Kathryn Mockler's Blog, page 28
April 30, 2024
Send My Love to Anyone | Issue 36
Hi Friends,
In Issue 36, you’ll find six collages from Kate Sutherland’s series, Exquisite Creatures, a nod and variation on the surrealist game of Exquisite Corpse.
Send My Love to Anyone is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support this project, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Saeed Teebi shares an excerpt from his acclaimed story collection Her First Palestinian (Anansi, 2022). “Enjoy Your Life, Capo” is set in Toronto during the early pandemic years and follows a Palestinian software engineer who develops a wireless breathing app in hopes that it will help his chronically ill teenage daughter. After years of work on the app, mounting debt, and little interest from the medical community, he’s forced to accept an offer that not only makes him complicit in the suffering of his own people, but also threatens his relationship with his daughter—a racial justice activist in the #BlackLivesMatter and #FreePalestine movements.
For Words Count, Christine Estima (author of the Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society) writes about how she broke all the rules in her search for a literary agent:
“I have had two literary agents in my career (currently still with the latter), both of whom I secured through unorthodox means. Taking the famed advice of Marilyn Monroe, “if I’d observed all the rules, I’d never have got anywhere,” I applied that ethos to getting an agent, refusing to go the traditional route.”
Also in Issue 36, “The Source of the Singing,” a poem from Julie Paul’s new book Whiny Baby (McGill-Queen’s University Press) and two poems from Cassidy McFadzean’s collection Crying Dress (House of Anansi Press).
In Gatherings, I recommend writing by Ibrahim Nasrallah, Annick MacAskill, Omar Sakr, Jade Wallace, Steven Beattie, Lisa Robertson, and Ross Gay; Kerry Clare’s new literary podcast, Bookspo; and my Capote vs. The Swans rabbit hole.
Hope you enjoy!
Kathryn
I said you could trace thought processes
like a series of intersecting bridges
imagining each fragment opening up the text ","size":"lg","isEditorNode":true,"title":"Cassidy McFadzean | Issue 36","publishedBylines":[{"id":404306,"name":"Cassidy McFadzean","bio":"Cassidy McFadzean is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Crying Dress (House of Anansi 2024). ","photo_url":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazon... My Love to Anyone","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f... Send My Love to Anyone
Support Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it!
Big heartfelt thanks to all of the subscribers and contributors who make this project possible!
ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
Send My Love to Anyone is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Gatherings | Issue 36
Kirby and I are cooking up something cool. Details TBA!
I’m thrilled to see Anecdotes on the Danuta Gleed Literary Award shortlist with these amazing writers!
What a lovely and generous reading of Anecdotes by Mia Johnson in White Wall Review
Kirby NewsRecommended Reading"She [Mockler] thoughtfully exposes how content we are with embracing ourselves until someone tells us it’s wrong to do so. And she’s as brutal as she is unforgiving because holding onto that shame is exhausting. Mockler’s prose allows us to grieve our youth; to visit those parts of ourselves that felt powerless and give them somewhere to lay their head. “I don’t want to be a woman!” she puts indignantly. It’s that outrage born from shame as our sense of self shifts. When giving voice to negative emotions around experiences that reveal a great deal of pain – they’re often overridden by a paralyzing fear. Mockler teaches us to trust the transformative process, which reveals a commonality in our repression of these difficult emotions."
Room Magazin e: Featuring Palestinian Voices, part 4: Palestinian poetry for National Poetry Month
Mustafa Aljazzar is raising funds for psychosocial and recreational support activities for children and women in shelter centers in Gaza.
omarsakrpoet
A post shared by @omarsakrpoetUniversities must be places where students have access to specialized knowledge that shapes contemporary debates; where faculty members are encouraged to be public intellectuals, even when, or perhaps especially when, they are expressing dissenting opinions speaking “truth to power.” Classrooms must allow for contextual learning, where rapidly mutating current events are put into a longer historical timeline.y
Read Is This the End of Academic Freedom? by Paula Chakravartty and Vasuki Nesiah in NYT
I was silent and nothing came of it.
I spoke and nothing came of it.
I cursed, I apologized, and nothing came of it.
I was busy, I pretended to be busy…and nothing.
I sat, I walked, I ran.
I shivered and I warmed up. Nothing.
Read Palestinian by Ibrahim Nasrallah (trans. Huda Fakhreddine) in Protean
RIP Paul Auster, The Guardian
As police, administrators, politicians, and outsiders attack college protesters in a wave of reactionary repression, I am reminded of the role the recently-passed novelist Paul Auster played in the anti-Vietnam War protests at Columbia University.
Read “Crazy with the poison of Vietnam in my lungs.” Paul Auster on the ’68 Columbia protests on Lit Hub
Jade Wallace offers great reviewing advice for poetry (but really can be applied to any genre)!
Send My Love to Anyone contributor Carrianne Leung brought this wonderful video to my attention: Inciting Joy with author Ross Gay
Two poems by Annick MacAskill in Ex-Puritan
has a terrific new podcast: Bookspo
Pickle Me This Episode Six: Emily AustinWhat a delight to bring you this conversation with Emily Austin about her beautiful and hilarious new novel INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT SPACE, how some interesting feedback on her first novel inspired her to deepen her own understanding of love, and how ideas from bell hooks’ ALL ABOUT LOVE found their way into her fiction… Listen now24 days ago · 2 likes · Kerry ClareIn the ’80s, the spy agency investigated the "Gateway Experience" technique to alter consciousness and ultimately escape spacetime. Here is everything you need to know.
Read How to Escape the Confines of Time and Space According to the CIA in Vice
Link to this trippy Gateway Intermediate Workbook, CIA
I went down a Truman Capote rabbit hole after watching the series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans
Truman Capote's "La Côte Basque," originally published in the November 1975 issue of Esquire, was meant to serve as the first taste from his upcoming masterpiece about the inner circles of high society women. That novel, eventually called Answered Prayers, wouldn't publish until after the writer's death, but the passage became famous for the scandals it brought. In 2024, it was adapted for the television screen, for FX's Feud: Capote vs. the Swans. Available in full, below, it contains insensitive descriptions of beauty and body standards.
Read "La Côte Basque” by Truman Capote in Esquire
Send My Love to Anyone is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support this project, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
It is fashionable to complain about the lack of books coverage today, but then this has always been the case. There has, according to a certain contingent, always been too little literary criticism, too few reviews, or the wrong kind of reviews, or reviews of the wrong books. But that doesn’t negate the fact that there is a vibrant community of people in Canada writing reviews, reading and thinking about literature, and striving to better the discourse in this country. They deserve recognition.
Read The crisis in book reviewing may not be what you think it is by Steven Beattie, That Shakespearean Rag
And while you are at it, check out a recent review by Steven Beattie of Mathew Walsh’s new poetry collection:
If Walsh’s collection is a snapshot of the way we live now – a fragile negotiation with the confusion and worry of how to be fully human in a world that seems intent on denying some people that freedom – it is also a paean to the importance of art as a means of support for the vagaries of human existence.
