylor16@gmail.com

Ottawa, Ontario lake

I dream this life a lake

fed by seasonal rain misting warm calm or cold and driven hard to ice that drifted with snow may heave crack break renew a lake nourished through time by unseen springs in white pine forests from the centre of a cedar strip canoe a child leans out trails small fingers in a scalloped sky that dances blue on passing wave tips this night she will dream her life a lake

Courtney Townson courtney.townson0626@gmail.com

Kingston, Ontario

Paper Cities

When I was a child the thought of speaking terrified me I found solace in pencil and paper, as I learned to carve my thoughts into thin pages. Cities built from scratching of graphite world being picked apart only seen through a magnifying glass. Was lost in the words that raced through my mind, scribbling hand could not keep up, as I finally found how to speak without a word spoken. Scribbling hand could not keep up, as I was lost in the words that raced through my mind only seen through a magnifying glass. World being picked apart cities built from scratching of graphite

I learned to carve my thoughts into thin pages. I found solace in pencil and paper, as the thought of speaking terrified me when I was a child.

Alex Kunert

Alex Kunert

D. V. E. McBride dayle.mcbride@sympatico.ca

Amherstview, Ontario

Cardinal – A Haiku

Coruscating red. Coveted feeder beckons from weathered fencepost.

Alex Kunert

D. Le Doan phung7170@gmail.com Beaconsfield, Québec

A Jet Plane Flies Past

A jet plane flies past screaming. Yet not one bird flies past and screams at the oppressive summer heat as if the birds knew summer days are fleeting.

White clouds remain calm. They lounge leisurely in the sky and have no mind to gather and no qualms about procrastinating, as if they owned time.

In the persistent dryness, shoreline greenery feels itchy in the throat. It’s desperate for a drink like the circling bald eagle that’s desperate for a meal.

And on the lake’s surface, a swarm of insects obsessed with the limelight are scurrying madly toward the place where thousands of stars sparkle.

Calgary Suburbs from above – Olaf Dijkstra

Vancouver – Olaf Dijkstra

Denis Robillard roepoe72@hotmail.com

Windsor, Ontario

The CPAP MACHINE

He sleeps in the small back room near the office and reclines in his favourite leather chair for the night. He is hooked up to a CPAP machine.

I tell him he looks like a fighter pilot or astronaut With all of those tubes and wires and air ducts Protruding from his face. I hunker down in the land of ill faded cosmonauts With him watching the painful machinations of all this breathing noise in dead space. We watch “The Alpinist” documentary together About a solo mountain climber from up in Squamish BC Named Andre Leclerc who fell tragically to his death In Juneau Alaska on a solo climb.

After seeing the movie It is deathly quiet and he moves around slowly like a laborious grumpy bear. Slow moving. Hard to breathe. Everything fractured now. (Only two months after writing this poem he will have suffered three heart attacks)He’s constipated and complains of his stomach aches a lot. I know that inside this brain machine movie he can make his Phantom limbs move at will and he is a young cub again. But it’s not working anymore. His mind clings to autopilot mode as he passes through a stray cloud and climbs straight up into colourless invisibility like a solo climber Amassing in cold degrees the synaptic frame of night.

Honey Novick

creativevocalizationstudio@hotmail.com

Toronto, Ontario

Salmon on the Humber

an act of futility becomes an act of amusement

this is the Salmon Run on the Humber River October 2020 (and every autumn)

September’s rain was not enough the water on the river was low the salmon swam their usual route to spawn until they hit the weir a man-made concrete structure making it impossible for their route to be passable

yet the people came and oohed and aahed with each failed jump cameras bore witness to this wonderment people and salmon in close proximity

classrooms of children came and oohed and aahed at each and every jump especially with the thud of the salmon on the concrete

I came twice and oohed at first I want to believe the salmon will spawn lay their eggs and die, as is their fate giving testament and hope for next year’s run

I want to believe that a skewered time will find a way back to a recognizable normalcy

