The Envoy #123 – The official newsletter of the CCLA – Canada Cuba Literary Alliance.

By Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

TuningourHeartbeatstoDonGutteridge’sRhythms:AReview ofhisBookAFine-TunedHeart.NewPoemsbyDonGutteridge (WetInkBooks,2023)

MScMiguelÁngelOlivéIglesias

AssociateProfessor.HolguínUniversity,Cuba

ProfessorofEnglish,LiteratureandStylistics

Author,Poet,ProseWriter,Editor,LitReviewer,Translator CubanPresidentoftheCanadaCubaLiteraryAlliance

The Canadian Prince of Poetry, Don Gutteridge, continues to impress us in 2023 with a volume of eighty-seven freshly baked poems, A FineTuned Heart. New Poems by Don Gutteridge (Wet Ink Books, 2023). The prolific poet outnumbers in poems his own fruitful age in a warm, all-embracing feat of poetic versatility and creative longevity. Gutteridge reexamines in his compact proposal (notice that the poems flow in a single train of thought, with no separate sections) his old-time, dear motifs, which have evolved as classics of his oeuvre and of Canadian literature, and he does it with renewed strength and tessitura.

I have stated that Don Gutteridge’s writings broaden our comprehension of the world and give free rein to our emotions, allowing us to relate to other people and voice our inner call. In Don’s most recent book, A Fine-Tuned Heart, poetry comes from his nexus with friends and family, who have been a significant part of his life, with past events that resound yearningly and with memories that never fade. This new book has the unavoidable ingredients of Don’s poetry, rhythm and musicality, where remembrances resonate and last. Both elements are as inevitable in him as breathing. No wonder he confessed to me once that “Nothing short of a stroke could stop me from writing poetry… I seem to dream poems and wake up writing them... I am very fortunate that the Muse has never let me down.”

The very first poem in A Fine-Tuned Heart, “Symphonic,” announces that musicality the poet seeks in his work, that tessitura I refer to. He sets out to share, nostalgic and reminiscent, primarily his auditory perception of the world, which is in no way limited to or constrained

by spatial references. It also travels the labyrinths of times gone by. This awesome duality of Don’s inner eye has accompanied us since he decided to cross, successfully, opportunely, the threshold of words and rhythms back in 1960.

Gutteridge soars, seated in his rocker almost in meditative state, through those very 60s. “Still able to breathe / in my [his] old bones,” his wistful memory echoes “the songs of the long- / ago Sixties, that brought / the blood up and wakened us / to the world, or stung our cherub- / cheeks with tears that such / glorious chording, / such disarming harmonies, / such melodious musing / should be un-lunged / and bloom anew in our ears / like a seven-sea-ed symphony…”

Emily-Jane Hills Orford speaks highly of Don’s work, “Special family connections. The simplicity of treasured family moments… I have read a number of Don Gutteridge’s poems over the years and I continue to marvel at his ability to capture the simplest of moments in a capsule and make it grander than life with his poetic observations.” (Taken from a Hidden Brook Press release).

That distinctive family recurrence in Don’s poems comes again, touchingly, with “O, Tom!” Even when sadness stays with him, Don finds some sort of relief in his recollections. The poet does not weep forever; he rather sees a form of healing in writing and of endurance in hope: “I have let you settle / in the consoling abode of my heart, / where your soul sings me to sleep, / brings some solace on, / and bids me believe you haven’t / gone.”

A poet connected to the land, both the local expanses he endearingly recreates in his work and the wider territorial notion of Canada, he has the virtue of turning a seemingly ordinary sight into a thing of beauty, registered for posterity in the piece “Peony.” He expertly handles the resource of contrast presenting firstly “Our barren back yard, / where the grass grew in grudging / clumps,” then moving to “was garnished by a single, / solitary bush, teeming / with peonies” and masterfully finishing with “I wondered / who had thought enough / of beauty to plant it here / for me to espy, and prompt / this poem” to

caress the reader with a closing image of magnificence that he claims, rightfully, motivated his poem. Profound spirituality pulsates in this piece as a true reflection of the poet’s lyrical soul and adherence to beauty.

We know that one of Don’s themes is beauty. Aesthetics, I would say, as aspiration but also as an observable, tangible miracle in nature and in man’s works of art, stands as a fountain of inspiration, unvanquished in A Fine-Tuned Heart. Hence, Don’s cultivation is admirable, and pleasurably noticed in his texts. Take, for example, the eloquence, the meaningfulness, the values, the sacred interconnectedness of the natural world with human creation, as well as the poet’s erudition, converging altogether in the poem “Beauty Bursts Us.”