Steven Beattie on Mathew Walsh’s Terrarium in That Shakespearean Rag
The season is called evening.
Out of belief comes men
and then the sea and then the air
and then the upper part ignites
and a child comes screaming rosy fluids
and then the mother sleeps and what is change
Read “After Trees” by Lisa Robertson in Brick
The Audacity.Standards of CareEarly in my relationship with my wife Debbie, I noticed that while we walked around in New York, she always holds her path. She is not rude about it but she struts down the street with an elegant confidence, an inherent belief that she has as much right as anyone to take up space. She is this immovable force and it is an incredible thing to witness. When I am out and about, I’m always inclined to move out of the way, to try and take up as little space as possible, to try and make myself disappear while knowing full well that I cannot. And, more importantly, I should not…Read more25 days ago · 225 likes · 33 comments · Roxane GayOmar Sakr PresentsOn Complicity & Cowardice in the ArtsRecently, Art Guide magazine commissioned an article from writer Sophia Cai on the subject of whether art can be "apolitical" and when she turned it in, they asked to remove two paragraphs in which she named the Australian cultural institutions that have publicly taken "apolitical" stances. Their reasoning for this was that her specificity prevented the…Read morea month ago · 15 likes · Omar Sakr
CRAFT TALKA Burst of ColorThe BIG news: this year’s #1000wordsofsummer big summer session starts June 1 and runs through June 14. I will be doing two free in-person events in New York City on June 1, and one free in-person event in New Orleans on June 8. Details coming soon…Read morea month ago · 166 likes · 19 comments · Jami AttenbergCalling all writers and wordsmiths—we are now accepting submissions for The 19th Annual Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest!
How it works: Send us a story and a postcard—the relationship can be as strong or as tangential as you like, so long as there is a clear connection between the story and the image.
Deadline: May 20, 2024 at 11:59PM PDT.
Winning entries get cash prizes and publication in Geist, so dig through your drawers and find a postcard that inspires the micro-lit writer in you.
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing✨Fiona Williams on choosing the best POVs to tell your story ✨Hello podcast and writing enthusiasts! Happy spring 😍 Is the sun shining on those manuscripts of yours? We sure hope so. In this week’s episode, Carly and CeCe are joined by Jo Ramsay, an agent at Transatlantic Literary Agency. After which, Bronwen Keyes-Bevan…Read more19 days ago · 14 likes · 3 comments · The Shit About Writing TeamThere is nothing I enjoy more than office supply talk. doesn’t disappoint by sharing a cool Muji pen hack!
sweater weatherMuji 0.38 support groupHello friends—Thanks for reading sweater weather! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. I know a lot of people are anxious about their beloved Muji 0.38 disappearing if Muji vanishes or goes into Bankruptcy in the UK, but I am here to tell you that you can make your own, lol…Read morea month ago · 190 likes · 32 comments · BrandonI’ve started up my writing prompts again. Here are some dialogue writing exercises:
Where Do I Start? | Writing Prompts by Kathryn MocklerDialogue Prompt"Dialogue...grows from the character and the conflict, and, in its turn, reveals the character and carries the action." —Lajos Egri from The Art of Dramatic Writing Where Do I Start? | Writing Prompts by Kathryn Mockler is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support this project, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber…Read morea month ago · Kathryn MocklerSupport Send My Love to AnyoneSupport Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it!
Big heartfelt thanks to all of the subscribers and contributors who make this project possible!
ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
April 27, 2024
Cassidy McFadzean | Issue 36
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
Crying Dress
by Cassidy McFadenHouse of Anansi Press, 2024The poems in Crying Dress, acclaimed poet Cassidy McFadzean’s third collection, explore the multiplicity of meaning that arises from fragmentation, rhythm, competing sounds, and ellipsis. Rooted in the tradition of lyric poetry, these strikingly original poems revel in musicality (rhyme, beat, and alliteration) while deploying puns, idiom, and other forms of linguistic play to create a dissonance that challenges the expected coherence of a poem. From the ghosts and gardens of Brooklyn and Sicily to the clanging of garbage chutes in Uno Prii’s modernist high rises in Toronto, to quiet moments of intimacy in domestic spaces, and the early days of sobriety and grief, Crying Dress explores the intersections between noise and coherence, the conversational and the associative, the architectural and the ecological, while reaffirming the poet’s sonic, vertiginous lyricism and gift for overlooked detail.
Support Send My Love to AnyoneSupport Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it!
Big heartfelt thanks to all of the subscribers and contributors who make this project possible!
ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
April 26, 2024
Saeed Teebi | Issue 36
What you have to do is silence the world. You have to tell the world to quit wailing, to calm itself, to let you think. Just as important: you have to pick one world, and listen only to that world’s wailing, that world’s screams. Nothing else. Otherwise, you will be like all the ashen crazies tramping down the street, cursing their imagined enemies while their minds, like their clothes and lives, disintegrate into nothing.
Romero tells me this. He is focused, goal-oriented. He has kept us on track even when I have become unreliable. Our operation is almost complete. It is papered, and not illegal, and none of us will go to prison for it. If I repeat these facts enough, they might even matter.
Why can’t you enjoy your life, capo? This is Romero’s terminology, not mine. He is used to making real money, so criminality does not perturb him. Bridle Path mansions are in our future, he says, and infinity pools, and opportunities to supplement our wives.
What I want most is silence. Since the tumult started, since children began to be unearthed from the rubble of downed buildings, I ache for silence.
I don’t really want all that. What I want most is silence. Since the tumult started, since children began to be unearthed from the rubble of downed buildings, I ache for silence. It is one thing for my wife, Marcy, and my daughter, Firdaos, to be glued to their Twitter accounts and their satellite stations — finding more reasons to wail, more seeds for their future nightmares — but I cannot do that. I am trying to work.
Self-preservation is crucial. When I realized things were becoming overwhelming, I asked Firdaos to show me how to mute words on my phone. During May 2021, the major ones are obvious: Palestine, Israel, Jerusalem, Gaza, Sheikh Jarrah. But the seepage was persistent. Soon, I had to mute the names of tiny villages and neighbourhoods, the names of the ones who were killed, the names of the arrestees and detainees, the home defenders, the worshippers, the healers, the reporters, the hunger strikers, the passersby, the children, the babies — one by one, as soon as I found out that they, too, had become part of that distant, deafening inferno.
The amount we have been promised is immense. It takes my breath away, to put it in romantic terms. But in exchange for this amount, our co-conspirators want our technology immediately.
Yesterday, if possible, in light of the current situation, says Romero.
