The ENVOY The official newsletter of the
Canada Cuba Literary Alliance I.S.S.N. – 1911‐0693
MAY, 2019
Issue 087
www.CanadaCubaLiteraryAlliance.org
OFFICIAL CCLA INVITATION TO CUBA JANUARY 2020
Hello, dear CCLA friends! Our next CCLA trip will be two weeks in January/February 2020. Date to be announced soon. We will meet in Holguín at the Mirador Resort looking north over the jungle canopy! We meet every year with a large or small grourp. The last Holguin group meeting was January 2017, during the presentation of the third book of the Bridges Series. It is about time we gathered again, as many of us as possible, to continue the CCLA tradition. This is
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
our big year of cheerfully closing the 2019 celebrations for the fifteen years of the CCLA. Please contact our Cuba President Miguel Olivé by email at cclacubanprez@gmail.com and migueloi@uho.edu.cu and let us know if you are interested in this year’s trip. Winter is harsh up in Canada, so what better way to fight it than packing up and coming down to enjoy our warm beaches and resorts, and above all the warmth of us friends meeting and sharing and reading poetry doing workshops, doing day trips and bonding more time? Tai says I am an “eager beaver,” but then I have my female alter ego in Adonay, Manuel Velázquez´s wife. She is already planning what we will do. Adonay is an excellent everything-planner and hostess, so don´t miss this opportunity! OUR ENVOYS 88 AND 89 WILL GIVE YOU DETAILS OF WHAT WE ARE PLANNING FOR 2020 – THINGS TO DO, PLACES TO GO, SURPRISES! Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias CCLA President in Cuba & The Ambassador Editor-in-chief Adonay Pérez Luengo CCLA VP in Cuba and “Executive Secretary” Miguel: cclacubanprez@gmail.com&migueloi@uho.edu.cu Adonay: adonaypl@nauta.cu (for short note, no attachments) & adonaypl076@gmail.com
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
The Envoy Editor: Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández. CCLA Ambassador of Sea Dreamers Gibara
Assistant Editors: Miriam Vera Delgado. CCLA author Adislenis Castro Ruiz. CCLA author, and
CCLA Cuban Prez, The Ambassador Editor-in-chief and poet: Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias
Adislenis Castro Ruiz Gibara, Holguín, Cuba, 1972.Mechanical Engineer.Narrator and poet. She is a member of the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance (CCLA) and the Literary Workshops "Armando Leyva Balaguer" and "Manuel Navarro Luna," both from Gibara, municipality where she resides. Her work has been published in the newsletters Cacoyugüin, from the Gibara Culture Club network, and Arrecife, from the Gibara local bookstore. Also, in the books Mis poemas son para ti Gibara, The Sea of All, Gibara 200 años, edited by the CCLA, and the book XIV Contest of Children's Tales without Borders by the Publishing House TXIRULAKulturTaldea. Her literary creation has been presented in cultural gatherings and local institutions. She has won awards and mentions in municipal contests and in the "XIV Contest of Children's Tales Without Borders," in Bilbao, Spain, 2016.
Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado Born in Holguín, Cuba. She worked as a ship invoicer for 23 years at Moa port and 10 years as a private English teacher. She started writing stories for adults in the ‘90s and has received several awards in Cuban literary contests. Her poetry and her short story “Paranormal Phenomena in my Life” appeared in the Stellar Showcase Journal. Early in 2010 her poetry book From the Heart was published by J. Graham Publishing. She is a constant poet and prose writer in the CCLA issues since it was founded in 2004.
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias Member, Editor-in-chief of the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance (CCLA) magazine The Ambassador, and CCLA President in Cuba. He also does translation, proofreading, reviewing and revision, along with compilation and anthologizing, and writes prose, poetry and literary reviews. He is a member of the Mexican Association of Language and Literature Professors, VP of the William Shakespeare Studies Center and member of the Canadian Studies Department of the Holguín University in Cuba. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Holguín, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Education, Major in English, and a Master’s Degree in Pedagogical Sciences. Miguel has written and published academic papers in Cuba, Mexico, Spain and Canada. He works in the Teacher Education English Department as a professor of English and English Stylistics. He is also Head of the English Language Discipline. He uses his academic papers, essays, stories and poems in class for reading, debating and practicing the language, adding a didactic and formative element to his scientific and literary production. He also does book presentations and poetry reading in on-campus and community activities.
