Contemplating contentment Manitoba poets explore the concept of happiness in verse A National Poetry Month Project with the Winnipeg International Writers Festival and the Winnipeg Free Press
By: Ariel Gordon Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Friday, Apr. 28, 2023

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/04/2023 (862 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For the eighth year of Writes of Spring, co-editor Sally Ito and I asked Manitoba poets to write on the theme of “Joy.”

We always use the themes set by the League of Canadian Poets, but I have to admit there are themes I like better than others. Sally and I were hoping the poems wouldn’t be all exclamation marks and rictus grins, the poets performing joy. Secretly, I was hoping for anti-joy poems, that spoke to the complicated joy/pain of living now.

We needn’t have worried. We got a record number of submissions that explored the concept from every angle.

We are grateful, as always, to the poets for saving us!

Also worth mentioning are McNally Robinson Booksellers and John Toews, who have made room for us to launch the section year after year.

LAUNCH: April 29 at 2 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers Grant Park in-person or via YouTube.

Performative

I am no great talent

My voice is common stock from the carton:
basic, bland, and better warmed.
My hands are blunt and unpracticed
in the intricacies of paper craft and pencil sketching.
My feet are shy and passive,
great weighted things that wait
for the circuit up the length of me
to ping our brain and close again.

But before your thrilled applause,
your toothy delight stretched so wide
your face is cheeks and chin,

I am a triple threat

Hazel Aduna is a Winnipeg writer. She lives with her husband and son, who have both inspired her published poetry.

---

Turntable

the big rock candy mountain
‘rivers of stew and whiskey, too’
jails of tin
trees fruitful
hay plentiful
a hobo’s paradise
in other words
a place to dream of
when you’re cold, hungry
______alone

he is there in his mind
basking in the pure joy that is
the big rock candy mountain
his eyes well up
his voice cracks
“did they get to that part?
where the hobo comes
and tells the story?”
______yes, dad.

he smiles through tears
joy and sorrow
are sometimes hand-in-hand

twice around the turntable
we go
reminiscing
then
“have you ever heard of a song
called the big rock candy mountain?’
yes, i say
______it’s been minutes

take another spin on the turntable
reminisce again
my eyes well up
my voice cracks
force a smile
joy and sorrow
are sometimes hand-in-hand

Elizabeth Denny is Red River Métis. Writer of prose, screenplays and stage plays, poetry, and creative non-fiction.  Master of self-deprecation.

---

Bubble gum tree

It must have been the comics
folded around each square
of Dubble Bubble, printed
on waxy paper, always with
Pud in his red cap. Or the way
our teeth sank into the soft
wads of pink. Or the fact
that Grandpa could reach above
our heads, into the cleft between
gray branches. It must have been
sheer pleasure of belief that kept us
hovering, my brother and I,
near the front-yard maple, waiting
for gum to appear. Neither he
nor I could blow a bubble, but we
were pleased with any sweet
thing the tree would give.

Joanne Epp is the author of two books of poetry, Eigenheim (2015) and Cattail Skyline (2021). She lives near the Assiniboine River in Winnipeg.

---

How to colour a purple martin

The smoke that cooks
a goldeye, the joy of rye mashed
to whiskey on the wind,
the melody of clay—

this is your palette,
bright as shadows on a lake,
the only sparkle so subtle
like shiners in the shallows.

When a pelican
eclipses the sun
and the pupil replies
how all its blackness is

stolen
from the depths
of nearby prairie thunderclouds—
apply the eyes with a sable.

In the cumulous calm before the nimbus
house the bird in an abode,
a miniature white adobe
on a tall scorched stick.

On the sky, the martin
will ink calligraphy, a swooping cursive
of blue, and rapture
will be the final colour.

Evan J (he/they) is the author of Ripping down half the trees (2021) and is the Fiction Editor for Cloud Lake Literary.

---

Dance of the bald eagles

The day is drained of all but its last light,
sky, a vacant space above the troubled city.
Two shadow-shapes emerge as one and rise
gladly, transcending time and discontent.
I watch them enter the empty stage, circling,
soaring. Their black wings wide, they float
toward each other and converge,
then solemn as a sermon waft apart.

The shadow-dance is not a polka, not a waltz.
Ballet, maybe: a joyful choreography
enacted above blaring horns, crunch of snow
beneath the angry demonstrators’ feet.
A quick pivot. I shiver (not with cold or rage).
The eagles, act completed, leave the stage.

Sarah Klassen’s latest poetry collection is The Tree of Life (2020); her second novel, The Russian Daughter, was released in 2022.

---

Smile Since you’Re Init

O halcyon sertraline, thou bearer of small joys and smaller

aggressions, whose apprehensions apprehend the state of

all and everything, and therefore nothing:

 

O untroubling bromide, o sleep-draught soporific

Bring unto me the vibe of the masses

That empty yearning, that hollow

 

Harmony. Communion bread beneath my tongue

Transubstantiates thou cortisol, thou wicked

Worst-case-scenarios, to peace.

 

200 MG

SIG: 1 CAP 1X A DAY FOR AS LONG

AS YOU WANT TO KEEP GOING

Kirstian Lezubski is a queer neurodivergent mother of two, with an MA in Cultural Studies. This is her first poetry publication.