And so we have been meeting them by video conference all day for the past three days, with scant regard for our differing time zones, trying to finish the paperwork. As we do, I have been learning to suppress my hatred. You work on that sort of thing gradually. You focus on the areas of overlap in your lives, not the areas of — what’s the diplomatic term? — conflict. The strategy works. With each meeting, we grow a little closer, feigning connection on the basis of little human facts about each other. You, too, have children? You, too, experience sun, rain, relatives, death? A measured exchange to make ourselves mutually acceptable. Within these bounds, we appear to enjoy one another.
Then our work becomes a transaction, and nothing more. I force myself to believe that to be true.
Is it our fault the market is stupid, capo?
Romero is right. The market works in mysterious ways. We have the buyer that we have.
Romero turns on our side chat. Mind your body language, he says. You look bewildered. I put my head on straight. My code is clean. It is without sins. Let’s remember that. There can be no debate that I created it to help people. I used to fantasize about the newspaper headlines. “Local Entrepreneur Leads by Caring,” or something comfortingly banal and affirming like that. A classic feel-good story. A quote from Marcy saying how proud she is of me. Perhaps a lede with one of the many patients I helped survive. And — dare I dream? — even a word or two from the original inspiration for it all, my tenacious fighter, Firdaos.
This is the world I want to belong to. But it is not the world I am in.
A TRIP TO the hospital is rarely an inspiring occasion, except that it was for me. More than two years ago now, Firdaos, then fifteen years old, was admitted for monitoring, struggling with another one of her periodic infections. By my count her fourth time, the cystic fibrosis now a familiar, unwanted guest, forcing us to grit our teeth and bear its visits until it deigns to leave. The usual cords of medical bondage were again attached to my daughter, a nurse or doctor coming in every ten minutes to check on her pulmonary function and respiratory rate.
Marcy had gotten better at putting on a brave face, but I knew she was roiling with anxiety inside. I was too. I tried to focus on prayer, but my mind kept taking refuge in logistics. All I could think was: Can’t this be done better somehow?
A few days later, Firdaos’s infection had subsided, and she was released from the hospital, a nebulizer over her face. Our whole house exhaled with her return. Not long after, I read online about new research claiming there was evidence that each human being has a unique breathing pattern. That was the kindling.
I started working up some ideas, stitching together parts of an algorithm. I couldn’t afford to pay anyone to help me — by this point in my blundering, we had to check our bank account before ordering pizza — so I did all the coding myself. It took seven months before I had anything resembling a prototype.
It was buggy, and regularly timed out. That’s where Romero came in. He had consulted on a few projects at DataHat, my old company. He never failed to isolate the critical issue and resolve it efficiently — a savant of software and, having seen some of his invoices, paid like one.
At my invite, he rolled up to the house on his motorbike, spitting out his toothpick on my lawn as he advanced to the front door. Sat at my desk and squinted at my monitor. Scrolled down the screen quickly, like a hyena bounding over the savannah. After complimenting my code — “clean like my mother’s kitchen floor” — he tipped the chair into a reclining position and studied me.
“Salah, my friend,” he said, “video intake is your issue. I can fix it. Watch the error rate vanish once I’m done.”
I asked him how much. He took my right hand and told me to spread it open. “You keep four fingers, I take one,” he said, tugging on my pinky. “Minority partner. You the capo, me the soldier.”
From the beginning, Romero enjoyed acting like we were in the Mafia. A fun charade for two middle-aged computer programmers.
That night, I tacked on two rakat after my last salat. Then I asked Allah for guidance: he said go ahead with Romero. By then I was up to at least three or four out of the five prayers daily; my religion was back on the upswing ever since Firdaos had gotten sick.
It took Romero just three weeks to work his magic. Then we were off to the races. We consulted lawyers, applied for regulatory approvals, even commissioned some branding. Soon we were shopping around Version 1.0. My friend Husam in medical marketing introduced me to purchasing managers at local hospitals. I prepared a spiel and sang it like a lyric:
The revolutionary BreathCatch technology and Api allows for the wireless monitoring of a patient’s breathing and vitals. It analyzes recorded and live video (at frame rates that are within the capabilities of most phone cameras) to detect the unique “breath fingerprint” of a patient: consistent patterns in their facial features, cadence, and spatial environment as they inhale and exhale. The BreathCatch technology uses the breath fingerprint, and any deviations from it, to generate metrics about the patient’s health over time.
Months of meeting after meeting, in claustrophobic Zoom rooms, sharing our screens, presenting our wares. Right at the start of the pandemic. Romero always by my side, hyping up everything I said like a human set of cymbals.
Uniformly positive feedback, I told Marcy. She had been through too much with me already. I think of the decade I spent at DataHat, complaining to her every night about the manager who co-opted all my best ideas, and made sure I never got promoted. Or the day I abruptly quit DataHat without a warning, either to the company or to Marcy. My parents had recently died, one after another in the span of a year, and the bereft child in me was acting up. I told Marcy that I needed the freedom to do things how I wanted, to not be beholden to anyone.
“Everyone in software takes a plunge like this at some point,” I said.
Marcy touched my wrist. “Go for it,” she said. We had some savings back then, but she still picked up tutoring sessions on the weekends to pad her teaching salary.
“I promise you won’t have to do that for long,” I had said.
Except that, after a couple of years of the entrepreneur’s life, and with several failures under my belt, I was no longer sure that was true. Marcy had long ago stopped asking follow-up questions when I told her about a new venture, though I didn’t stop volunteering answers.
“No bites yet on BreathCatch, Marcy, but lots of promising nibbles. Don’t worry, this isn’t like my other projects. This time the concept is innovative, solves a real problem. Romero says the feedback we’ve been getting means it’s a matter of when, not if. You have to give people time and space for an idea to take hold in their minds.”
“I believe in you, Salah,” Marcy always said.
I HAVE TO FOCUS. In our side chat, Romero predicts that our co-conspirators will next want to discuss the mechanics of the escrow. What? Why? I steel myself for battle. I am so ready to put these people back in their rightful place as my foes. They are bureaucrats and government lawyers and data scientists, but from the beginning, I have had to work hard to not envision them in army fatigues. Whenever they make a demand — an “ask,” is the genteel way us co-conspirators put it — it’s like the hot mouth of a Tavor is pointed at my face.
But there are no Tavors in the face of a muta’awin, are there? The villas of collaborators like me are raided very infrequently, the hand restraints placed very gently on their wrists, just for show, if at all. Their dossiers are kept in an entirely separate department of Shin Bet.
Collaborator. Not a scent of treachery in that word in English. On the contrary. Before I went out on my own, did not every resumé I ever submitted to an employer describe me as “collaborative”? Collaboration is critical to creating value. And now that I have created the biggest item of value in my life, am I to suddenly stop being collaborative?
Yes, I should stop. All the time, all I want is to stop.
The second-in-command unmutes himself to relay the latest ask: “We want a window of time to inspect the software in escrow, to verify all the goods are as they should be, before we release the payment to you. Don’t worry, we only need a very limited period, not nearly long enough for us to copy it all for free.” (Hearty laughs from all the faces tiled on my screen.)