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
THE AMBASSADOR 015 CCLA "From the pages of The Envoy 87, its Editor and Assistant Editors are pleased to announce the publication of The Ambassador 015. This is a special celebratory issue for the CCLA´s fifteen years. Please go to ussuu.com website to find it! You can also click at https://issuu.com/richardgrove1 to find all issues of The Ambassador! The CCLA will keep the cultural bridge open back in 2004 by Richard Grove, Kim Grove and Manuel Velázquez, among other Canadian and Cuban friends! Be sure we will be celebrating our second fifteen years of friendship and cultural exchange in 2034!"
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
Parable of the Mouse and the Owl By:John B. Lee
I was driving home my car enclosed in the white claustrophobia
hovering as an opaque whirlwind
of a winter storm
of indifferent darkness
my headlights stuffing
doubled by a wet-feathered blizzard
a luminous squall with angel-form
and there in my path
my mind threading
fate has placed a full-stopped stranger
the slow squint of a winding road
blocking the way
as though lost on the narrow meander of farm lane
and both directions drop
I’m following the rocky outcrop
for all my lonesome importuning
cut into the perilous contours
of divine intervention
of the limestone escarpment
thisdeus ex machina
I’m auto-caught between an unforgiving guardrail
becomes my circumstance
and the sheer face of an ominous stone god
and there in that unloving cold
rising up and out of the earth looming over the lake
in that mouse and owl moment
as though in judgment of all smaller things
I meet the plunging edge of everything
my heart like a runner’s heart
star-born and eventual
my prayer simply to excel
and on my own in the universe
to defeat the morbid
I vanish looking up at the red claws of heave
altitude this slab shadow
looking down on the shrinking hill
this death bringer
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com Longer Biography Statement:
Pat Connors first chapbook, Scarborough Songs, was published by
Lyricalmyrical Press in 2013, and charted on the Toronto Poetry Map. He was literary juror of Big Art Book 2013, a digital project of Scarborough Arts. He has appeared in entities such as Toronto Quarterly, Zouch Magazine & Miscellany, This Place Anthology, Northern Voices Journal, Poetry’Z Own Magazine, Chrysalis Zine, and was nominated for the 2011 Best of the Net contest. He recently published in: Canadian Stories; Big Pond Rumours; and Sharing Spaces, a joint project of York University and Antares Publications. Part-Time Contemplative is his second chapbook. He is a manager for the Toronto chapter of 100,000 Poets for Change. To the Point; When My Worlds Collide; Epic.
To the Point
When My Worlds Collide
The best poems are written to be read by anyone.
My world was always meant to come together.
Meticulously crafted over a period of time
To have flow, unity, and coherence.
To seem written quickly and simply.
Even as a little boy, I lived in many worlds. Problems always would arise when they would collide.
The best moments in life
Especially when I forced them to.
are the result of years of preparation passing by in a burst
Now, I live in that flow, embrace my reality,
causing change
the uniqueness of who I am.
even if you are not ready.
I accept the differences of all the worlds in which I walk. I love each one of them individually, as well as part of
Before you realize
a collective blessing.
they have happened they have happened
Now, when my worlds collide, there is no confusion,
and stay with you forever.
no fear, no resentment. And I am free to be myself, not the guy I am within any crowd. Now, I can try to help make the world the kind of place I have always wanted to live in. Now that my life has begun.
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
Epic
My feet set squarely in the present. My eyes firmly focused on the future. The narrow way seems dangerous and hard wrought with strife and lonely. But when not absorbed in seeming circumstances or caught up in wavering from side
to
side
it merely becomes the surest and shortest distance between two points. The past has passed and the present is but a fleeting gift— I will hold out for the future and trust in what it brings.
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
NOTES ON PRIOR PUBLICATION These poems were all published in 2017 in Bottom of the Wine Jar, by SandCrab Press. Launches were held in the town of Gibara, Holguin Province, Cuba, as well as Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Included here are listings for some of the other publications of these poems. “To the Point” was originally published in Big Art Book 2014 by Scarborough Arts. “When My Worlds Collide” was featured on the blog of The League of Canadian Poets for one weekend in April of 2013. It was also published by Aquilrelle Magazine, an online publication from Belgium, in May of 2016. “Epic” was originally published by Word Salad Poetry Magazine in their Summer 2010 issue. It was also posted online by Poetry Pacific in November, 2018.
