musée mia burrus

collage

Boxed

Locked in the windowless bathroom, she listened  to water sing in the pipes, a soothing refuge from uncalled for noise, the bang of a door,  or maybe the clang of a balcony rail.   O ever blend sounds  to dull sonic grey smooth out incomprehensible talk with thrumming wheels  humming fridges whiney grinding air conditioners […]

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stanchion

A year ago I reread Phoebe Wang’s poem Invasive Carp and was inexplicably taken with a word she used – stanchion. From the word and it’s etymology and associations grew eight pages of musings and stabs at scraps of verse. I’d also had in mind for many years a favourite old photograph of snow fencing

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Montreal Massacre

August 6 and 9 are the 75th anniversaries of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I am rereading John Hersey’s account of six hibakusha, literally “explosion-affected persons”, thinking of the tiny lanterns set afloat on the river each August, and the Hiroshima memorial/museum, which, if I had a bucket list, would be on it.

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a poem for Mila Grace

what could we give you, tiny jewelled shrine which bears all gifts, you, so perfectly gifted?   evening sky eyes, scintillate, our stardust past made present  delicate mouth, oracular, we bow before its wordless wisdom cinnamon spun silk hair swirls in the merest breath of air pearl-tipped fingers strum our heartstrings’ silver tones sugar sweet

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ekphrasis

Every musée needs a display. That was the conceit behind my wish to add a poem, in the form of a ‘label’, to Vicky’s wonderful assemblage, on view in Gallery. An ekphrastic poem is at once description, reflection, expansion of a work of art (or – god forbid- its meaning.) What came to mind was

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We Call it Canada

Here is a poem I wrote on the occasion of Canada’s 150th birthday, initially inspired by the first line of Gwedolyn MacEwan’s Dark Pines Under Water….”This land like a mirror turns you inward”. What followed was four plus pages of notes about Canada and the notions of big-C and little-c country. I completed a version

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