I want to believe

Lee-Ann Taras

leeanntaras@kos.net

Kingston, Ontario

When the Body Is Joy

lids of eyes bruised with dreams, hazy and languid lips stained like a rose bleeding ruby wine the brain in my skull pulses with a love like quickening, electric shocks the spacious chambers of my heart beat bright red, crimson for the profound joy of you

I am listening to the song my eager heart sings

House-and-tree – Olaf Dijkstra

Main Street Bradian – Olaf Dijkstra

Lisa Makarchuk

lisamakarchuk@sympatico.ca

Toronto, Ontario

Two Balconies

industrial noise, incessant air conditioning hum ferry boats blaring, deafening rattle of medevac choppers ripping through the fabric of night pierced by jungles of glass and steel towers scraping skies which bleed in unforgiving thunderous rain; shrieks from ambulance and firetrucks’ sirens meld with crescendos of traffic roar

GONE, REPLACED with soft silences of lustrous dawns Black River malingering undisturbed, except for splashes from elegant swoops of fish-diving Caspian terns; sinuous swans and teals and mergansers bobbing Canada geese, wing-beaten from territorial duels occupy a veldt, irritatingly honking at us for trespassing on their domain incandescent reds flash off blackbirds’ wings; cardinals dart like sweeping streaks of crimson on green twilights’ dragon flies flit in multi-winged hues of silver and blues seeking their feeding amid cattails and reeds; night times illumined by frenetic flashes of fireflies chasing the dark we cocoon amidst life in our self-isolation

Teresa Hall thallartist@gmail.com Scarborough, Ontario

The Rain Forest

The world was beautiful then, bathed in the softest sun touched glow. Lush jungles spanned the meridians where treetops grew so tall, you couldn’t see the sweet green shoots reaching for the light.

Above the endless canopy the wild birds flew. Their scarlet wings gently brushed white orchids, entwined and peeping thru those daunting heights. Languidly they floated on the emerald mist, their flight in perfect unison as we once were. Oh, for a golden moment, we were one with the Earth then too!

But slowly, slowly as time went on, we forgot the birdsong and all was lost in a fiery haze while the rain forests burned, ‘til all that remained was the blackened earth, stripped bare and silent…

Jane Hodgkinson jane_e_hodgkinson@hotmail.com Toronto, Ontario

Idling on the Gradation

At Nanuya Levu, Shoal floating alone.

I settle slow. With a skeletal lip, abandoned bone, I furrow a trench through past lives, regress all afternoon. No sound, just eerie pulsing. I disappear under shadow of waves, reclaimed by sea. All humanoid, wet skin, super ego, gone.

A creature all stomach, limbs multiplying, and wide mouth.

Feet sucking rock, slow crawl cut across a nebula. I shoot steady, calm and light without thoughts.

Hovering, I look to where the sun points, sound out patterns in the pulse, units of symmetric frequency

held in anapaestic suspense. My shape is a pale particle hung upon an expanse heavy, mystic, monstrous.

I resurface as quickly as I travelled. A tourist. A photo horizon, catamaran idling on the gradation.

Allan Briesmaster abriesmaster@outlook.com Thornhill, Ontario

With a Virtuous Patience

It is better, however, to get no return than to confer no benefits. ─ Seneca

When he treated that person with open goodwill which they took as an indication of weakness, it irked him. And when they proceeded to cavil at something he said or wrote, with disdain, he was further put off, though he brushed it away.

Then when, not long after, they asked for a favour as if it was owed, earned and apropos, he curbed his first impulse toward retaliation, decided the job was, in fact, worth a go, and finished the thing in professional style: feeling slightly grateful at having been shown a rival’s true stripes without harm or bile while he held higher ground all his own.

Anna Panunto

Anna Panunto

Anna Panunto

Peter Dalglish

In Memory of Peter Dalglish

1933 – 2023

In his younger years, Peter planted thousands of trees on his farm. He loved watching them grow. In later years he felt great pleasure seeing his black angus cows light up the green fields, he celebrated every calf that was born.