Alewives
BY: NORMA WEST LINDER Down, down into the round unseeing amber eye I stare transfixed held by a coal‐black pupil. This shining body darts no more yet glistens still upon the shore beside my wave‐lapped feet. Along this sun‐bright beach numbers of your kind have spilt their silver lives on shifting sands. Slowly, with regret I turn away. I cannot plunge light‐hearted into these emerald waters —not today.
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
ONE HUNDRED CENTS
By: Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado
Story To Chely, my daughter-in-law… It was carnival, and my son and his family had come to visit me. That afternoon we went out to walk the main streets, enjoy de variety of sales and the colorful ambiance of those days. We walked around, our little girl rode on all the equipments in the Amusement Park and then we continued to an ice cream parlor. On our way, we ran into a man selling parakeets of different colors and trills. Right there our “little one” fell in love with them and asked us to buy one for her. She claimed that she couldn’t have a puppy or a kitten because they didn’t have a yard and their house was too little, but that she could have a parakeet. It was not so simple, each of them was 100 pesos, and you had to buy the couple or they would turn sad. Since we didn’t have a cage we also had to buy one. So, adding 2 parakeets, 100 pesos each, and a 200 pesos cage, it was 400, and that was without mentioning the food that had to be bought. We managed to persuade her into going for ice cream and promised that there we would make a decision. While having our ice creams, we agreed that I would buy the two parakeets, and her father, the cage and the food. We explained to our little girl, that it was a sacrifice, due to the price, and we tried to make her understand that it was a lot of money. She was asking for 100 pesos parakeets. We were walking out of the ice cream parlor, when my little girl, that seemed to be deep in thought, said: “Granma, do you know that my mother had once to save 100 cents?” I answered her that I didn’t, and asked her how she knew. She said that her mother had told her this story once. Then I asked her if she knew for what she had saved them, but she didn’t remember that part of the story. Since her parents were immersed in their own conversation, they hadn’t heard ours. So I interrupted them and told the mother what our little girl had just told me, adding that she didn’t remember the reason. Then she told me, while a soft smile, mixture of remembrance and melancholy, showed on her face: “As you know, my parents have always been humble farmers, and although they had the money for our basic needs, there was no money to be given to the children. I could only take the cents that came with the change, whenever they paid for something. I loved the little apple marmalade pots they sold in the 70’s, so I decided to save one hundred cents to buy myself one. I started saving them in a little box, counting them once in a while. Four of five months later, I had put together my one hundred cents and ran happily to our little campsite store. Once there, I asked the clerk to change them for one peso, and then holding my peso, I asked him for a small apple pot, which price was a little less. Full of happiness, with the small pot in my hands, I started my way back, joyfully running and jumping. But our road was a ground one and the stones were abundant, and with one of them I stumbled. As I fell down, I saw my little pot flying away from my hands and crashing against the road. I stood up slowly, and tried to clean the dust from my knees and hands, while I stared at the little apple marmalade puddle, full of glass pieces, that was now in front of me. I couldn’t stop the tears. After sobbing for a few minutes, I sighed, and started walking slowly towards my house… to start again saving one hundred cents.”
Colin Morton's tenth collection of poetry, The Undead, was published in 2018 by Aeolus House Press, and launched in Ottawa. His wife Mary Lee Bragg will publish her first full-size poetry book with Aeolus House in spring 2019. They both will be reading at Kingston, Ontario's ArtFest on Canada Day, July 1, and Mary Lee will be having launches later in Toronto and Ottawa.I also have some new poems online at Ascent (www.readthebestwriting.com) and soon at Valparaiso Revew..
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
POEM Doctor Cody is retiring Doctor Cody, who saw all your children into the world, who relieved you of your flaming appendix and eased your mother’s passing into the realm she had been dreaming of for years, Doctor Cody, who has poked and peered and listened to you almost all your life, is retiring, and the young one, Doctor Cody Junior, doesn’t care the same way and never will. Some other young doctors will look inside you but will never know you as Doctor Cody did, and for that, for once, you can be thankful, because you are not the same person Doctor Cody knew and you don’t know that you want anyone to know this new, old you that well. Doctor Cody is retiring and your old body goes on, but you know there will never again be a Doctor Cody, and when you stop to think, you know, you never knew him.