I waffle. Every decision is an opportunity to escape. There have been many review meetings, phalanxes of their experts inspecting the software as if it were the body of a newborn. I have held my co-conspirators’ hands as they waltzed through the lines of my code, sometimes reading them aloud to each other with symphonic appreciation. Where they didn’t understand something, I was the model of patience as I explained it to them, stifling every outward sign of disdain. Why, then, the need for more inspection time, when the baby is already caged in escrow, waiting to be handed to its new parents?
Romero consents on our behalf, adds a condition or two.
Every little thing does not have to be an agonizing decision, capo.
Soon, this will all be over, tossed into a dark basement of my memory and shrouded in binding confidentiality provisions. Lupara bianca, in the parlance. Then, Romero assures me, we will have nothing but comforts.
After how hard our road was, capo? You can never convince me we don’t deserve it.
ROMERO AND I followed up with each purchasing manager we met, three or four times at least. Gradually, the responses evolved from “Not right now, but we’ll contact you if anything changes” to “Please stop calling us, our decision is final.”
We kept working, undaunted. Our clinical trials yielded good results but needed something anecdotal to tug on hearts. We knew the optimal specimen was Firdaos. Young, vibrant, and in a never-ending fight just to keep breathing — who wouldn’t sympathize with that?
My relationship with my daughter then was not at its peak, not anymore. That magical time was a few years ago, when she was in middle school. Back then, my late-night coding sessions often stretched until the muezzin app on my phone signalled the time for dawn prayer. Firdaos, already showing signs of being my opposite, was an early riser.
Unbidden, she would slip out of bed and find me in the master bathroom. We would do our wudu together at the double vanity, as quietly as we could lest we disturb her mother’s sleep. We’d polish off the brace of rakat, chat a while on our prayer rugs, and then move to my office. There I would show her some coding basics, watching her eyebrows rumple in concentration as she absorbed another if-else statement. When I got sleepy, she’d pester me to leave her with a coding exercise to do on her own, so she could show off how well she’d completed it the minute I opened my eyes again.
As she got older, Firdaos lost interest in coding, replacing it with reading, blog writing, Twitter debates. Her disease took a toll, too: she became more distant after every debilitating flare-up, as if she wanted to prove to her parents that she could manage on her own. My bond with her endured, but it felt mostly historical, like it wasn’t based on anything current anymore. Still, sometimes if I got out of bed early enough, I might find her sitting in my office, tapping on her laptop or leafing through the newspaper. It made me happy to think of it as a sign of her lingering attachment to me.
My office was where I found Firdaos the morning that I told her about BreathCatch. She was touched that I invented a whole system to monitor her health. But the teenager in her bristled when I asked if I could install an old phone in a corner of her room.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I can’t see your picture. It just analyzes your breathing and sends me the information. You’ll forget it’s even there.”
The readings arrived at my console whenever Firdaos was in camera range. If they showed that her vitals had taken a turn for the worse, I texted to ask how she was doing.
I can’t believe you can figure out I’m not right from a phone cam, she texted me back once. I haven’t even coughed! It’s a little creepy.
Romero and I drafted reports based on the clinical trials, and on Firdaos. In block quotes, we said that BreathCatch showed a 97.5% accuracy rate in detecting moments when a patient’s breathing was in or near distress. For software that could run off a phone cam, this seemed extraordinary to us.
Not that our precious case study was available much in those days. During the spring of 2020, the pandemic forced Firdaos’s public school to shift to virtual learning, but she was so involved with all the protests going on at the time that I hardly saw her. I did see her traces, though. There were markers and large pieces of cardboard left on the living room floor, along with splayed pairs of scissors that blended hazardously into the rug. There were attempts at catchy slogans scribbled and crossed out next to aborted sketches of George Floyd. A Black girl named Adie began to frequent our backyard, she and Firdaos chatting with their masks tucked uselessly under their chins.
“I think it’s good that our teenager is so engaged in the world,” said Marcy. “She’s not letting her condition stop her from living her life.”
It was true. The movement for racial justice seemed to ignite Firdaos. She went to all the demonstrations and rallies, no longer embarrassed to be seen using her medical accoutrements if she needed them. She wrote letters to the editors of local newspapers calling out their coverage of the riots in the United States. She covered our lawn with signs bearing the names of recent victims of police violence. She even started a group called Palestinians for Ending Anti-Black Racism, through which she started organizing online.
One day I noticed that she had changed her Discord profile picture to an old photo of a full-cheeked Black woman wearing a polka-dotted bandana.
Is that an old Black Panther or something? I texted.
Wow, the ignorance, she replied.
According to the lecture my daughter later delivered, the picture was of Fatima Bernawi, one of the first Palestinian women freedom fighters. Bernawi, a Jerusalemite of Nigerian descent, had been imprisoned for attempting to bomb an Israeli cinema in her hometown shortly after the war in 1967. Bernawi looked like a punk rock star: angry eyes, tongue out in defiance, jet bangs peeking out from under her headwrap.
“I’m surprised you don’t know her,” Firdaos said. “You call yourself a Palestinian?”
There’s no greater accountability than that which your children demand of you. As the lockdown wore on through the summer, Firdaos increasingly brought Adie inside our house for the comfort of air conditioning, and they spent hours together in Firdaos’s room. This was against the rules at the time, but Marcy let it slide. She said she didn’t want to regulate our daughter’s life too much, not when the disease was already in charge of most of it.
“Plus, they’re both wearing their masks, aren’t they?” she added.
At first, Adie’s presence in Firdaos’s room tripped up my software. So I cobbled together a patch that enabled BreathCatch to distinguish multiple people and record their vitals separately. It surprised me that the girls’ masks didn’t degrade the quality of the readings much. With small modifications, the software was able to detect a person’s breathing patterns no matter what they had on their face.
Those were strange times. The software had become quite powerful, but the pandemic made it so hospital and clinic budgets were maxed out attending to more immediate needs. I was always either distracted or in a bad mood. I started waiting until Marcy was sound asleep before coming to bed myself, just to avoid telling her how grim things looked for my new venture.
On a particularly bad day in the middle of June, I was in my car, trying to distract myself with a drive on the 401. I put on Abdul-Basit’s recitation of Al-Rahman, one of my favourite suras, which I hoped would calm me. His voice as he enumerated God’s blessings brought me back to the day when Marcy and I had our nikah in a small ceremony at my parents’ house, and my mother played this melodic sura. Even before that day, Marcy was like the daughter my mother never had.
Marcy’s family had been our next-door neighbours, and after her own mother passed away prematurely from cancer, her overwhelmed father was only too glad for preteen Marcy to spend some after-school time with the kindly, veiled immigrant lady next door. Marcy became a fixture at our house, teaching my mother some slang and explaining to her the workings of middle school; in exchange, my mother let Marcy watch her as she tended the garden or wrapped grape leaves for dinner. By the time I had completed university, I was struck by how attractive and mature Marcy had become, and how much a part of our family she already was. Marcy seemed to see something in me, too, though I don’t doubt that, at least partly, she saw my mother.