Peter attended Upper Canada College where he made lifelong friendships and The Ontario College of Art. He was the recipient of the French Governor General’s Award for fine art.

He loved and supported the arts such as Opera Atelier, OCAD and was a member of the Art’s and Letters Club where he painted weekly.

Poem and a Preamble

by John B. Lee

Yesterday I read a story in the Toronto Star about a five-hundred-million year old fossil of a jellyfish which has two stages of life, one on the ocean floor, the second after a transformation into a floating creature of the kind we associate with jellyfish like the Portuguese Man of War, ‘’agua malo” in Spanish.  It is one of those early life forms that finds itself on the cusp between being a plant and being an animal.  Anyway, I’ve often thought, or wondered if it might shake the faith of Christians to think that the roughly 100,000 years since homo sapiens first walked the earth, it took 98,000 years prior to the birth of Christ.  Even given certain fundamentalist’s suggestion that the universe is only 6 thousand years old, that means for two thirds of human time, since the creation of Adam, we lived without the benefit of the son of God.  My speculation is this: does that shake the faith of those who believe Jesus is the son of God.  If it does, then I think the person does not understand the nature of faith, nor do they have a very profound understanding of the power of story.  The life of Christ has its parallel in the story of Horus of Egyptian story, even the beatitudes are prefigured by a roughly analogous set of principles.  In any event, I wrote a poem inspired by the story of the 500 million year old fossil remains of a jellyfish.  And it troubles me not at all as a Christian, nor as a spiritual warrior in the battle against the diminishing materialism of contemporary atheism.  My faith is God, and in the lessons of the life of Christ are only deepened by the mystery of time.

Here’s the poem I wrote inspired by that.  As I write this I’m listening to Cuban music, and oh how I long to relive our halcyon days when Manuel, Adonay, Wency, et al were available reminders of the beautiful people who inhabit this world, you and Kim included.

Ode on a Five-Hundred-Million-Year-Old          Jellyfish Fossil on a Shelf at the R.O.M.

from the ghost oceans of the earth locked witin the afterlife of stone five-hundred-million years on the water floors of a world before the world evaporate in the drying away

trace lines of time waiting in among the patient rubble of a shelf in the city museum touching the darkness of an archival mind like the lichen that clings to erosion that living shadow of botanical life with its insatiable appetite for rock oh how long the thunder lizards roamed as dragons over the burnt dream forests and scorched ferns of a tropical arctic until unwoolled man turned his thoughtful mind to the cycles of the moon and the retreating silks on the shores of her shallowing ice biding in caves and deep-mountain grottos for the coming of Christ and the dwindling down of a multitude of petti-gods demigods and the puny relics of the divinities of Rome a mere two-thousand years in a blink of faith what we might hold as true in a long story and we weren’t here and our fathers weren’t here when there was cold fire and the heavens were blind and basalt black

Can you guess which one is Margaret Atwood

ᐃᐦᑭ / IHKE / MAKE

ᐃᐦᑭ is the phonetic spelling of “IHKE” in the Indigenous language. IHKE” is the root word of “Make” in the Indigenous language.

Dear Readers, let me introduce this new section entitled “ᐃᐦᑭ”/IHKE/MAKE” and introduce you to Debora Puricelli - débora ᑌᐠᕑᐊ the curator of this new Indigenous Art section.

As débora ᑌᐠᕑᐊ will explain below in her introduction we are in the process of naming this section. The name and content will no doubt grow and morph into what it needs to be. We hope you enjoy and grow with us. For now we can just say welcome and thank you to débora ᑌᐠᕑᐊ for joining the Devour: Art & Lit Canada team.

If you have any questions or comments you can reach Debora Puricellidébora ᑌᐠᕑᐊ at: littlepeacelove@hotmail.ca

All the best and thank you for reading, learning and growing with us, Richard Grove / Tai ᑕᐃ

Self Portrait in Landscape by débora ᑌᐠᕑᐊ

Introduction by débora ᑌᐠᕑᐊ

First, I want to say thank you and acknowledge the Land where our ancestors cultivated and nurtured all living and non-living beings so that we could inherit the Land known as Turtle Island.