This poem sings to the senses, mostly acoustic and visual. It pours onto the flaming vessel of allusions the exquisite appeals of nature’s landscape and artistic genius interwoven in eighteen lines. “Beauty Bursts Us” simultaneously brings to the page that will eventually reach the readers the environment’s beauty, “the sunlight that flares / in a flower or the dark that stuns / the stars awake,” and human contribution to beauty, “our hearts open to the slow / imploding of an ode or the / Siren subtleties of song, / while the brushstrokes of a Van Gogh / or the marble musings of a / a Michelangelo unsettle / our sight and skew the world / new, and Ludwig’s Ninth / or Brahms’ First.”

In the poem (as in all others!), a stunning display of expressive means and stylistic devices (metaphors, metonymies, epithets, personification) springing from the poet’s versatile mind, “the dark that stuns / the stars awake,” “our hearts open to the slow / imploding of an ode,” or “the marble musings of a / a Michelangelo.”

In the process, he becomes a painter of words, a conductor leading an orchestra commanding “pentameters / that dance aloud like the / Bard’s, and bloom cathartic / in the heart.” (from the poem “Hectic”)

Unfortunately, so many poems in A Fine-Tuned Heart, so many literary gems, cannot be individually commented on in this brief review. Let

me close with my opinion on “One More time,” one of the last pieces in the book.

Art, assumed as “the expression or application of creative skill and imagination, especially through a visual medium...” (Taken from Concise Oxford English Dictionary – digital format) and the Canadian poet Antony Di Nardo’s criterion, “I often consider poetry as a form of visual art painted with words” (Taken from his introductory words to the poetry book This Pulse of Life, These Words I Found, Wet Ink Books, 2022), enable us to discern Don’s conception of the art of poetry reflected in “One More time.”

We solemnly, reasonably, read his position as an architect of words, now mature and retrospective, and ache in his understandable pain, as he tells us, “The aging poet does not / pose behind a podium / to project some bardic bravado, / he is seated, rather, in his walker, / awkwardly, as if he can feel / his bones brooding in their sockets, and, wincing at “prince…””

BUT, as always, the survivor, the resilient man, the great bard, rises, Phoenix-like, and ends with hopefulness in one hand and his last lines in the other, “he gathers what remains of his versifying / voice, glances at the words / swimming on the page below, / and begins, one more time, / to recite the lines still / marauding in his mind, hoping / against hope to find / the reason behind his rhymes / or a condoning abode for his poems – / content, this day, to let / the erotic of applause be enough.”

Don has constantly found the basis underneath his formidable poetry and the dwelling for his indelible poems: life and motivations are the ultimate reason; readers’ hearts the warmest home. That is why I see the poem’s title as a fresh élan of optimism and determination: the show has to go on, at least one more time and one more; and one more: “he gathers what remains of his versifying / voice… // and begins, one more time, / to recite the lines still / marauding in his mind…”

Don princely proclaims in his poem “Hectic”: “I let my words / have their own say: / plumed and unbenumbed.” Wondrously, we have been blessed with Don’s poetics and keep it close to our hearts, where we synchronize their beat to the melodious rhythms of a poet who has justly earned the title of Canadian Prince of Poetry. Thank you, Don, for your legacy. Thank you for your book A Fine-Tuned Heart. New Poems by Don Gutteridge.

By Katharine Beeman (selfie)

Vodka and Oysters, a Collection of Poems and Stories by and for James

D. Cockcroft,

Editor

Katharine Beeman

Here is the “Preface” and “Editor’s Introduction.” As well, Manuel De Jesús Velázquez Léon, former CCLA Editor-in-Chief, has a piece in the chapter “Presence” and CCLA member Hugh Hazelton wrote the Back Cover piece.

Preface

What time desires for James, yet again

What time desires— to leave behind a word insistent as rain a necessary word.

Lo que el tiempo quiere para James, ya otra vez más

Lo que el tiempo quieredejar atrás una palabra insistente como la lluvia una palabra necesaria.

Editor’s Introduction

For over two decades I had the pleasure of sharing vodka and oysters, political and poetical space with James Cockcroft. For twenty-four

years, he was in three of the four circles of my life personal, poetical, and international solidarity, especially with the First Nations, Latin America and the Caribbean. We went to the same gatherings, meetings, demonstrations, readings. About twice a year we had time out after some event to sit over drinks—vodka martinis, mojitos, wine— and oysters, munchies or a meal, to have a heart to heart about it all, getting our heads straight for the tasks behind, at hand, ahead. Who was going to undertake this project if not me, his closest poetic collaborator over those decades? My job, as editor, combing through two shopping bags of his “for new book” archives, gathered between 20132019, was as a Bonsai gardener, to divine, to shape, to prune where necessary, bringing out the truth of the tree.

