The Flood: Tuileries & Guggoló & Book Launch by Ilona Martonfi
Sometimes it is everywhere. I do not need to read or understand. I let it speak. The lament. The stillness. In medias res. I remember Paris. The Montreal Flood of 1987. Asks us, What does it mean when you dream about a place from your past? Kakekotoba. Haiga. The...
Pontoon Bridge: Refugee & Basho’s Crow & Blár by Ilona Martonfi
In this Inanna blog Ilona Martonfi, author of THE TEMPEST, introduces Refugee. Haiku. Bashō’s Crow. Tanka. The Tempest Review by The Miramichi Reader. “LOCKDOWN” Tanka p. 59. Language. Pontoon Bridge. Otthon (Home). Budapest, 1945. Korneuburg, 1945. Schillerswiesen,...
Characters Are (Not) People by Vivian Zenari
Characters Are (Not) People by Vivian Zenari I know that Philippa and Gilda Peterborough, the protagonists of my first novel, Deuce, are not real people. If I saw either of them on the street, though, I’m sure I would recognize them. # When I distinguish between...
DIATRIBE OF A MUTE EVE by Irene Marques. Translated by the author.
The other day, through a colleague from Princeton University, Luís Gonçalves, I came across an article in the Brazilian magazine Bula: Literatura e Jornalismo Cultural titled “The Ten Best Brazilian Poems of All Time.” Luís’s sour disposition toward the...
THE NIGHTINGALE; KRISTEN HANNAH by Rhoda Rabinowitz Green
The nocturnal nightingale, symbol of melody and beauty, joy and hope, suggests as well a darker side. The title, then, of Kristen Hannah’s historical novel, set in German-occupied WWII France, serves as the perfect objective correlative. As with many works of fiction,...
Iran – New Uprising by Nasreen Pejvack
Effort, labor, sweat is mine Seize, deceive, scheme is yoursTalent, preparation, production is mine Pleasure, disrespect, entitlement is yoursReproduction, creating life, raising is mine Annihilation, elimination, prerogative is yoursWe the women,...
Looking for Jane. A Novel about Abortion in Canada – Gail Benick
Looking for Jane is a work of historical fiction illuminating the underground abortion network which assisted women in many Canadian jurisdictions prior to the legalization of abortion in 1988. Building on a solid foundation of research,...
In the Time of Bleaching, Koza, Blue Nights & Bucha by Ilona Martonfi
In this Inanna blog Ilona Martonfi, author of The Tempest (Inanna 2022), introduces Climate Change. “BLEACHING” p. 72. Praise for The Tempest: Blurb by Louise Dupré. Elegy. The Unfolding Elegy: Anne Carson’s “Nox.” Koza (Коза: Goat) in Ukrainian: A Mimetic Folk Play....
An Appeal to Writers to Support Women and Protesters in Iran – Fereshteh Molavi, Mehri Yalfani, Mehrnaz Massoudi, Nasreen Pejvack…
On September16, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, was killed in the custody of the morality police because of “improper hijab.” Sparked by her tragic death, a series of peaceful protests all around the country has been brutally cracked down...
Exile Trains & Totenwald Meet Turtle Island Folklore & Inanna Spring 2022 Crowd Cast Book Launch No. 2 by Ilona Martonfi
In this Inanna blog Ilona Martonfi, author of The Tempest introduces Tanka. “TRAINS” p. 20. A blurb by H. Nigel Thomas. Collage Poetry: Ezra Pound’s “CANTOS”. Word of the day: Hurucane, (Demon-spirit of the wind). Sonic hurricane for piano and tape (Youtube). Codex...Listen! Ilona Martonfi reads poems from her new collection, The Tempest
Learn more about The Tempest Ilona reads from her poem, “Pupa” Ilona reads from her poem, “Dandelion Snow”
The Cap of Hades by Fereshteh Molavi
My childhood was a small planet enveloped by the atmosphere of my grandmother’s stories. All I possessed on my planet was small-scale: home, school, a long narrow street, a couple of alleys, a few people. But what I could have, immeasurably, was made...
Anna Akhmatova and Todesfuge Meet Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 by Ilona Martonfi
Requiem I have woven you this wide shroud out of humble words I overheard you use. Everywhere, forever and always, I will never forget one single thing. Requiem by Anna Akhmatova As Akhmatova states in a short prose preface to the work, Rekviem was conceived...
A Must Read: Michelle Good’s novel, “Five Little Indians” by Gail Benick
In his 2003 Massey Lecture, the novelist Thomas King—the first person of Cherokee descent invited to be a Massey lecturer—stated: “The truth about stories is that’s all we are.” Stories can transform a culture, but they can also attempt...