Secondly, I want to say thank you to Wet Ink Books, Devour: Art & Lit Canada and Tai for the invitation to be an ongoing curator for this new Indigenous section. Stay tuned for future Indigenous Art. I will attempt to bring you a wide range of Indigenous voices in coming issues. I am grateful for the invitation to have the Indigenous voice included as a sovereign identity as Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island now called Canada. I still feel that Canada, the word, is also an Indigenous word appropriated by colonial power to make the Indigenous population believe that the colonial power was in fact showing respect but I wasn’t there so that’s my extension to what may have been mixed in.

Thirdly, I would like to thank the Creator for this opportunity to share my voice with all of you. My name is débora ᑌᐠᕑᐊ. The Indigenous letters are the phonetic spelling of débora which comes from Hebrew in Swampy Cree / Ojibwe slavs. I was given the privilege to learn about Indigenous Visual Art Culture(s) at OCADU, Ontario College of Art and Design University. During my time at University I quickly realized that I and many other people were not yet feeling included in the University curriculum. In first year we skipped over Black Art History due to lack of time. In the course layout I had to ask to change Canadian Art History to Indigenous Art history due to the fact that Canadian Art History did not involve anything Indigenous which I still haven’t recovered from. I don’t believe that Canadian Art History exists without Indigenous Art History. I happened to share that comment with Tai, from Devour, and he agreed that Canadian Art would not likely exist without Indigenous Art. LOL I hope. I am calling this part of the healing. I have been on a healing path ever since I accepted the fact that I am a trauma survivor. As such I believe in the healing of all beings so let the healing begin.

Back to Art by Indigenous folks, in all the many Indigenous languages there is no single word for “Art” there are only a series of words for the action “Making” which is like an equal opportunity to share with others through the action of Making. I talked with Tai about what to call this new Indigenous Art section and I

Reanimated Tools by débora ᑌᐠᕑᐊ

thought an Indigenous word or something like that might be good but we have not yet settled on this part of the process.

As an Artist I started making stuff at a very young age, I even invented a few things, it’s classified LOL. As a child I would make books and try to sell them to people so I could do something different. I sold one book to a man who stopped by to see my books and he bought the one I made and it was all yellow drawings and words. I received $1 for the book I made. As a young second grader my teacher was so impressed with a Cow I drew she asked me to please show all the second grade classes my Cow picture and then I gave her my beautiful Cow drawing. I truly thank my mom for my Art making gift because she would give me paper and a pen. I also thank my mom’s mom, my granny, who was also an artist always sewing, painting or making preserves.

Well I hope this says a little something about my Art practice. I really appreciate all the incredible people I met over the years and I have met so many talented Indigenous Artists and the community really helps everyone make more together. For Canada’s 150, a group of Indigenous and non-indigenous people, were part of a across Turtle Island’s National Parks project called “Landmarks”. I did a piece called “Moving Stones”. I moved a hundred and fifty stones one for each year. 150 divides evenly into six piles of twenty five each then spread into a diamond making a giant snowflake to mark the spot. As an individual I am still learning to forgive and put the past behind me. The now can be difficult and that is when I do remember the Indigenous community because as a community we can heal. Art will be Art and Canadian Art cannot exist without Indigenous Art because Canada doesn’t exist without Indigenous people.

So let the healing begin, Peace, Thank you, Merci, Miig Wech, débora

Biographical Note for Debora Puricelli

debora ᑌᐠᕑᐊ puricelli ᐳᕑᐃᐨᐁᓫᓫᐃ graduated from the Indigenous Visual Culture Program at OCADU in 2018. She received the Bronze award for Highest marks in Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as the award for Highest achievement in the INVC (Indigenous Visual Culture Program). She was also given the title of “Knowledge Keeper” or “Knowledge Holder” by the Ojibwe/Cree Elders, Edna and Connor.