It was an hour lost in this memory, and in Abdul-Basit’s voice, before I even looked at my phone again and noticed a spate of missed calls from Marcy.
Firdaos’s principal had called. Firdaos and Adie had been caught on closed-circuit cameras brazenly defacing school property. With black spray paint, they had scrawled RACISM HAPPENS HERE TOO on the school’s front doors, across several classroom windows, and on the tennis court. They did it in broad daylight, without hoodies or hats or anything to conceal their identities. They didn’t even hasten their steps as they were leaving.
The next day, Marcy and I had a video call with the principal, Ms. Warner. She was in her late fifties, with a silver bun on top of her head and a manner of speaking that made you feel she was disappointed you didn’t know better. Ms. Warner wanted us to know that the school had been very sensitive to the emotions of students during this difficult time in race relations. There had been special video listening sessions that were made available, with school administrators and child psychologists present. There had been resources created for those affected, and for their allies like Firdaos. The school had even issued a formal statement in support of Black Lives Matter, which was unprecedented and, some would say, controversial. Ultimately, however, the actions of Firdaos and Adie were unacceptable. The upshot, as I understood from reading between the lines, was that while the school would’ve liked to discipline the girls, they were afraid to in light of shifting public sentiment. And so they were willing to resolve the issue quietly, provided the parents of the two well-meaning (but culpable) teens paid to repair the damage.
This seemed like a reasonable solution to me, but I wanted to consult with Firdaos. I asked Ms. Warner if she had spoken to Adie’s parents. Ms. Warner said that she had; the Taysons wanted time to think the matter over.
I looked at Marcy, who nodded at me to respond. “In that case,” I said, “we will do the same.”
ON THE SCREEN SHARE, the row marked “Escrow” is now green, meaning completed. Only a few more rows of collaboration to go.
The second-in-command mentions that he would like to revisit the intellectual property terms. I can almost hear my heart rate quickening. Stay calm, stay calm. This is a normal business negotiation between human beings. To prove this to myself, I go over the human traits that I have learned about the second-in-command: three children, a second wife, likes sports, does not like hot weather. That last bit I gleaned today. As part of our compulsory five minutes of small talk, the second-in-command said: “Our weather is sometimes difficult in the summer, even if we are right next to the sea.”
The thing to avoid here, if I were to anticipate Romero’s advice, is lingering on the words our weather. When the second-in-command says that, it is obviously not meant to insult, obviously not meant to inflame. I have to be very firm with myself about this. We cannot be adolescents here, trying to detect hurts where there is only normal communication. The second-in-command does not mean that he owns the weather. He simply lives in an area, and the weather in that area is, as a figure of speech, his weather.
The second-in-command mentioned the name of his city in our earliest introductions. A hub city for technology in their technology-proud country. It was called something ending in -na, I believe. Or maybe something ending in -ya, or -on. I don’t remember. I made sure to expel it from my mind as soon as I heard it, so I would not be tempted to locate it on a map later. If I did look on a map, the area might seem familiar. It might have a former name that did not end in -na or -ya or -on, a former name in my own language, not theirs, and so one that I could not so easily forget. Perhaps his weather would be revealed to be my grandfather’s old weather, or my grandmother’s old weather. Perhaps I would be tempted to think of it as my rightful weather. And all that for what, a figure of speech?
Let’s focus. I message Romero: I would like to keep an open mind here, but what more could they possibly want? We are already selling them our entire technology, totally and completely.
The second-in-command says, “We would like to add that you will give us everything you may invent in the future that is in any way related to this software, or related to breathing generally.”
Fury.
Is what I am hearing real? They want to lay claim not just to the best idea I have ever had but also to any ideas I may ever have? Is this what passes for a joke among them, their way of toying with the Arab they have on a string? My daughter struggles to breathe, I witness her languishing every day — yet I am to stop myself from thinking of ways to help her, or else risk losing them to these criminals?
The thought of Firdaos makes me desperate. Without warning, I turn off my computer camera and pick up my phone. I see she’s changed her profile picture again — it’s back to the Bernawi photo, which she hasn’t used since last summer’s George Floyd protests. And she’s added some of my muted words in hashtags on top of it.
#FreePalestine #SaveSheikhJarrah #EndtheOccupation #EndIsraeliGenocide
Romero messages me in our side chat. Where are you? Did you walk out? This ask is not strange, and our lawyer agrees. They just want to make sure you’re not holding back anything. It’s baked into the price.
I turn my camera back on. Borrowing some boldness from my daughter, I address the second-in-command. “So, about this request then . . . What if we say no?”
“That would be a problem,” he says.
“In that case, we have a problem.”
Excerpt from "Enjoy Your Life, Capo" from Her First Palestinian copyright © 2022 by Saeed Teebi. Reproduced with permission from House of Anansi Press, Toronto. www.houseofanansi.comSaeed Teebi is a writer and lawyer based in Toronto. His story “Her First Palestinian” was shortlisted for the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize. He was born to Palestinian parents in Kuwait and, after some time in the U.S., has lived in Canada since 1993.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
Her First Palestinian and Other Stories
by Saeed TeebiHouse of Anansi Press, 2022Finalist for the 2022 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedShort-listed, Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, 2022Nominated, Forest of Reading Evergreen Award, 2023Short-listed, Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Award, 2023Runner-up, Writers' Union of Canada Danuta Gleed Literary Award, 2022Support Send My Love to AnyoneElegant, surprising stories about Palestinian immigrants in Canada navigating their identities in circumstances that push them to the emotional brink.
Saeed Teebi’s intense, engrossing stories plunge into the lives of characters grappling with their experiences as Palestinian immigrants to Canada. A doctor teaches his girlfriend about his country, only for her to fall into a consuming obsession with the Middle East conflict. A math professor risks his family’s destruction by slandering the king of a despotic, oil-rich country. A university student invents an imaginary girlfriend to fit in with his callous, womanizing roommates. A lawyer takes on the impossible mission of becoming a body smuggler. A lonely widower travels to Russia in search of a movie starlet he met in his youth in historical Jaffa. A refugee who escaped violent circumstances rebels against the kindness of his sponsor. These taut and compelling stories engage the immigrant experience and reflect the Palestinian diaspora with grace and insight.
Support Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it!
Big heartfelt thanks to all of the subscribers and contributors who make this project possible!
ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
April 21, 2024
Christine Estima on Rule Breaking
There are very few gatekeepers left in most artistic disciplines. Gone are the days when you needed your fledgling band to tour dinky dives across the country before getting a record deal. Now you can record an entire album from home, upload in seconds to Spotify, and become an instant chart-topper. It's the same for the theatre, where a tiny play submitted to the Toronto Fringe Festival became the international TV sensation Kim’s Convenience.