Vodka and Oysters is a retrospective, an homage, a commitment to a friend and unfortunately, his last book, his second poetry book, a project dear to his heart. It’s mostly in English, some Spanish and French as his life was lived; some pieces are not finished as his life was lived—although his was a life most substantially performed.1 In April 2017, he wrote: “For introduction to my 2nd poetry book: Martí said about poetry when he sent Versos sencillos to his mother, ‘it’s little, it’s my life’ [es pequeño, es mi vida].”2

A retrospective can start from the beginning, end, or as the whole picture appearing in front of us, the option chosen here. You could say love as in love for partners, love for humanity, love for justice is the motor of Cockcroft’s poetry. Grief as in grieving for his own, and in grieving for theirs greases its gears. Friendship as in the words on many Cuban billboards solidarity is the tenderness of the peoples, humanity’s joys and concerns close as drawing the next breath is its fuel. Nature, the lap of Pacha Mama, from which he saw, in which he rested as he traveled through this world is its environment. Which is why these four elements love, grief, friendship, nature commingle, interweave throughout this collection rather than being separated into

different sections as they were in his first collection, Why? ¿Porque?

Pourquoi? (Hidden Brook Press, Brighton, Ontario, Canada, 2009, proceeds to the families of the Cuban 5). As well, Vodka and Oysters exudes the thread of a man recapturing, re-gathering, his life through a relationship, as his sons told his dearest partner: “You gave us our father back.”

James also understood, to borrow a favorite metaphor from a time honoured friend, Michel Mill, having both feet on the ground and your head in the clouds.

This is his sense of Bolivarian, Fidelista Utopia: ordinary human beings by their actions make that other, necessary, not only world, not only new women and men, but a new mode of civilization, cradled by and cradling ecosystems, possible. Or more poetically, as he wrote in an unfinished poem about Simon Bolívar’s experience on the Andean mountain of El Chimborazo:

Bolívar tocó la copa del firmamento teniendo a sus pies los umbrales del abismo.

Bolívar touched the crown of the sky the threshold of the abyss at his feet.

James was also an inspirer, an enabler of creativity, and inspired our writers’ salon, Le Salon rouge/La Sala Roja/The Red Saloon, his family and others, so we have a chapter ¡Presente! That thin line between love and grief, where there is no death because the absent are present, was one of the things he understood best. He also loved to dance. And to fish.

“Liberty gives wings to the oyster,” wrote José Martí in “The poet Walt Whitman,”

“And what seemed a prodigious battle when heard from within the shell turns out to be, in the light and open air, the natural movement

of the vital fluids driven by the energetic pulse of the world.”3 May these words of vodka and oyster flow for you.

Katharine Beeman

January, 2022

1 In architectural law substantial performance is a public declaration of completion of contract, nothing more to be done…

2 Cintio Vitier y Fina García-Marruz, Agustin Pi El amigo absoluto, La Habana, Centro Cultural Dulce María Loynaz, 2009, p.13.

3 New York, 19 April, 1887, pub. La Nación, Buenos Aires, 26 June, 1887, cited in José Martí Selected Writings, Penguin Books, 2002, New York, New York, p 187.

From Víctor Manuel Velázquez

Photo by Víctor Manuel

Agradecí la luna mielera del cielo de la tarde, invernal y subida como una geisha silenciosa o un cenizo toro de Miura, ciego, deslumbrante, tonteando sobre el parque del Quijote. Y agradecí, ya oscuro, la bendición de la crema de afeitar, un privilegio que hace años no me visitaba y que hizo de mí un afilado y moreno Santa Claus. Me recordé a Don Pablo, afeitándose el triangular bigote pequeñoburgués con navaja y agua jabonosa, frente al añico de espejo embutido entre la tabla de palma, al pie del pozo de agua salobre. Recordé su despedida, ya sin habla ni razón, ajeno a los dones del vigor, la voluntad y la memoria; y mucho antes el taburete embestido al horcón donde se dejaba mimar por el sueño.

Me despierta, como a él, como a todos ellos, esa lucidez opaca, víspera del alba, ¿herencia de qué Adán?

Nota: La foto que comparto es de un indio de reciente contacto, paciente mío de Jurití.

I was grateful for the honeymoon in the afternoon sky, wintry and soaring like a silent geisha or an ashen Miura bull, blind, dazzling, fooling around in Don Quixote park. And I thanked, already dark, the blessing of shaving cream, a privilege that had not visited me for years and that made me a sharp and dark Santa Claus. I reminded myself of Don Pablo, shaving his petty-bourgeois triangular mustache with a razor and soapy water, in front of the shard of mirror wedged between the palm boards, at the foot of the brackish water well. I remembered his farewell, now without speech or reason, oblivious to the gifts of vigor, will and memory; and much earlier the stool rammed into the post where he allowed himself to be pampered by sleep. I am awakened, like him, like all of them, by that opaque lucidity, the eve of dawn, an inheritance from what Adam?