Peace Kwe.

In Honour of Ukraine by débora ᑌᐠᕑᐊ

Digital Frontier by débora ᑌᐠᕑᐊ

Devouring the Lines and Images of a Quintessentially Canadian Magazine

A Review of Devour: Art and Lit Canada

Hidden Brook Press – Wet Ink Books, 2017-2023

In August 2017 Canadian publisher, poet, writer, photographer, artist Richard Marvin Grove published the first issue of the digital flagship magazine of Hidden Brook Press, Devour: Art and Lit Canada . He stated that the mission of the magazine was “to promote Canadian culture by bringing world-wide readers some of the best Canadian literature, art and photography .” Sixteen issues later (2023) that mission continues to guide the purposes and endeavors of its Editor-in-chief and Layoutand-Design man, Richard Grove, and the continually growing group of collaborators who have submitted their work and added prestige to the magazine, helping to increase readerships inside and outside Canada.

Devour has been systematically inviting and featuring writers, poets, artists and photographers to fill its pages with the best of their production. Poems, book presentations and analyses, photos, interviews, have been the key in the steady flow and show of what Canadians value so highly, culture. Culture has filled the magazine’s pages offering readers a rich variety of high-quality pictures, topquality poetry and prose, and revealing interviews and sections.

Issue 001 started on a grand scale, inviting well-known names: John B. Lee, Shane Joseph, Norma West Linder, Morgan Wade and Ivy Reiss. Both renowned personalities and rising ones have found an open door in Devour, which honors talent and contribution to culture. The front covers of the

Issue 017 Devour: Art & Lit Canada 68

authors’ publications, reviews of their work, fragments taken from their novels, stories, full poems, bios, pictures, etc. began to mold the magazine’s format and objectives, which has remained intact—and creatively improving—through these past six years.

More pages and more guests marked the second publication. If I were to choose a poet and his/her poem to reflect not only the success but also the spirit of the magazine, I would go to section “Quintessentially Canadian” and quote Graham Ducker’s A Northern Sight. The poem made me think of Devour’s achievement—even when it is still the second issue. If we are going to speak about essences, Ducker, a Canadian and a poet from head to toe, the loon, and Canada’s own cultural exploits make up much of that essence:

A loon splits the river. Its haunting laugh announces the accomplishment.

Devour maintained its steady, attractive course as years went by. Issues 5, 6 and 7 found themselves in the middle of the hard Covid months. The magazine proved its cultural and humanistic nature and worth by making those issues special, as the Editor-inchief tells us in the eighth edition of the magazine, “Welcome to the 8th issue of Devour: Art & Lit Canada. As you will have noticed our 5th, 6th and 7th issues were “special issues” between our winter issue and this current summer issue. Those three special issues were dedicated to “The Poetry Pandemic Project” with Panku poems from around the world and photographs by Ann Di Nardo. We have one final special Panku issue scheduled for after this summer issue.”

The idea of a Panku approach to the dark Covid days is explained in the following note: “For this project the name “Panku” comes from a cross between the words “Pandemic” and “Haiku” = Panku. It is meant to be a play on words. In these strange pandemic days, I thought it was time that we lightened up a bit so I started “The Poetry Pandemic Project”. We put a call out for uplifting, fun, light, amusing, pandemic poems in the form of a Panku…”

Of all the fine panko poems submitted, I chose two which represent most of the bottled up concern and energy of the lockdown and social isolation days (from issue 005, Panku poems #1):

Poet Richard Grove (Ontario, Canada) from my car window

I blew a kiss to a friend six feet away and poet Arianne Laporte (Québec, Canada) Before I craved some time alone, Now I crave crowded places.

Devour 008 presented a new section, “Canada in Review,” hosted by Shane Joseph, who is appointed as Devour’s book review editor. Poets like Honey Novick (see my review about the Toronto High Park Poets) are featured here. Joan Sutcliffe (also included in my High Park Poets review) is the author of the review on Novick in this section. Devour has continued to grow. Now a 120-page edition (001 was only forty pages long), the magazine expands and attracts more and more artists to the quintessential spaces it offers.