But in literature, barring the unlikely event that you’ve penned the next 50 Shades of Vampires (or whatever) and garnered millions of fans online, you still need to play the game. No, you can’t just submit your manuscript to Harper Collins or Penguin Random House yourself. They only take solicited submissions. So before you can even break beyond the Big 5 gate, you need to get yourself a literary agent to solicit on your behalf. A quick look at the Binders Seeking Literary Agents Facebook group reveals post after post of hopeful writers waiting months just to get a reply from overworked agents, or receiving positive feedback but no offer of representation. In arguably the most competitive industry, where book deals trade hands for fortunes, getting that all important agent may seem impossible these days. So perhaps bending the rules is the only path to success.
I have had two literary agents in my career (currently still with the latter), both of whom I secured through unorthodox means. Taking the famed advice of Marilyn Monroe, “if I’d observed all the rules, I’d never have got anywhere,” I applied that ethos to getting an agent, refusing to go the traditional route.
Even figuring out how one is supposed to acquire a literary agent has historically been one of great mystery. When you’re a teenager with dreams of writing the great Canadian novel, or even just wanting to get your YA novella into the hands of a publisher, you will be disappointed to learn that when your school holds a career day assembly, this vocation is ruthlessly left out. Writing, much like the other arts of acting, dance, music, and visual art is often something a hopeful enters into with a lot of gumption, and a hell-or-high-water attitude. That means, hustling to figure it out.
Before everything was on the internet, one would have to go to Chapters Indigo and ask the staff to even figure out that there was a book published every year called the Canadian Writers Market which would list alphabetically all of the literary agents, publishers, newspapers, magazines, and journals that were accepting submissions. When it came to agents, they would list their contact information, what to send them, and what genre they might be on the hunt for. It was almost like a Lonely Planet guidebook for starry-eyed authors. And details included could quickly become out of date, obsolete, or were simply untrue.
For me, my luck in getting my first agent was simply because I unapologetically and indefatigably talked all about my career aspirations to anyone and everyone would listen. That’s how in the late aughts, I found myself at a house party as the guest of a friend, not knowing anyone, but willing to talk about my writing career as if it were existent rather than non-existent. The host of the party ended up telling me that she was actually interning at a literary agency, and asked me about my manuscript.
I will admit to being skeptical, and to having grandiose dreams of signing with a huge international agency rather than some small local boutique agency I’d never heard of. So when she asked me to send her the first 50 pages of my manuscript, I balked and only sent 15.
That, my dear friends, isn’t how these things are done. To get an agent, not only should you send exactly what they ask (sometimes it’s the first 50 pages, sometimes it’s the first three chapters, and in addition to that, you are quite often required to include a cover letter that lists your potential audience, other like-minded books on the market, and even a marketing plan).
Very quickly, the head of the agency asked to meet me for coffee. After chatting over coffee, and then him reading my entire manuscript and offering editorial notes, I accepted his offer of representation. My first agent – obtained from a house party.
After a few years with this agent, I noticed he just couldn’t sell my manuscripts and that perhaps it wasn’t the best fit, prompting me to look elsewhere. I had big dreams and big stories to tell, and I had an agent who wasn’t even reading my manuscripts, to say nothing of my emails. I thought getting an agent would mean I had “made it,” and I had big plans and big designs for my illustrious literary career. But of course, that old saying applied: “If you want to make god laugh, tell him your plans.”
I’d never done the query-wait-manuscript-wait-edit-wait-wait-wait route. So once again I decided to bend the rules a little. This time, I was going to leverage the social media following I had spent way too much time curating to get myself a new and better agent.
Before X (formerly Twitter) became the current hellscape that it is, it was a wonderful place to network, support other artists and working professionals, and have interactive conversations with others in the field. I had been following one literary agent for a while, and while we had DM’d a few times to say hello and offer our best wishes, nothing about representation had ever come up.
So I decided to break the first cardinal rule of getting a literary agent – I DM’d him on Twitter. Today, I can imagine that would rub a lot of literary agents the wrong way and might ruin anyone’s chances of representation before their manuscript is even read. But this was circa 2015, and I figured, “no guts, no glory.”
He wrote back and agreed, yes, it was unorthodox, but still encouraged me to send him my first 50 pages. Upon reading them, he said the manuscript was great and agreed to meet with me secretly. So at a Starbucks located far away from where my first agent might see us, we clandestinely grabbed a coffee, and he offered to represent me on the condition that I terminate my contract with my other agent pronto.
So I went home and emailed my first agent, letting him know I was out. “I’m sorry I couldn’t sell your books,” he wrote back (the first time he answered my email within five minutes. Usually, they just were ignored). And that was that. I had pulled it off almost like a scene in Ocean’s 11. Recon work, secrecy, and playing a part led to securing the bag. My second literary agent: obtained via Twitter DM.
It was my second agent who brokered the deal for my first book, THE SYRIAN LADIES BENEVOLENT SOCIETY, published by House of Anansi Press, which was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by the CBC. He has also brokered the deal for my second book, LETTERS TO KAFKA, due out in 2025, also with Anansi. What a dream it is to not only have an agent who believes in your work (and actually reads it), but to also support it to the point of publication. I’d never had that before.
Not everyone is so lucky. In 2023, the New Leaf Agency scandal rocked social media when it was revealed the literary agency dropped many of the authors on their roster over email, many of whom had manuscripts on submission or were negotiating book deals. The drop came unceremoniously, without warning, and at two hours to midnight before a long weekend, leaving many authors out on a limb when they should have been enjoying their holiday. What’s worse, the agency also dropped their own agent who was repp’ing these authors after she had already left her for holiday, forcing her to issue a statement that, no, it wasn’t agreed upon or amicable.
This sparked a conversation online about the hurdles writers must endure not only to get an agent, but also to keep one.
In an industry where the marketing department ultimately has final say over the editorial department, and every book tearing up #BookTok seems to just be a derivative copy of the next, authors with big dreams and big stories to tell often do not even get the benefit of consideration in these business decisions. Maybe breaking all the rules is the only power move left. If you want the agent and the career you deserve, with no waiting, it might be time to do as Elizabeth Taylor once said: “Now is the time for guts, and guile.”
Christine Estima’s essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times, the Walrus, VICE, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Observer, New York Daily News, Chatelaine, Maisonneuve and many more. Her debut book THE SYRIAN LADIES BENEVOLENT SOCIETY (House of Anansi Press) was named one of the best books of 2023 by the CBC. Please visit ChristineEstima.com for more.Support Send My Love to AnyoneSupport Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it!
Big heartfelt thanks to all of the subscribers and contributors who make this project possible!
ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
Christine Estima | Issue 36
There are very few gatekeepers left in most artistic disciplines. Gone are the days when you needed your fledgling band to tour dinky dives across the country before getting a record deal. Now you can record an entire album from home, upload in seconds to Spotify, and become an instant chart-topper. It's the same for the theatre, where a tiny play submitted to the Toronto Fringe Festival became the international TV sensation Kim’s Convenience.