---

Pizza Bliss

This Easter morning, Jesus will not rise
from my oiled ceramic bowl,
this Easter morning, a greased ball of
pizza dough will rise in His place.

A pouch of rapid-rise yeast mailed
from my ex-husband’s survival stash
has returned me to a time when
I made everything from scratch.

All the tapping of pizza delivery numbers and
buying premade dough from Superstore and
my hands still know what to do—
Press, pull, knead. Press, pull, knead.

I do not need a thermometer to know
how hot the water for yeast should be.
It’s muscle memory, the pushing and
stretching to birth this gluten baby.

It’s the ritual of it I love,
coaxing dough into being.
If I could choose my last meal
it would be pizza, pie of my eye.

Holding the wisdom of civilizations,
providing sustenance long before Christ.
That wild yeast and ground grain
a match made in heaven.

Pizza fed me six broke months in
New York, slice a day from Ray’s,
pies tossed heavenward then
slid into Gates of Hell ovens.

Pizza may save my life yet again.
A Second Coming with melted cheese.

Margo McCall recently returned to Winnipeg after decades spent living and writing in Southern California.

---

Curls

A marvel to behold,
shining bright black,
glinting like diamonds
on a sunny day.

Winding round and around
pulling, elongating,
letting go. A giggle as they
boing back into place.

Grin widening, stretching
cheek to cheek, delighted
to see the curls so fully
embraced, gorgeous
in their unpredictability.

An act of rebellion in the face of
those insisting that the coils
curving circles and S-shapes
around her crown are too
wild, as though being tamed
should be the goal.

What she sees is prismatic,
endless possibilities,
a breathtaking array—
weaving, waving
this girl on her way.

Abiola Regan is a poet and writer with an academic background in psychology and a passion for pop culture.

---

West Broadway, Late Winter, Early Spring

Whatever you would like to call it—
Whatever is:
crystal snow melting into the yawning cracks of the alley
Then freezing up again
trash novelty, karaoke
two for two fifty or maybe more.
deconstructed chest of drawers
the sirens and the crooked trees,
street merging with sidewalk, sidewalk merging with dirt

the chickadees and graffiti artists are coming out from their nesting
the summer is in mind’s reach
There is an elusive joy to this place, like the city itself, which asks of us
Pure immersion
to look in the boxes of free items without taking
to stop lying about not having any change
to have conversation with the world

I am the sun coming through the east-facing window at 9
I am the faint darkness on the other side
I am the cat, running silently through the parking lot
I am the sunny day itself, under blue-green tint

Holly Smith is a young artist with a BA living in the Winnipeg city core.

---

In Hindsight, Joy: a litany

the swirl of vowels; prints of our lovers’ lips;
smoke drifting from Marlboros; wells of white
rock; sweat laced with liquor; candies wrapped
in red cellophane; buttered biscuits in bed;
cracked shell of a robin’s egg, last line of every
book I’ve read; my sister’s funeral plants; a sky
of cranes; spiraled blue cord; luminosity left
behind; this pearl of flesh, divine; moon-
blessed sleep; his cries rope in the loop
of need; plot-altering embrace; a relief map
of the sea’s history; our bodies yoked
and orbiting; my tethered heart; lasso my
tongue; the phone rings dahlias; how simple
the solution if it meant sunshine; a line of linen
and bone band; smells of blackberries, cedar,
fungus; my suburban chrysalis; peppers the color
of koi; your tyrant lizard ways; entire stanzas
dizzy me; boy-blanket blues; hatched from that
last life; April’s awakening fields; a blizzard
of cottonwood seeds; my money maker
and marrow builder; persuade me with
marshmallows; snip apart a surface of syntax;
if sorrow yields sacred ground, my body blooms
hosannas; sting this world to satisfaction; renounce
boundaries; stretch your supple pages; this heart-
print, this syllable-quilt; I architect spells;
the grammar of his shape; make it urban; space
as invention; glitter against the gauze; umbrella
spines of old trees; a symphony of stained glass;
the spiral of stops.

Christine Stewart-Nuñez is the author of five poetry books and an essay collection. She teaches at the University of Manitoba.

---

Cane

My youngest would hand me my cane
like that stick might keep away harm.
Inoculate. Prevent further
trouble. As we’d all had enough.

Their boy faces were round and smooth
back when we all found our way home,
a time long enough ago that
they are their own now, through and through.

My walk was this lurch, gasp. The touch
of my oldest, hand on my head,
helped wrap a day’s hurt. Like a soft
rug taking a fall’s shock. Mercy.

A child can’t halt the accruals.
Those stings by day. Hollowed out nights.
Yet their looks kept us all upright.
Still do. Steady, Mom. Lift, bend. Lift.

Sue Sorensen’s poetry collection Acutely Life is expected next spring from At Bay Press.

---

guide

fawn is a secret night shares
___with the sleepless
___you frayed who stray out of doors
______sink into shadow          sigh

______in time doe deliberates past
_________baby bobbling behind
__________moon marked     marvelous
________& delight              so long distant
____________you supposed it dead
_________pierces your hematite heart

_________lay hold this lantern
__________hoist it lark high
__________so lambent beams light your way

Jess Woolford is currently writing Breaking Water, a collection of poems about the destruction of Winnipeg’s Parker Wetlands and Aspen Forest.