Mar 192011
 

Maggie Helwig is an incredibly gifted novelist and poet and an old friend dating from the early 1990s when for four years (1991-1994) she and I edited the annual discovery & showcase anthology Coming Attractions published by Oberon Press. Among the new writers we discovered were Lisa Moore, Caroline Adderson and Elise Levine (who subsequently got her MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts). Maggie lives in Toronto, and is the author of six books of poetry, two books of essays, a collection of short stories, and three novels. Her most recent novel, Girls Fall Down, was shortlisted for the Relit Award and the City of Toronto Book Award. She has worked as a human rights activist with organizations including the East Timor Alert Network and War Resisters’ International. Maggie is currently completing a Master of Divinity degree at Trinity College, and will be ordained in the Anglican Church of Canada in May.

dg

Now the Green Blade Rises

By Maggie Helwig

A homily preached at Trinity College Chapel, Toronto, Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009


And at the beginning of everything, a garden.

Two people in a garden, and in this place the whole human story begins; begins and begins again, new, utterly changed.

John Donne wrote, “We think that Paradise and Calvary, Christ’s Cross and Adam’s tree, stood in one place.” We knew this, two days ago, our failures and petty evils, our violence and greed, converging on that terrible death, all our sins wrapped up in the torture and murder of a man on a tree.

But this place, this day, is more than that, it is all places; it is the cross and the grave and the place of rebirth all at once, it is paradise and Jerusalem, the city and the garden, and in the meeting of these two people are all people, all of us falling at the feet of the unknown and so deeply known Resurrected One.

And Mary Magdalene in the garden, the last one left, pathetically stubborn, unable to let go, unable to accept the inevitable loss and move on; she is the first to know, and she is the first to tell the story.

But she begins with a mistake – or not a mistake, perhaps. Perhaps something more. The man approaches her, and she takes him for a gardener. It isn’t that surprising, really, that she doesn’t recognize Jesus right away. How could she have expected this? How could any of us expect this?
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Nov 052010
 

Foto_by_Dixon

 

I only know Goran Simic by reputation and by the power and beauty of his poems (which is to say that at a certain level I know him well). Since he came to Toronto from his native Bosnia  in 1996, a year after the war ended, he has been a stalwart of the poetry scene, that rare thing in North America, a man-of-letters, an indefatigable  promoter of other writers and their books, and a moral beacon. He has won numerous awards including a Helman/Hammet grant (for writers who have been victims of political persecution) and a PEN USA Freedom to Write award. His poems and stories about the war he lived through and the Siege of Sarajevo are incredibly stark and moving.

The river carries the corpse of a woman.
as I run across the bridge
with my canisters of water,
I notice her wristwatch, still in place.

Someone lobs a child’s shoe
into the furnace. Family photographs spill
from the back of a garbage truck;
they carry inscriptions:
Love from …love from…love …

(from “The Sorrow in Sarajevo”)

It’s a great pleasure to display here seven poems from Goran’s new book Sunrise in the Eyes of the Snowman which will be published by Biblioasis in December.

(And for Goran’s poignant essay on coming to Canada, on being an immigrant and on becoming visible, click here.)

dg

What I Was Told

When I was born everybody rejoiced.
This is what I was told.
I was also told that in his notes my father the King
described hundreds of tents in front of the castle
for the common people’s celebration of my birth.
For months wine flowed and roasted quail were eaten
until the wine started to sour
and quail started smelling of wine.
My father the King invited the best fortune tellers in the country
to read my kingdom’s fate from my baby palm.
Some of them were richly rewarded.
No trace of the unfortunate others was found in my father’s notes.
When I grew tall enough to touch my father’s shield,
he issued a state decree ordering
the people of our kingdom to build a castle for me
on the hill. I could smell the sweat
of those who pulled stone slabs up the slope
while I lolled on my throne.
Those who survived the ten years of work
are mentioned in my father’s notes. This is what I was told.
Those who didn’t were buried in the castle’s foundation
and were not recorded in my father’s notes.
I forgot the name of my bride.
The taste of matrimonial wine lasted no longer
than the wedding night
when I had to lead my army to war with our neighbours.
My father told me to follow the tradition
and that I will find reasons once I learn how to read.
Sitting on my black horse, watching graves being dug in our wake,
I wondered why people called my army the Virus of Death,
why the sunset scares me
even after the leaves under my horse’s hooves
changed colours ten times.
Once my sword acquired the scent of burnt homes and rotting flesh,
I returned to my kingdom in a golden carriage.
But when I arrived
nobody was there to decorate my exhausted soldiers with garlands.
Only wretched old men and witches were begging forgiveness
for failing to predict my return.
The plague had eaten my father the King,
and my darling whose name I lost in the roll call of my generals.
All I had left from my kingdom were neglected fields
and a notebook that I couldn’t read.
Now I sit in my tower with a crown on my head.
I watch storks leaving the cold chimneys of my kingdom,
while I listen to the wind riffling the sheets of my empty bed,
leafing through the pages of my father’s notebook.
In this very moment I would happily exchange
my glory and my golden crown,
for someone who would teach me to read.


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