Gathering Voices in Response to Peril – Penn Kemp and Susan McCaslin
On Saturday, April 2, 2022 at 2 p.m. Eastern Time, Penn Kemp, Susan McCaslin, and host Richard-Yves Sitoski presented thirty Canadian poets in response to precarious events in the world for a special Oh!Sound online celebration of poetry. What better time...
T.S. Eliot and Mushin Meet Du Fu’s “Ballad of an Old Cypress” by Ilona Martonfi
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot I. The Burial of the Dead April is the cruellest month, breedinglilacs out of the dead land, mixingmemory and desire, stirringdull roots with spring rain....
My Writing Odyssey by Fereshteh Molavi
I recall a few lines of a narrative poem by Nima Yushij, one of my favorite poets. The character of the story, a poor fisherman coming upon a mermaid one stormy night, says to himself: I must follow my own path/no one will take care of me/amidst the turmoil of...
The Pandemic Product that Could Help Promote your Publication by Lisa Braxton
The COVID-19 pandemic has largely forced authors to put tradition aside when it comes to promoting their books, and find creative and innovative ways to get the attention of readers. Bookstore customers sitting on folding chairs, clutching cups of punch while the...
49th Shelf meets Goddess Clotho in The Tempest by Ilona Martonfi
49th Shelf Browses Books in Death Like the figure she describes in her ekphrastic poem “Clotho” as “Ensnared in long tentacles of hair, skeletal, toothless, chiseled in white marble…” Martonfi’s The Tempest has hewn her own spare...
Notes on “State of Terror: A Novel” – review by Gail Benick
A match made in heaven! If ever two women were meant to collaborate on a high-stakes political thriller, it is Hillary Rodham Clinton, former U.S. Secretary of State, and Louise Penny, best-selling Canadian author of crime fiction. Drawing on their areas of expertise,...
Ciuri, Ciuri, a Sicilian Folk Song Meets the Plague in a Play by Ilona Martonfi
Ciuri ciuri Ciuri, ciuri, ciuri di tuttu l’annu l’amuri ca mi dasti ti lu tornu. Ciuri, ciuri, ciuri di tuttu l’annu l’amuri ca mi dasti ti lu tornu. Flower, flowers Flower, flowers, flowers all the year The love you gave me I give you back...
Meet Me in St. Louis by Gail Benick
When I began to write Memory’s Shadow, my second novel, I knew the story had to be set in St. Louis. As the old adage goes: ‘Write what you know.’ Although I have not lived in Missouri for decades, St. Louis is my birthplace and the site of my fondest childhood...
Fighting the Medical Monopoly – Mobilising for ZERO-COVID and Decommodified Healthcare by Salimah Valiani
With the slow rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, ’vaccine nationalism’ is only slightly more rife than the calls against it. The focus on ‘vaccine nationalism’ by critical thinkers and activists around the world misses some key lessons of the pandemic elaborated in my...
Gender and Leadership by Gail Benick
Until recently, modern western democracies have excluded women from political leadership and disparaged their ability to lead, as if there is something contradictory in being female and a leader. Women who do achieve positions of leadership face misogynist media...
OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS: Blog: Tell-Tale and A Writer’s Blog by Anubha Mehta
With the purpose of providing collaborative spaces for writers and artists, Anubha Mehta’s two website blogs are becoming extremely popular. There is no fee for submission, and anyone can submit within the guidelines. Blog: Tell-Tale : Welcomes diverse, everyday...
First Nations Still in Limbo by Nasreen Pejvack
I arrived in Canada as a new immigrant in the 1980s, and soon began my life by learning about the education system and planning my options. Whenever I had free time, I would look for people who might be the Native peoples of this land that I had learned about in my...
Ghost of the Tōhoku Tsunami Visits Chernobyl’s Bestiary by Ilona Martonfi
Ilona Martonfi, author of The Sow Kimono and Salt Bride, introduces yūgen, Yosa Buson’s haiga, calligraphy, round nibs, brush and ink. She will offer a tanka sequence “Elegy”, a free verse “Ghost of the Tsunami”, the haiku sequence “Chernobyl Pianos”, and a witness...
(Not So) Safe in Hell: The Working Class Heroines of Pre-Code Hollywood
By Heather Babcock
Like many women, I was inspired and empowered by the Me Too movement but it also brought back a lot of painful memories. Most of us have probably encountered a “Harvey Weinstein” at some point in our professional lives. I know I have. This type of sexual...
By Heather Babcock
Brundibár: Children’s Opera Performs With a Moth by Ilona Martonfi
In this Inanna author blog we follow poet Ilona Martonfi, who was born in Budapest, and now resides in Montreal, who, decades after she lived in a war refugee camp in Austria went back to construct her memorials. A sgraffito excavation, scraping through layers of...
