At fifty I wrote Marrying & Burying, a memoir. Today, twenty-eight years later, in the middle of a pandemic, I have time for a backward glance. Or a forward glance. Who can say? I’m scrubbing my hands routinely and building a coffin in the basement, hoping to ward off death. Writing a memoir is…
Endings in Ritual Studies
Click here to order from Amazon Endings in Ritual Studies was published in January of 2020, just in time to hit the Covid wall. I couldn’t get an author’s copy of my own book across the Canadian-US border. Endings is a bookend to Beginnings in Ritual Studies. Now in its 3rd edition, Beginnings wears a…
bull
The ten ox-herding pictures represent stages of enlightenment in Zen Buddhism. Below is my idiosyncratic rendition and interpretation of the pictures. The art is Japanese ink-brush on paper towel. Follow this link to Tricycle to see more traditional ox-herding pictures. searching bitching the while away, i sniff pasture and sky for what i do…
Disarming Boys
Originally published in The Canopy Review 01 (2019): 10-26. Excerpts read at the Langston Hughes House, Harlem, September 23, 2019. World War II rages as my parents rivet B-24 bombers at Consolidated Aircraft. Home from the graveyard shift, Dad’s teaching me to box. Knees knocked, I’m punching back. Later, he’s equipped me with a toy…
Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers
Readings at Red Sandcastle Theatre in Toronto by authors in Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers, edited by Susan Scott.
The backsides of white souls
26 January 2019
Ron Grimes
creative nonfictionessays, articlesethnicity, racism, multiculturalismjusticereligion, spiritualitystory & essayviolence
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The backsides of white souls Ronald L. Grimes Black History month starts on February 1, so I am re-posting this essay from its original publication in Canadian Notes and Queries (CNQ). A selection of films for Black History Month: National Film Board of Canada. For background on the writing of this essay see “Sleeping with…
You want it darker?
It’s easy, I suppose, to get romantic or religious as you age. It’s harder to get honest about yourself, your failures, and your aspirations. Leonard Cohen is about as straight-forward as you can get. I beg Leonard’s pardon for putting him to work in the service of democracy:
Mining words
Robert Fullerton, an ex-shipyard welder in Glasgow, says, “Imagine going down into the dirt to find a word that you’re going to elevate up into poetry. That’s mining for me.” Drawing inspiration from the sparks, he imagines them as “wee possibilities or wee ideas,” Fullerton began crafting poems while working at the shipyard. He discovered that his dark, solitary days provided the “perfect…
Living in the world as if it were home
Tim Lilburn teaches at the University of Victoria and has published ten books of poetry. The Names, his most recent poetry collection, was published in 2017. The Larger Conversation: Contemplation and Place, a collection of essays, was published in 2017. This is an interview by Tim Wilson. To read “Listening with Courtesy,” another interview with Tim,…
Listening with courtesy
An interview with Tim Lilburn by Darryl Whetter, Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature canadienne, [S.l.], Jan. 1997, accessed 02 Oct. 2017. ISSN 1718-7850. DW: You write and speak about poetry as a “courteous” way of seeing. How does this notion of courtesy affect your work technically? TL: First of all, I don’t…
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