Fall 2013, Volume 4. Issue 1

Well, it has been a long time since our last edition of Mosaic 2.0. To those authors who submitted their writings expecting a 2012 publication, we apologize. I will not go into details on why the Advanced Writing Centre team was diverted from this project, except to say that it has been a year of transitions for us and of intense activity with our student priorities at CNA-Q.  But rest assured, the AWC will endeavor to publish Mosaic 2.0 at least once per year, while striving for two editions, one in the spring and one in the fall.

Mosaic 2.0's contributors for this edition include authors whose names are familiar to regular visitors to our blog. And some authors are new to us. While most of our writers this time reside in Qatar, they continue a 'tradition' of representing different countries, races, cultures and, indeed, continents.This feature of our writing blog is almost as exciting for us as are the writings themselves. But truly, it is the writings, from around the world, in voices representing its diversity, finding their way to this single, globally accessible venue that is our raison d'etre, our reason for existing.

Predictably, the subjects embraced in this edition are diverse. Julie O'Rourke in a short-short story goes back into Roman history and contemplates the experience of Ovid as he realizes that his instinct for self-expression has dangerously angered the Emperor Augustus. Lina Al-Sharif touches on that primal need to express, emphasizing the importance for her of the freedom to write. James Thurgood covers a lot of turf with poems inspired by his encounters with people in China and the ancient poets they revere; and with a native elder in a Canadian city who 'disappears' but not utterly, not for James. Then in a whimsical piece, he regards himself as grave companion to Shakespeare's Romeo, at the point that his own remains are unearthed by an archeologist. Finally, he declares his affinity with a musical insect. Paula Hayden's three verses are terse testimonies about lies, the burden of stuff, and the coy instants of flamboyance that are typical of the Gulf's otherwise desert austerity. Epifania Amoo-Adare shares a contemplative mood as she absorbs the elements of nature at Accra, capital of Ghana. Umeshkumar Radhakrishnan's enigmatic piece seems to cry for uncooperative words to come to him with 'pleasure to the painful heart / and solace to the tattered soul'. Finally, I offer a rendering of Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene, as it might be played out in the pathos of modern romance--across oceans via texting.

So, enjoy, until the next Mosaic 2.0 edition. And to conclude on that point, please spread the word, that anyone is eligible to submit short stories, poems, essays, photos and artwork. Our editorial team at the Advanced Writing Centre will make the final selection of items for publication. For detailed explanation of eligible items, maximum length, etc., click on the Submit link in the top right-hand margin.

Kevin Pittman

Editor / AWC Coordinator

Night Falls on Ovid

by Julie O'Rourke

Editor’s note: The poet Ovid was forced into exile from Rome on the order of Emperor Augustus. The year was 8CE, and Ovid was 68 years old. He made his way to the  city of Tomis on the Black Sea at the very edge of the empire. Ovid repeatedly asked for clemency, but was never allowed to return. Ovid's offense, described in his own words as “worse than murder and more harmful than poetry,”  was never disclosed.  

Julie's translation/interpretation is from a Latin document that some scholars believe was written by Seneca, Ovid’s younger contemporary.

In the weeks leading up to his arrest and sentencing, rumours circulated about the City: the old man was fuming, he was after blood, someone would atone for his embarrassment. Even the poet heard stories he shouldn’t have.

When the sentence was delivered, he was given eight hours to attend to his affairs, pack his bags, say his farewells and depart. Those hours passed in frenetic activity; things were hurled into crates, loans called in, patrons and clients summarily dismissed. Like all men in crisis, part of his mind stood aloof, waiting for the joke to be revealed, waiting for time to slow down to its quotidian pace...for the reprieve. Another part of his mind argued with the disbelieving part and harried the panic: the part that preserves skin at any cost.

The hot afternoon closed, taking the swollen sun to deserving rest, washing the cares of the day from its radiance in the soothing waters of the river of dreams, of sleep and renewal: Tethys.

Ovid had one minute to note the brilliant moon arching into the sky like the back of a snowy sacrificial bull, rising to join the gamboling lambs who drink the nectar of the milky night. Time frozen in starlight.

For years after he remembered that teetering moment between banishment and home, day and night, citizen and exile.

On Wan Wei's 'Reply to Chang Yin'

by James Thurgood

Editor's note: Wang Wei was a great 8th century poet of the Liang Dynasty in China, known for his evocation of nature. A Buddhist/Taoist comtemplative, he favoured rural retreats, from where he communicated with friends and contemporaries across China.

 

we aren’t told if Chang Yin did visit -

if Wang Wei really thought he might,

which I doubt: the invitation is too off-hand,

too wistful, as if turned down

more than once before                                  

anyway, should you make it

this far north, you’ve got a place to stay

- we’ll sit out under the maple trees

and talk about other Chinese poems

To a Physical Anthropologist

by James Thurgood

 

                   should you dig this jawbone up

                 and note a molar broken

             don’t declare he lived with pain

                      for so do all and

            its nature falls beyond your scope

- nor will you reckon the probing journey of

       this silver tongue long gone, which

            in keeping with the greater machine

      succumbed to danger’s charm, thus

as it teased a jagged fang, tearing then

      swelling such that in its eloquent course

it brushed said blade again

                bled, throbbed, and though warned

            took a thousand cuts, till

      by next afternoon, as said greater machine - that is

the man of whom said tongue was but a painful cog –

  found itself in class declaiming old Capulet -

      each thee and thou scrape of wound

          on demi-tooth - it would bark

                      at a thirteen-summered girl

               who durst allow a token relayed from Romeo

                                                       two rows over

                        by plump hand of cueless Nurse

           - this fool contraption with

       its broke-toothed jaw a too-much-moving part

                   would vow this gentle lady

              whose smile raised a sunken heart

           would hang, beg or starve in the streets

                  you who dig this jawbone up

                         figure which grain or nut

               broke a tooth - the rest

                      is one – your Verona too

             will know ancient grudge, new mutiny

                crossed love

A Touch Closer

by James Thurgood                   
                            

                    so where she asks

               in this coffee-clutch of poets

           and other strangers is home

                  muscles move with memory:

                                           

                  Atlantic breakers my first salt kiss of life

              red island grimed in bloody knees

        green dreams of pastures

   my four ghostly fathers

         their own dreams cleared

                            their stories fenceposts fallen

                    uprooted stumps their prayers -             

                my grandfather

       shouting sweaty, swearing machines

           through red clouds of whinnying snorting dust

   round a treed hollow

            as to honour the homemade house

       that birthed my grandmother

            whose air of baked bread

                    fed morning’s ravens

             - my uncle yanking

      a familytree of potatoes

                    from sighing earth

             the hardknock city

    I strayed with no lunchbucket

                                  six-pack streets that

                          wormed and layered my brain

           till ages off I sleepwalk their maze

                                                    toward the border

                                                                                     

                                              and prairies

                       that embraced me

       a Saulteaux voice calling

                         our mother died - your mother

                and others I thought had more time

          but gone this way or that –

                               for when you turn

              you can’t even see how far you’ve come

                              in this endless country

                      where it’s so easy to push forward

                                  so hard to go back

                         I just shake my head

                 but that’s not right either

         so open my hand to this table, stool

                         this dark daughter of northern bush

                   fathered by long-gone logging camps

                                                    mothered by city streets

                                     her flesh pierced and leatherclad –

                                                   her civil questions

                                   drawing me a touch closer