Colin Morton Notre Dame de Paris Brûle Our Lady of Paris is now
devotees and deniers
and ever
tourists and travellers
shall be
and lovers
France’s
of all things beautiful and old
Point Zéro
and otherworldly
the heart of Île de la cité
and Our Lady of Paris shall be
where all roads start
as in the beginning – parceque
and taken for granted
Notre Dame de Paris
byParisiens and ex-pats
ç’est Paris
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
Awe By: Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias
I´ve seen the evening dip its darkness in the sea slowly embrace the waves turn cold and vast. I´ve felt their might swallow time and space, humbled at their greatness awed deep in my heart.
Sobrecogimiento He visto el anochecer mojar su oscuridad en la mar abrazar lentamente las olas volverse frío e inmenso. He sentido su poder devorar el tiempo y el espacio, apocado por su grandeza sobrecogido profundamente en mi corazón. LOVE FORMULA By: Raúl Vera Delgado The architecture of perfect love Is a well-known recipe. Knowing that violence, death and Suffering Only engender new and bigger failures The adequate formula was created With a compound of wonderful elements: Absorbing during 33 years enough pain, happiness, sweetness, admiration and reasoning; Hang from a wooden cross amidst the deepest suffering, Resurge and spread in the Universe as a celestial offering; Emanating love and confidence in big amounts in all directions… And Forgive.
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
The Honey Bees of Notre Dame
By Patricia Black
180,000 honeybees - theMelissas lesabeilles de Notre Dame whose hives sat on the ancient roof are silent drunk sontivres intoxicated by the smoke billowing rising into the Paris sky from centuries’ old wooden beams lesabeilles have no lungs bee-keepers’ smoke calms them so calm amidst the destruction devastation of the great fire miracle des miracles the bees
tiny winged messengers of hope
survive! across Europe cathedral bells peal Our Lady of Paris and her Queen bees dare a small smile April 23, 2019 Revised May 1, 2019
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
Bruce Meyer
Foreword by George Elliott Clarke In a poetry career that spans more than forty years, Bruce Meyer has given us poems that emphasize the importance of our humanity. From that simple gift of love, compassion, generosity of spirt, and faith in small, daily acts, Meyer has created a chronicle of the overlooked life that is there for everyone to embrace. A master of form and phrase, these poems convey the beauty of a heart and soul that refuses to surrender its hope and justice. This collection marks the first time Meyer’s work has been presented in overview, and reveals the scope and power of his voice. Bruce Meyer is author or editor of more than sixty books of poetry short fiction, non-fiction, memoir, portrait photography, textbooks, reference books, and anthologies. Best known for his broadcasts of The Great Books and Poetry is Life and Vice-Versa for CBC Radio and the national bestsellers, The Golden Thread and Portraits of Canadian Writers, Meyer has introduced generations of readers to the joys of literature. His work has been shortlisted for numerous prizes, and he has won the IP Medal for Best Book of Poems in North America (The Seasons), the Gwendolyn MacEwen Prize, and the E.J. Pratt Gold Medal and Prize for Poetry. He was the inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Barrie from 2010 to 2014, and teaches literature and creative writing at Georgian College in Barrie and Victoria College in the University of Toronto. He lives in Barrie with his wife, Kerry Johnston, and their daughter Katie. His poems shine through the cracks of our every day existence, leaving us standing in awe before the wonder of living and the need to stretch our own vision. The First Taste is hopefully a foretaste of many feasts to come – nourishing fare for the wavering soul. — James Clarke Bruce Meyer’s poetry has magnitude, expressing a keen perception of complex family, regional and global realities. Through an adroit use of traditional forms, masterful narrative techniques and transformative metaphors, he gives insight into our contemporary world, offering moments of revelation and hope. — Laurence Hutchman FirstTaste-Cover.indd 1 18-07-24 7:30 PM
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
YELLOW BY: BRUCE MEYER
That night, tired in every aching bone, I had a dream in which I met you. You were standing among the flowers, the cosmos and black-eyed susans that grew on the walkway to our door, and glowed with questions of childhood, a brilliance almost blinding me – you were energy in search of substance, a child whose golden ringlets fell as if strands of a story yet untold, and you said, “This is my room.” I have painted many rooms for you – a Chinoiserie red bath retreat, as red as an envelope of lucky cash; a Barbie sunburn-pink explosion for when you thought you were a princess; and a slate grey teenage funk-out when the world just needed to adjust: I would paint the chambers of my heart if I thought I could keep you there. But nothing compares to that yellow room. It was not the yellow of spring or sunlight but a yellow as intense as hope – the yellow of a wish on its way to granting, a yellow that lights the sun with gifts, the small light that is all I offer, the little I could do to give you space when you find days too dark for light’s reply. I shall labor at the walls until they fall to a candle’s glow that lights your way.