Note: The photo I share is of an Indian of recent contact, a patient of mine from Jurití.

FAITH, POETRY, FAMILY, FRIENDS: PILLARS FOR LIFE

by Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias

Canada Cuba Literary Alliance Prez in Cuba

Author, Poet, Prose Writer, Editor, Lit Essayist, Translator

for the Lord preserves the faithful. Psalms 31:23 In a world full of noise and thunder, poems are a refuge. Katie Hoogendam (Devour. Issue 013, 2022)

… we will always have the warmest beat and the brightest light shining on both sides of life´s tunnel, the one that leads us into, through and out of existence: family. Poetry certainly eases the passage. M. Olivé Now when [Job’s] three friends heard of all this… that was come upon him, they came… to comfort him. Job 2:11

The year 2022 has still been a rough one –to put it mildly– for people around the world. It all began in 2020 with the outburst of COVID, a pandemic which has not been totally controlled yet. I did not escape its grip and was infected in August 2021. I survived, lucky me, yet sequels ensued in the post-COVID months. They ended (actually started a new stage) with doctors discovering a tumor in my body. The news was I had to undergo twenty-five nonstop sessions of radiation and chemo to fight the tumor and was warned of the treatment´s possible awful aftereffects. They did not take long to appear making matters worse, affecting my general health and extending my condition to the present, August 2022.

I won´t elaborate on the abyssal divide opened between the moments before and after I was told what I had. Only those who have been there know how it feels… Fortunately, I am slowly moving on recovery mode now. I must rest for five weeks and be biopsied again to see what remains of the uncomfortable tumor.

The journey has not been easy at all. However, it has been softened by poetry, the support of family and friends (around me and miles up north in Canada) and above all by my faith in God.

Prior to falling ill with COVID, I had been very active writing and publishing mostly poetry and literary essays on Canadian poets, encouraged by Richard Grove (Tai), Canadian publisher, poet, writer, photographer, artist (and an invaluable friend to me), who had been visiting Cuba for the last thirty-something years first as a tourist, later as a friend and promoter of culture, which led him to found in 2004 and preside since then the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance to bridge Canadian and Cuban artistic manifestations thus fostering friendship and cultural exchange between the two nations. It seemed to me, arguably on a personal, subjective level, that COVID first then the tumor decreased my capacity to write. My prolific literary production waned (over fifteen books -plus mags- edited, translated, reviewed and/or authored from 2018 to early 2022 thanks to Richard Grove´s unstinting encouragement), and as much as I wanted to I was not able to put coherent and meaningful words together, or those I did manage to fell short of acceptability. I was on the verge of desperation for creative and lit writing had become fulfilling assets in my life.

Yet, key pillars saw me through my plight. Even when I stopped writing (This piece is my first attempt to resume it), I did not give in to my anxiety thanks to:

One, my turning to God every day in search of fortitude to face the challenge. It has been uplifting. He is the path towards and the threshold into salvation—He is salvation: He is the Savior.

Two, I continued to read poetry. I revisited the classics I have loved all my life and reread Canadian icons I had discovered during my studies of Canadian poetry to write my essays. Poetry was instrumental in my recovery. Poetry caresses our eyes and warms our souls. Poetry complements us and touches both our emotions and our intellect. Poetry

helps us express ourselves differently, share the spark glowing inside us and grow personally and socially.

Three, I had (have) family and friends by my side. They came to me offering whatever they had and I could use to cross the bumpy path ahead and come out a victor. My dear next of kin, colleagues, students, acquaintances were there for me. My status as a patient also brought new friends into my inner-circle “radar”: caring students of mine who have accompanied me along the way, doctors, lab techs, nurses. Family and friends did not fail me. I am so grateful. In terms of family and friends, I am closing my piece by acknowledging my wife. During my illness she has been provider and nurse, and has had to cope, most of the times in empathetic silence, with my tantrums and howling when I have lost it and needed to vent my bottled up sensations of loss, helplessness, pessimism, confusion or anger… When challenges threaten to crash us down, faith, poetry, family and friends make a huge difference. They embrace you injecting strength, hope and optimism you cannot find in yourself sometimes and all you see is darkness. God is light. God is our most solid pillar. Poetry soothes and nurtures. Poetry is one of God´s ways of healing our hearts and bodies. Poetry is another pillar. Family and friends are God´s gifts to make life endurable on earth. This is a necessary pillar. Faith, poetry, family, friends are crucial in our passage through life. I was made fully aware of that when I entered an unwelcome period in mine but did welcome the significance they convey and the power they have in lightening our sorrows, unburdening our heavy weights, reshaping our existence and salvaging our souls. I am nothing but deeply thankful and forever indebted to them.