Women Environmental Warriors by Gail Benick
The election of Annamie Paul as leader of the Green Party of Canada comes as no surprise. She is the third woman to lead the Greens since the party was founded in 1983. It is worth remembering that the new Green leader stands on the shoulders of countless women who...
COVID-19 and Patriarchy in the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife by Salimah Valiani
In an effort to shed light on the vital but undervalued labour of predominantly female health professionals, the World Health Organisation named 2020 the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife. It is an irony and sickening reality that 2020 turned out to be the...
FINDING MEANING / The Void by Mary Rykov
I wake from a lucid dream in which I’mwatching another COVID-19 television newscast. I, a daughter of the Holocaust, shudder at the thought of mass graves on Hart Island. Or anywhere. The sound and visual images are so vivid that I wake relieved to know I’m dreaming....
Jean Harlow: My Kind of Dame by Heather Babcock
Every Wednesday evening as a child, my mother would force me into an itchy, ugly brown polyester dress and thick woolen stockings and take me – kicking and screaming – to the local community center for my weekly Brownies meeting (for those not in the know, Brownies...
Van Gogh’s Irises Meet a Shrike in a Play by Ilona Martonfi
The Shrike “These hook-beaked songbirds with a raptor’s habits skewer their prey of small birds, lizards, and insects with thorns, the spikes on barbed-wire fences. This helps the shrike to tear the flesh into smaller, more conveniently sized fragments, and serves as...
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mom
by A. S. Compton
Words, slow in coming, slow in thinking, slow in painting a worthwhile picture in the mind. Words, slaved over, loved deeply, churning, building, breaking and remaking. Hours...
by A. S. Compton
Sand in the Wind: Finding a Mother Tongue by Ilona Martonfi
…If I wasn’t free I couldn’t even liveSand in the wind, you say that’s what I amSand in the wind, that’s what I might be… —Song: Homok a szélben (Korál-feldolgozás)https://lyricstranslate.com Ilona Martonfi, author of Salt Bride Inanna,...
“Late” is a relative term by Lisa Braxton
Television news is a young person’s game. I first heard that assertion from my broadcast journalism professors and class advisors, and then later from workshop presenters at national industry conferences. The statement was an undercurrent that gradually grew into a...
Klee’s “Hermitage” Meets Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” by Ilona Martonfi
In the beautiful summer of 2017, doors and windows wide open to sunshine, I am ordering my fifth poetry collection, The Tempest. I can still picture that first sighting of the book cover: Paul Klee’s Hermitage, 1918, blue pencil, medium watercolour on chalk. “In...
An interview and poem, “Corona Corona” by Susan McCaslin
“An interview and poem, “Corona Corona” by Susan McCaslin, April 26, 2020, originally published on buddybreathing, online blog of Lesley-Anne Evans: https://buddybreathing.wordpress.com/2020/04/26/napomo-poetry-party-25/ I’m excited to introduce you to Susan McCaslin,...
For to Make Tartys in Applis: Poet in Lockdown by Ilona Martonfi
Ilona Martonfi, author of The Snow Kimono and Salt Bride writes her Lockdown Diary during the quarantine of the Covid-19 Pandemic. Making Tartys in Applis in the time of the Black Death plague, remembering her mother baking the Hungarian almás rétes, the scent of...
Dandelions? by Mary Rykov
Thank you, City of Toronto, for banning pesticides and enabling joyful seas of yellow to dot summer lawns and fields. I love dandelions because they symbolize everything that is tough, tender, supple, resilient. And prolific. Dandelions should be Toronto mascots,...
Eh-up, mind what am tellin’ yer! or Listen! Here’s something important! by Pam Galloway
Women talk! In many cultures across the world women nurture, take care of us at all stages of life and when they do, they connect with their charges or lighten their load by talking and singing. My day to day conversations these days are most often with the women who...
A Modern Fairy Tale Where the Victim Saves Her Own Life by Gail Benick
photo credit: Melanie Gordon Photography In her memoir, A Good Wife. Escaping the Life I Never Chose, Samra Zafar explores the roots of her abusive arranged marriage and her courageous breakaway from the confinement imposed on her. Samra Zafar, a woman of Pakistani...
The God-Word and Thomas Merton by Susan McCaslin (with a poem by J.S. Porter)
Photo credit: Mark Haddock My friend J.S. Porter and I recently published a multi-genre volume of reflections titled Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton’s Dance with the Feminine (Wood Lake, 2018).* We feel that Thomas Merton and other contemplatives of mystical...
Four Crossings of the Border: A Report by Fereshteh Molavi
Photo credit: Hoda Ghods Prologue After I saw an article, Seven Hours in Tehran, published in American Libraries in early April each re-reading of it saddened me more than before. The author, Leonard Kniffel, reports how his invitation to the...