It is impossible to go issue by issue (an interesting characteristic is that Grove publishes with the seasons, so we have a winter issue as well as a summer issue), so I will focus on the latest one, 016. With 132 pages, now published by Wet Ink Books, Devour retains the lure and quality its Editor-in-chief aspired to when he started

back in 2017. Grove introduces this issue, which in his words “is primarily dedicated to the winners of the 2021 and 2022 Don Gutteridge Poetry Award. Congratulations to all of the winners.”

The 2022 Don Gutteridge Poetry Award Winners were: John Tyndall, Richard-Yves Sitoski, K.V. Skene, Kate Marshall Flaherty and Bruce Kauffman. The 2021 Don Gutteridge Poetry Award Essays were David Blaikie, Wendy Maclean, Antony Di Nardo and Mike Madill. It also includes photographers Olaf Dijkstra and Ann Di Nardo, whose pictures are impressive for the views they capture and their excellence technically speaking.

The 2021 Gutteridge Award winners were individually reviewed, the origins of the Award discussed in this Devour 016: “ A tireless promoter and champion of Canadian literature is publisher, poet, photographer, artist Richard M. Grove, who in collaboration with another iconic poet, Don Gutteridge, generated the Don Gutteridge Award. The year 2022 stands as the inaugural year for the award with Gutteridge as the sole judge.”

About the first prize winner, Blaikie, I said in a review: “His last poem, “The Bridge,” pensive, yearning, intimate; a closer, invites us to a recurring theme in every writer, poet and artist. Parting, that “sweet sorrow,” is coloured by the poet’s keen frame of mind. In an instant, he plays with sublime metaphors again, captures images and memories redimensioning them into genuine symbolic evocations, goes back in time and speaks to his beloved one… Let’s find endless delight in the lines above, in the whole poem and in the book. Let’s toast to the superb amalgamation of solemnity, cutting naturalness, sheer frankness and sensitivity overflowing them.” Let’s “… hold that / like an old Matryoshka doll / and all the rest will be inside” and never hesitate to “weep and dance” with a forthright David Blaikie and his A Season in Lowertown, a rightfully merited Don Gutteridge Award holder.

Below, his full poem “The Bridge”:

when I go, I’ll turn and look a final time, that I might take you with me a billion coins of light flashing in the current below the iron bridge where we stopped and stood so often, and the sun would find you there reach past clouds above the moody dam and pour itself upon you

there among old girders of rust and faded paint where we mellowed without resistance in the soft, slow melt of time

and words walked lightly on our tongues or scarcely walked at all as seasons settled without marking in the crevices of our days

and I’ll hold that like an old Matryoshka doll and all the rest will be inside

Devour: Art and Lit Canada is definitely a quintessential magazine. Since its birth in August 2017, it has been a reflection of Canadian culture at its highest. Little by little—summer and winter—the magazine, conceived and kept going thanks to its Editor-in-

chief, has summoned and attracted a significant group of Canadians deeply connected to their nation and seriously concerned about culture.

The word devour means figuratively in English “read quickly and eagerly… (be devoured) be totally absorbed by a powerful feeling.” (taken from Concise Oxford English Dictionary - digital format). Except for quickly (the opposite of how readers will read such fine magazine), eagerness in reading, being pleased with Devour’s offers and being absorbed by its impressive front cover, contents and people giving substance to them, will always be the inevitable meanings and ways to open its pages and enter its enticing words and colourful images.

Sixteen issues and six years later, we still read the newest number of Devour anticipating how much it will impress us with its stunning photos and sections, and expecting to read the next issue! Passion, creativity, variety, “quintessentiality” and well-earned Canadian pride of nationhood are the magazine’s signatures. Thank you, Richard Grove. Thank you, collaborators.

Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias, MSc

Associate Professor Holguin University, Cuba Author, Poet, Writer, Editor, Reviewer, Translator

Mike Gaudaur