But in literature, barring the unlikely event that you’ve penned the next 50 Shades of Vampires (or whatever) and garnered millions of fans online, you still need to play the game. No, you can’t just submit your manuscript to Harper Collins or Penguin Random House yourself. They only take solicited submissions. So before you can even break beyond the Big 5 gate, you need to get yourself a literary agent to solicit on your behalf. A quick look at the Binders Seeking Literary Agents Facebook group reveals post after post of hopeful writers waiting months just to get a reply from overworked agents, or receiving positive feedback but no offer of representation. In arguably the most competitive industry, where book deals trade hands for fortunes, getting that all important agent may seem impossible these days. So perhaps bending the rules is the only path to success.
I have had two literary agents in my career (currently still with the latter), both of whom I secured through unorthodox means. Taking the famed advice of Marilyn Monroe, “if I’d observed all the rules, I’d never have got anywhere,” I applied that ethos to getting an agent, refusing to go the traditional route.
Even figuring out how one is supposed to acquire a literary agent has historically been one of great mystery. When you’re a teenager with dreams of writing the great Canadian novel, or even just wanting to get your YA novella into the hands of a publisher, you will be disappointed to learn that when your school holds a career day assembly, this vocation is ruthlessly left out. Writing, much like the other arts of acting, dance, music, and visual art is often something a hopeful enters into with a lot of gumption, and a hell-or-high-water attitude. That means, hustling to figure it out.
Before everything was on the internet, one would have to go to Chapters Indigo and ask the staff to even figure out that there was a book published every year called the Canadian Writers Market which would list alphabetically all of the literary agents, publishers, newspapers, magazines, and journals that were accepting submissions. When it came to agents, they would list their contact information, what to send them, and what genre they might be on the hunt for. It was almost like a Lonely Planet guidebook for starry-eyed authors. And details included could quickly become out of date, obsolete, or were simply untrue.
For me, my luck in getting my first agent was simply because I unapologetically and indefatigably talked all about my career aspirations to anyone and everyone would listen. That’s how in the late aughts, I found myself at a house party as the guest of a friend, not knowing anyone, but willing to talk about my writing career as if it were existent rather than non-existent. The host of the party ended up telling me that she was actually interning at a literary agency, and asked me about my manuscript.
I will admit to being skeptical, and to having grandiose dreams of signing with a huge international agency rather than some small local boutique agency I’d never heard of. So when she asked me to send her the first 50 pages of my manuscript, I balked and only sent 15.
That, my dear friends, isn’t how these things are done. To get an agent, not only should you send exactly what they ask (sometimes it’s the first 50 pages, sometimes it’s the first three chapters, and in addition to that, you are quite often required to include a cover letter that lists your potential audience, other like-minded books on the market, and even a marketing plan).
Very quickly, the head of the agency asked to meet me for coffee. After chatting over coffee, and then him reading my entire manuscript and offering editorial notes, I accepted his offer of representation. My first agent – obtained from a house party.
After a few years with this agent, I noticed he just couldn’t sell my manuscripts and that perhaps it wasn’t the best fit, prompting me to look elsewhere. I had big dreams and big stories to tell, and I had an agent who wasn’t even reading my manuscripts, to say nothing of my emails. I thought getting an agent would mean I had “made it,” and I had big plans and big designs for my illustrious literary career. But of course, that old saying applied: “If you want to make god laugh, tell him your plans.”
I’d never done the query-wait-manuscript-wait-edit-wait-wait-wait route. So once again I decided to bend the rules a little. This time, I was going to leverage the social media following I had spent way too much time curating to get myself a new and better agent.
Before X (formerly Twitter) became the current hellscape that it is, it was a wonderful place to network, support other artists and working professionals, and have interactive conversations with others in the field. I had been following one literary agent for a while, and while we had DM’d a few times to say hello and offer our best wishes, nothing about representation had ever come up.
So I decided to break the first cardinal rule of getting a literary agent – I DM’d him on Twitter. Today, I can imagine that would rub a lot of literary agents the wrong way and might ruin anyone’s chances of representation before their manuscript is even read. But this was circa 2015, and I figured, “no guts, no glory.”
He wrote back and agreed, yes, it was unorthodox, but still encouraged me to send him my first 50 pages. Upon reading them, he said the manuscript was great and agreed to meet with me secretly. So at a Starbucks located far away from where my first agent might see us, we clandestinely grabbed a coffee, and he offered to represent me on the condition that I terminate my contract with my other agent pronto.
So I went home and emailed my first agent, letting him know I was out. “I’m sorry I couldn’t sell your books,” he wrote back (the first time he answered my email within five minutes. Usually, they just were ignored). And that was that. I had pulled it off almost like a scene in Ocean’s 11. Recon work, secrecy, and playing a part led to securing the bag. My second literary agent: obtained via Twitter DM.
It was my second agent who brokered the deal for my first book, THE SYRIAN LADIES BENEVOLENT SOCIETY, published by House of Anansi Press, which was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by the CBC. He has also brokered the deal for my second book, LETTERS TO KAFKA, due out in 2025, also with Anansi. What a dream it is to not only have an agent who believes in your work (and actually reads it), but to also support it to the point of publication. I’d never had that before.
Not everyone is so lucky. In 2023, the New Leaf Agency scandal rocked social media when it was revealed the literary agency dropped many of the authors on their roster over email, many of whom had manuscripts on submission or were negotiating book deals. The drop came unceremoniously, without warning, and at two hours to midnight before a long weekend, leaving many authors out on a limb when they should have been enjoying their holiday. What’s worse, the agency also dropped their own agent who was repp’ing these authors after she had already left her for holiday, forcing her to issue a statement that, no, it wasn’t agreed upon or amicable.
This sparked a conversation online about the hurdles writers must endure not only to get an agent, but also to keep one.
In an industry where the marketing department ultimately has final say over the editorial department, and every book tearing up #BookTok seems to just be a derivative copy of the next, authors with big dreams and big stories to tell often do not even get the benefit of consideration in these business decisions. Maybe breaking all the rules is the only power move left. If you want the agent and the career you deserve, with no waiting, it might be time to do as Elizabeth Taylor once said: “Now is the time for guts, and guile.”
Christine Estima’s essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times, the Walrus, VICE, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Observer, New York Daily News, Chatelaine, Maisonneuve and many more. Her debut book THE SYRIAN LADIES BENEVOLENT SOCIETY (House of Anansi Press) was named one of the best books of 2023 by the CBC. Please visit ChristineEstima.com for more.Support Send My Love to AnyoneSupport Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it!
Big heartfelt thanks to all of the subscribers and contributors who make this project possible!
ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
April 14, 2024
Kate Sutherland | Issue 36
Kate Sutherland is the author of the poetry collections How to Draw a Rhinoceros and The Bones Are There and the collage chapbook Nuptials. Her collages have been published in Canthius, long con, and Photo Trouvée magazines and exhibited in group shows at A’ the Airts (Sanquhar, Scotland), and Propeller Art Gallery and Gallery 1313 (Toronto, Canada).Support Send My Love to AnyoneSupport Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it!
Big heartfelt thanks to all of the subscribers and contributors who make this project possible!
ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
April 6, 2024
Julie Paul | Issue 36
We longed to find the source of the singing but our legs
were broken. Well, not broken, but unusable,
untrustworthy. In fact they were fine, our legs, but we’d
forgotten how to walk and there was no one left to lead
the way. Did we want a leader? We thought of other
leaders, how they’d taken their people to glory and/or
graves and we decided it wasn’t worth the risk. But the
singing – the melody seeped through the cracks in the wall
like the scent of a lemon tart. The voices harmonized as if
the wind and sea, sky and light, had joined forces to take
us down. We felt a deep twitch in our hamstrings. Our toes
grabbed at the dirt. Who dared to make such a joyful noise,
we whispered, our vocal cords long turned to rust. We
longed to find the source of sound. The urge to move grew
louder within us, swelled to mirror the choral crescendo
that haunted us. But instead we sat with our backs against
the wall and let the music ruin us, note by note.
© 2024 “The Source of the Singing” by Julie Paul from Whiny Baby published with permission of McGill-Queen’s University Press.Julie Paul’s second book of poetry, Whiny Baby (2024), follows the 2017 release of the poetry collection The Rules of the Kingdom, both published with McGill-Queen’s University Press. She is also the author of three short fiction collections, The Jealousy Bone (Emdash, 2008), The Pull of the Moon and Meteorites (both Touchwood Editions, 2014 / 2019). Julie’s poetry, fiction and CNF have been widely published and recognized; The Pull of the Moon won the 2015 Victoria Book Prize, The Rules of the Kingdom was a finalist for both the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and her personal essay “It Not Only Rises, It Shines” received TNQ’s Edna Staebler Personal Essay Award. Unless she’s visiting her daughter in Montreal, Julie lives in Victoria BC, where, in addition to writing and playing with paint, she works as a Registered Massage Therapist.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
Whiny Baby
by Julie PaulMcGill-Queen's University Press, 2024Chomping / champing / championing / churlish / … / There’s a wolf at the door / that looks exactly like me
Who is the “whiny baby” in this book? Rather than calling names or hurling insults, the candid poems in this collection most often implicate the poet herself.
Expansive in form and voice, the poems in Julie Paul’s second collection offer both love letters and laments. They take us to construction sites, meadows, waiting rooms, beaches, alleys, gardens, and frozen rivers, from Montreal to Hornby Island. They ask us to live in the moment, despite the moment. Including a spirited long poem that riffs on the fairy tale “Three Billy Goats Gruff,” these poems are like old friends that at once console and confess. They blow kisses, they remember, and they celebrate the broken and the lost alongside the beautiful.
At turns frank, peevish, introspective, and mischievous, the poems share sincere and intimate perspectives on the changing female body, our natural and built landscapes, and the idiosyncrasies of modern life. Whiny Baby calls on us to simultaneously examine and exult in our brief time on earth.
Support Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it!
Big heartfelt thanks to all of the subscribers and contributors who make this project possible!
ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
March 29, 2024
Onion Man
Thanks so much for subscribing to my newsletter Send My Love to Anyone.
The publisher of my first book closed down and all rights for the book reverted to me.
But why have a book go unread?
So I’m offering it to my paid-subscribers as an E-Book.
Hope you enjoy!
If you’d like to become a paid subscriber, sign up!
March 28, 2024
Send My Love to Anyone | Issue 35
Hi friends,
In advance of Poetry Month, Issue 35 of Send My Love to Anyone is heavy on the poetry!
You’ll find “Mouth Still Open,” a beautiful and heartbreaking poem by award-winning poet Mosab Abu Toha (author of Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear), “The Country of Poets” a new poem by Stephen Collis (author of The Middle), an excerpt from Emily Austin’s (author of Everyone in this Room Will Someday Be Dead) new poetry book Gay Girl Prayers (Brick Books), and in their column The First Time, presents Dale Martin Smith who writes about his forthcoming book This Size of Paradise. Chelene Knight (author of Junie and Let It Go), makes the case for letter writing, and I share an old poem where I decry the sadness of the world and a new dialogue prompt in my other Substack Where Do I Start?
In Issue 35 Gatherings, I recommended writing by Saeed Teebi, Sophie Monks Kaufman, Octavia Butler, Matthew Salesses, Mary Gaitskill, Canisia Lubrin, Lynne Tillman, and more!
Visit the About Section to find out more about Send My Love to Anyone!
Hope you enjoy!
Kathryn
Thank you for reading Send My Love to Anyone. This post is public so feel free to share it.
The country of poets is
being bombed again
I can see the clouds of word-dust
billowing into the televised air
cries come out of burnt nights
metered but tending towards
a fractured syntax
and the unexpected image
not a dove
but a singing mechanical bird
perched on a tank’s gun
its new rhythms
the staccato of RPGs
the phosphorous of idiot wind","size":"md","isEditorNode":true,"title":"Stephen Collis | Issue 35","publishedBylines":[],"post_date":"2024-03-16T20:42:10.626Z","cover_image":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazon... My Love to Anyone","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f...
Dale Martin Smith “Notes On Paradise”","size":"lg","isEditorNode":true,"title":"the nebulous issue of the 'about'","publishedBylines":[{"id":16955065,"name":"KIRBY","bio":"The pansy. Not the cream puff. poetryisqueer.com ","photo_url":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-... First Time","id":142732882,"type":"newsletter","reaction_count":4,"comment_count":2,"publication_name":"Send My Love to Anyone","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f...
Where Do I Start? | Writing Prompts by Kathryn MocklerDialogue Prompt"Dialogue...grows from the character and the conflict, and, in its turn, reveals the character and carries the action." —Lajos Egri from The Art of Dramatic Writing Where Do I Start? | Writing Prompts by Kathryn Mockler is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support this project, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber…Read more8 hours ago · Kathryn MocklerVisit the About Section to find out more about Send My Love to AnyoneSubmissionsPitches for reviews of small/independent press books are welcome. If you have a title that you’re interested in reviewing, please email me with writing samples. Visit the About Section to find out more about honorariums for capsule and full reviews.
Paid subscribers of Send My Love to Anyone are welcome to send along their book or event info, press releases, or arcs for consideration for excerpt publication or mention in Gatherings. Read the About section for more info.
SMLTA is does not accept unsolicited submissions of original creative work or essays at this time.
Support Send My Love to AnyoneSupport Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it!
Big heartfelt thanks to all of the subscribers and contributors who make this project possible!
ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