A new poem, something of a Christmas poem I suppose. I've always loved what Dylan Thomas wrote in his Collected Poems in a note by way of introduction: "These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I'd be a damn' fool if they weren't"

God’s Idea

By John B. Lee

the white-breasted nuthatch circles the trunk of the great wide-thighed two trunk Norwegian maple the one that cools the back deck with a toss of darkness summer’s shadow landing like a widow’s veil skeining the boards in the breath of its weather like the wet soothing of a fever cloth it comes to the glass of the lake room but this is winter and the little blue-grey shouldered bird is seeding the rough bark like the beadwork of close-candled sunlight the kind that young girls learn from their mothers and this it seems is God’s idea

By Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

of avian service in the holy stations of the forest this eventual hunger put to the purpose of beauty amazing even to strangers of glory this faith in the future when the day sun envies the moon like a man grown old in a mirror

From Víctor Manuel Velázquez

Los navegantes: Bautizaron "Enmanuel", en memoria del hijo que no rebasó la adolescencia, a la chalupa clandestina hecha de tanques de latón y despojos. Le improvisaron una vela con una discordia de sacos de yute y mástil de bambú. Cargaron una virgen de yeso y una brújula que se entronizó en la proa guiándolos al norte, hasta que solo hubo una línea trabada entre dos cielos pujantes, que se mordía la cola como una víbora imperturbable.

Remaron y remaron con la fuerza de los brazos sin carne, hasta que el viento bastó para arrastrarlos al abismo que de tan azul parecía negro y oliva, allí donde los elementos se quedan sin su nombre, donde las olas son una soledad dorada y movediza que ve pasar las nubes indefinidamente.

Algunos días los entretuvo el sol que relojeaba de este a oeste, mudando de color. Otros días, por la deshidratación, creyeron

ver todo el mar aflorado de piraguas tripuladas por gente que gesticulaba, como aves a punto de volar; o con ojos sonámbulos cazaban sombras de leones sumergidos, imposibilitados de distinguir la realidad del delirio. En las noches, mientras resbalaban los gritos hasta perderse en la constelada desmesura, los seguía una luna desdeñosa y muerta, redonda como el ojo de un ídolo, diferente de las lunas de tierra firme; una luna rubia anterior al pensamiento y a las primeras glaciaciones, y aún así, sabedora de tantas cosas. Lo que ellos eran dejó de existir en algún punto entre la isla y el continente.

Los periódicos de allá dijeron que huían en pos de la libertad. Los de acá se refirieron a ellos como los "menos favorecidos", eludiendo la palabra "pobres", nuestros pobres. La libertad no existe, solo hay liberaciones, contadísimas oportunidades de esfumarnos en un sueño. A fin de cuentas, qué es la vida sino eso, una charada.

The navigators: They baptized "Enmanuel", in memory of the son who did not exceed adolescence, to the clandestine boat made of brass tanks and offal. They improvised a sail for him with a discord of jute sacks and a bamboo mast. They loaded a plaster virgin and a compass that was enthroned in the prow guiding them north, until there was only a line locked between two mighty skies, biting its tail like an imperturbable viper. They rowed and rowed with the strength of their arms without flesh, until the wind was enough to drag them into the abyss that seemed so blue, black and olive, there where the elements remain nameless, where the waves are a golden and shifting solitude that watch the clouds go by indefinitely. Some days they were entertained by the sun that kept watch from east to west, changing color. Other days, due to dehydra

tion, they thought they saw the entire sea surfaced with canoes manned by people who gesticulated, like birds about to fly; or with sleepwalking eyes they hunted shadows of submerged lions, unable to distinguish reality from delirium. At night, while the screams slipped until they were lost in the constellated excess, they were followed by a disdainful and dead moon, round as the eye of an idol, different from the moons of the mainland; a blonde moon before thought and the first ice ages, and still, knowing so many things. What they were ceased to exist somewhere between the island and the mainland.

The newspapers there said they were fleeing in search of freedom. Those from here referred to them as the "less favored", avoiding the word "poor", our poor. Freedom does not exist, there are only liberations, very few opportunities to vanish in a dream. After all, what is life but that, a charade.

Our Road for Mrs. G.

