Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
Yesterday, I learned that Dr. Sultan Al Jabar has been appointed president for COP28, the 2023 iteration of the misnamed conference on climate change. Al Jabar is the UAE minister for industry and advanced technology but, more pointedly, also serves as chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), the world’s 12th largest…
Do I really think Canada is dying? I’m not sure. I do think a particular narrative of Canada is dead and gone, didn’t deserve to live in the first place. The better question is whether we can work up a more robust narrative…
Before there were germs, there was miasma. Bad air. Billows rolling off the bogs and fens. The stench of swamp gas. The rot of ferns and trees fallen to decay in stagnant pools. Fetid. Rancid. Odoriferous.
cellular breakdown draws our thoughts to death, but seen afresh, it reveals an act of generosity
Orwell observed that the manipulations of language are important to the machinations of power. He observed it in the gradual impoverishment of vocabulary (newspeak). But he only identified half the matter. He failed to note a corresponding impoverishment of musicality in speech.
Let’s bust up this concrete lockdown and hurry back to going nowhere.
when Christ blew out the candle
darkness hit the road
three days down on my knees
fumbling for matches from Joe’s
A poem to mark July 4th, 2018, and the celebration of American Independence, or whatever. As a Canadian, I find it hard to give a flying fabrication.
Is there a difference between the dirt-smudged smile pasted to a seven-foot face on a billboard and a Netflix scientist riffing on the stardust that lives and moves and shapes our being? The teeth survive the body; our dentists have seen to that. But they’re no match for the stars which wheel through our dreams…
We’re smitten by extroverted summer days, effusive skies, sunlight chattering through leaves. Soon it’s time for the weather to turn, a seat alone, rain clattering against the pane.
A poem inspired by my neighbour’s sexual prowess and the feelings of inadequacy it engenders.
My cultural moment came and went. Now the useless pendant chafes my neck, brings to mind remaindered analytic books whose theses chased the waddling ass that lapped me on the straight-away. I let it pass and listened to their twaddle. The blubbering cheeks squidge on. Their route? I couldn’t say. There was an instant, back…
While browsing used titles in Cambridge, / I found an old volume, The Limerick. / Tho not illustrated, / ”Twas unexpurgated / The famous Paris Edition and you get the idea. It’s a consolidation of various sources dating from 1870 to 1952 and even includes one questionable mention of Toronto from 1941
More tomb than room, was what she said.My grandmother fled to the fields,convinced the old farm house held death,a mid-life freak, I guess, though to hear hertell it, planets must have collidedand debris come raining from the skies.Grandfather had quit his farming, severedten acres for himself and sold the rest.I had just been born, maybe…
Kevin, do you remember our tripto the Science Centre when we stoodat our separate consoles playing tictac toe against the computer?Monolith displays half-way acrossthe gallery, light-bulb arrayslike movie marquees while vacuumtubes chugged out the next moves?And you said you had a friendsmarter’n me, betchure life,who come here one time an’ beat it.And I said, in…