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
THE FUTURE
By: Bruce Meyer
My best coat sits heavy on my shoulders. My best coat has many pockets, and each is stuffed with what I carry, with all I take with me to the future. My coat is shelter. I have taken you inside it many times, pretended it is a house of tweed, a dwelling place, a place of safety, a shelter of pockets to warm your hands. My best coat is way too heavy as I ride a crowded, overheated bus through the white-out of a December storm. To either side of the narrow highway, fields as white as the future spread then vanish beyond a wire fence that says there were boundaries once … O, my love, what does the future hold? My hands ache but there is only snow, and whatever exists beyond the white, beyond the familiar and the forgetful— will it be a place that is part of us? Will it sit heavily on my shoulders, too? Will it have pockets to keep our secrets safe? Will it be a shelter from future storms?
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
The Bay BY: WENCY ROSALES We slaw walked to the seashore my grandson sturdily holding my hand slippery from the sweat provoked by the still hot afternoon sun. A strong breeze forced the seagulls to fly and fly over a delicious shoal of strange fish in the restless bay waters. Time-trapped coconut trees swayed their yellow boughs and only the sound of the waves breaking against the rotted dock escorted in perfect synchronicity the lonely afterglow. As we neared we saw the dirty waters, and what looked like fish in sleep was only the remainders of the creatures that could not survive such big pollution. Once more the strong March breeze brought the scent of polluted saltpeter, one more time the disappointed seagulls flew and my five-year-old grandson murmured --- So bad, no one can take a swim here --And we walked back on the wet grass looking for an idea to save the species in the bay.
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
NATURE´S NEEDLEPOINT
By: Kimberly Elizabeth Grove The view from my cabin window is Nature’s large empty cloth. White as this page, winter lingers. Brittle frosted branches begin the lines and angles etching a rough gray sketch with the needle’s single trail. Spring’s streaks of lightning startle any artist’s hand as the rumbling thunder like distant fireworks warns that the belly of the sky will open. The artist’s cloth is rinsed through before jungle shades of green begin to border the scene. Then the whistle of a camouflaged thrush pierces the air; the sound struggles, reaching for sunlight to signal summer’s lazy days. Bright yellow daffodils worship the sun while lilacs perfume the air. Roses, lilies and tulips sew more colour into the fabric. She adds the hundreds of leaves that will crumple underfoot like worn paper bags. The height of colour woven into Her work, She applies some final touches, blowing away Unnecessary edges or redoing ugly patches. A sewn-in signature like the branding of a great creature, the artisan stands back with me to survey the masterpiece.
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
Grapes in September BY JAMES DEAHL Grow early old with grief that then Must to the wastes of nature go — — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every day the Concord grapes grow larger. Soon their purple blush will glow in the dawn. In each life must come a harvest, an autumn day when the sugars attain perfection. Perhaps we must also die to enter perfection like grapes bursting for the press. We drag our grief into stony deserts as if redemption followed suffering. When winter arrives the vines die back, but these scorching sands have survived ten thousand years.
“Freedom, passion, beauty and surrendering fly from The Envoy pages across Canada and Cuba, even beyond our frontiers” Words by: Manuel de Jesús Velázquez León
MAY 2019 ENVOY-087 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
Silver Sea by Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández This is my silver sea Sending back to us the reflection of a naked moon Celestial jewel that irradiates Hoarse roars Of incomprehensible harmonies Bustling waters A sea always agitated By the wind´s hands. I am privileged to breathe The salty air coming with the waves Constantly breaking against the rocks They wear off my fatigue Nourish the energy That opens my heart And fill it with endless hope.