By Patrick Connor

On sunny days we strolled by the schoolyard recalled our latest game and talked trash to each other. They say that life is what you make it. One moment you're 15, the next you're 50. The loss you have had is less than the love you have gained until there is another loss.

On rainy days we ran by the schoolyard splashed little drops of happiness which mixed sweetly with our tears. Life is what it is today. You share a meal made of love and are afraid to take the leftovers in case they might be the last.

Calling

After Pablo Neruda

By Patrick Connor

I was at that age where a man from this society should have a career, a car a purpose clear to all around him. Yet there was so much more I lacked –integrity, passion, commitment. I didn’t have a public face, and I could barely look at myself in the mirror. Then, just as I had nearly accepted a living death which aspired to mediocrity my entire myopic world imploded caved in by a gust of putrid wind. I had a clear choice –be destroyed by impure nonsense embrace the abyss of a world not worth being in where I only occasionally received guilty pleasure

and a sick sense of belonging –or rejoin the path I had once followed. Long had I ignored the summons. I knew exactly where it came from –pure wisdom patiently waited until I finally answered her call. I overcame the mere existence I left behind, while being prepared by repeated trials and refining fire for the inspired life which will define me.

Finding Myself

By Patrick Connor

Strive to change the world in such a way that there's no further need to be a dissident.

Ferlinghetti, Poetry as Insurgent Art, page 8 Rising up from deep within the very core of my being the essence of who I am underneath my public image is the need to find myself someone to admire.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti spoke the words the world needed to hear at that exact moment. Best of the Beats because he promoted the rest above himself.

Paragon of enlightenment inspirer of a new way of being

artistic role model. Ferlinghetti would have loathed such titles based on what little I know about him. He would have frowned if not downright sneered at such fanboy foppery. In the same way many reading or hearing this could be offended by words like humanist, socialist, countercultural, malcontent, protestor, activist, freethinker, nonconformist. In the Coney Island of My Mind - or, more accurately, Exhibition PlaceI get to play with words turn image into meaning and back again with enough musicality to form a poetry of concise language and complex thought imagine these words making this world a better place at least for a moment and believe if I say them with clarity and integrity for long enough you may just listen to me.

Wency Rosales

Wency Rosales

Marcos Verdecia

Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias

January 2023

I

For never-resting time leads summer on To hideous winter… Shakespeare … boughs which shake against the cold… Shakespeare One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs… W. Stevens

January 2023 has come with a sprinkle of Cuban winter in its glove. Cold, cold nights; cool days too for the sun has little strength to warm us while the wind connives with dawn to spread icy crystals on tremulous tree branches brushing up against my sleepy window. II

Youth is fiery, age is frosty. Longfellow Old age strikes all in an instant. James Deahl

January 2023 is passing fast, like life a pageant of swift hours that enter our skin telling our bodies what oldness means,

unbridled minutes

that strum our DNA´s strings replaying in our minds the metaphors Youth is fire, age is cold.

III

I will fear no evil: for thou art with me. Psalms 23:4 In process of the seasons have I seen… Shakespeare There´s so much of January in this time of the year, infrequent winter hugs unusual snaps of cold full nights and days. I rejoice in being alive this 2023: God warms my body and my hopes as I behold the season´s cycle unfold its chilly blanket intent on frosting my calendar. January freezes the world yet God saves me thawing the arctic fears that bite me.

Una pulida tarde de noviembre, poco antes del pistoletazo, Van Gogh me sugería usar el tierra de sombra tostada y los azules ultramarinos, y construir mucosidades a partir de ahí. Esto es todo cuanto sé. Eso y que la acuarela es una multitud de charquitos de agua beduina, pigmentos y goma arábiga.

¡Ah! Y trabajar más rápido que escupida de músico, que las manchas sean gestuales como los garabatos chinos. Yo ya tenía conocimiento de que el agua de Holguín, rica en permanganato, era generosa para velar cartulinas y criar piedras en los riñones. Y sin perder de vista esa ventaja me atreví con este retrato arlequinesco, uno de muchos que ahora andan endulzando paredes por el Mediterráneo. Lo pinté, igual que al resto, en menos de lo que se persigna un cura loco.

Eros: Largado en el satín de un blanco disparejo, un estambre de mujer con pensativo ruido de tijera.

Un gusano carmesí en la blusa plisada y petirroja de nieves y de ramas y en los pies todo el hollín de los calvarios de Padua.

Eros bueno, fantasma de labios indecentes como el joven amor en las colinas,

como las faldas rojas que esconden la fogata de una piel o las copas errantes de los heliotropos, Edén que un dios venéreo cansado de siglos y epidemias soñó para nosotros.

Painting by Víctor Manuel

Ablandado por la escarcha de Frimario, mes rico en travesías y coronaciones, he pensado en la ausencia que nos espera a ambos extremos de la vida, ese misterio que llaman Eternidad. Y he recordado hasta las lágrimas, sentimental como soy, este texto brevísimo ya lejano, que bien pudiera servirme algún día de epitafio, "La siesta"...

La siesta: Cuando todo pase, novia mía, déjame dormir en San Andrés, arropado solo del recuerdo. Llévame un domingo, cuando la nube de alquitrán ponga el Sol como un beso redondo sobre las lomas en llamas. Y ponle una flor plebeya a mi reposo, que su tenue pubertad me acompañe dulce al otro lado.

Softened by the frost of Frimario, a month rich in voyages and coronations, I have thought about the absence that awaits us at both ends of life, that mystery called Eternity. And I have remembered to tears, sentimental as I am, this very brief text already far away, which could well serve me one day as an epitaph, "La siesta"...

The NAP: When everything happens, my girlfriend, let me sleep in San Andrés, wrapped only in memory. Take me on a Sunday, when the tar cloud sets the sun like a round kiss on the burning hills. And put a plebeian flower to my rest, may its tenuous puberty accompany me sweetly to the other side.

Painting by Víctor Manuel Velázquez

Holguin writers owe much to many Canadian poet friends. Their loyalty, generosity, advice, support and friendliness are worth-praising always. One of those friends is John Hamley, the Haiku Master. Time-honored Canada Cuba Literary Alliance member, published and acclaimed both in Canada and abroad, Hamley devotes a part of his time to help poets in the making, like me, to improve our creative writing skills. I cannot let my book, In My Night Silence, go public without deeply acknowledging and thanking him –and by extension other Canadian poet friends– for his perfectionist´s touch and interest in refining my humble work, and for his open-hearted gesture to bring me a print copy of the book, a nearly impossible feat for me to attain. Grateful is the word that best describes how I feel. Thank you, John.

About Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández, author of : In my Night Silence (SandCrab Books, 2021)

Los escritores Holguineros deben mucho a muchos amigos poetas canadienses. Su lealtad, generosidad, consejos, apoyo y amabilidad son dignos de elogio--siempre. Uno de esos amigos es John Hamley, el Maestro de Haiku. Miembro consagrado de la Alianza Literaria Canadá Cuba, publicado y aclamado tanto en Canadá como en el extranjero, Hamley dedica una parte de su tiempo a ayudar a los poetas en ciernes, como yo, a mejorar nuestras habilidades de escritura creativa. No puedo dejar que mi libro, “En Mi Silencio Nocturno” , se haga público sin reconocerlo y agradecerle profundamente a él –y por extensión a otros amigos poetas canadienses– su toque perfeccionista e interés en refinar mi humilde obra, y su sincero gesto para traerme una copia impresa del libro, una hazaña casi imposible de lograr para mí. Agradecido es la palabra que mejor describe cómo me siento. Gracias John.

Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández was born in Santiago de Cuba in 1961, but he spent his childhood and teen age years in Bayamo, a town on the eastern part of Cuba, north of Santiago. He attended local schools during that time. He liked reading story books, painting, fishing and the theater, and took part in children’s lit contests where he was awarded citations and mentions. As a student he was given the opportunity to attend a school where studies and work were combined: ESBEC (Junior High School in the Countryside). He excelled in English, Spanish and Industrial Arts. He continued developing his artistic talents at writ ing. His interest in the arts led him to enroll a Teacher Education College, majoring in English. His freshman years began at IPE (Institute of Professional Upgrading), where he completed the academic courses and received his first degree as a Junior High School Teacher of English. His merits allowed him to pursue university studies and he graduated summa cum laude as a Bachelor in Education, English Major, in 2007, from the Holguín University of Pedagogical

Sciences. He started working as an English teacher in the years 1977-1978. He moved along all the teaching levels: Junior and Senior High, School of Economy, Poly-technical Schools and Language Schools. He was appointed Head Professor in many of these schools. He also worked with foreign students in the Isle of Youth, and was awarded as Best Teacher Assistant, he worked too in INTUR (National Tourism Institute) in Granma Province as a language coordinator at the Sierra Maestra Hotel in Bayamo, Bartolomé Masó Lookout and Guacanayabo Hotel in Manzanillo, and participated as a language coordinator in the LINGUATUR Workshops taught during the summer by Canadian professors in Varadero, Cuba, about communicative competence for tourism students. He was a member of the Protocol Group for International Tourism, contributing in many occasions to hard currency revenues for the country. During his upgrading projects he completed courses on restaurant-bar, kitchen and bakery-confectionery services.

He participated in the “First Scientific Workshop on Tourism Services Quality” with the paper entitled “Role of Language towards the Development of Touristic Culture.” He was also a singer in the Bayamo Professional Choir, and taught English pronunciation to concert singers with different tessitura. He lives in Gibara, Holguín, now. He worked as a Specialist in Scientific and Pedagogical Information, known later as CDIP (Documentary and Informational Center). He was rewarded for his outstanding participation in the Municipal Workshop “Revolution’s Programs” with a research paper. He was a Supervisor of School Libraries, worked at the University Branch in Gibara, took part in ENALEX (Foreign Language Teaching Workshop), and in varied research works, and national and international events related to his profession, then was transferred to the Gibara Branch of the Holguín Medical School where he taught English in the different majors. He was awarded the José Tey Medal presented by the State Council of the Republic of Cuba. He has devoted his life in Gibara to fishing, which has been his greatest aspiration. He was chosen VP of the Pepín Infante Gibara Fishing Center and stayed in that position for some time. His boat, that he named Isabel María, was his inseparable partner for twenty-one years.

He has been in the poetry world. He belongs to the Peña Cultural de los Creadores Gibareños (Gibara Poets Cultural Group), to the Raúl Gómez García Casa de la Cultura de Gibara, won the first prize in poetry during the Semana de la Cultura, has been a promoter and supporter of culture in his town with expos, book launches, poetry reading and book donations to numerous institutions.

He has published in English and Spanish issues, among them his first poetry and short story book entitled Jorge and the Sea. Together with members of the Gibara Poets Cultural Group, he published Marea de Sueños, a compilation of poetry. In December 2012 was published the book The Sea of All, with poems by ten Gibara and Holguín authors, and created the First Lit Workshop “Marea de Sueños” with the support of the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance (CCLA), where Jorge assists in the translation of poetry and prose. He also collaborated in the publication of Mis versos son para ti Gibara, a compilation of two-hundred poems by two-hundred poets to honor the two-hundred year old city. He has published in the Bridges Series Books, Where the Heart Lies (2018) and in the Canadian anthology The Dream The Glory and The Strife (2018) by the CCLA. He has also published in the newsletter The Envoy, where he works now as Editor in chief to promote Cuban and Canadian culture, art and photography. The last book of poetry is the one you could see here in The Envoy, it is called “In My Night Silence”

Thank you Tai, Thank you John

About John Hamley

The New book of HAIKU by John Hamley

This book is dedicated to the memory of my mother Mari Kuusela (1912-1997) who has a brilliant mind and a mischievous sense of humor. When I was little, she recited to me couplet that translates to

Vast are the steppes of Siberia

Sonya alone shovels snow

which I suspect is a parody of some famous Russian song. Perhaps not a haiku, but an image so strong it has stayed with me all these years.

Creador Inmortal

Por Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

Tu revistes los cauces de verde riqueza a los árboles das derramas consuelo sobre la tierra colocas las nubes para sombras los arroyos espumeantes creaste rudo grito a las olas del mar con tu hálito el aire respiro nuestra órbita acoge Tus rugidos y abraza triunfante Tu voz fragante rocío que moja la viña mi cuerpo débil ante Ti levanta la frente vista firme a Tu rostro perfecto mis rodillas declinan al suelo solo Tu, creador inmortal.

Immortal Creator

Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

You cover the riverbeds with green wealth to the trees you give You bring comfort to the earth You place the clouds for shadows the foaming streams you created rude cry to the waves of the sea with Your breath I breathe the air our orbit welcomes Your roars and triumphantly embrace your voice fragrant dew that wets the vineyard my weak body before You raises its forehead steady gaze on Your perfect face my knees drop to the ground Only You, inmortal creator.

By Wency Rosales

By Jorge Alberto Pérez

Masthead

Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández, CCLA Ambassador, Editor

Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias, CCLA Cuban President, Assistant Editor

Adonay Pérez Luengo, reviewing editor

Katharine Beeman, reviewing editor

Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado, CCLA Cuban Poet Laureate, reviewing editor

Wency Rosales, Cuban photography curator

Editor´s emails: joyph@nauta.cu joyphccla@gmail.com jorgealbertoph@infomed.sld.cu

FROM THE EDITOR:

IN OUR UPCOMING ISSUES, WE WOULD LIKE SUBMISSIONS FROM EVERY CCLA MEMBER SO THAT YOU RECEIVE SOME DESERVED PUBLICITY WHILE WE ARE NURTURED BY YOU. BOOK LAUNCHES? POETRY EVENTS? LET US KNOW ABOUT THEM AND WE WILL PRINT UP THE INFORMATION IN THE ENVOY.