Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme (E-Journal, York University)

Glasser Langille, Carole

102 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
“faraway.” Then the job in Montreal 
had come up. 
She knows she should start “invest-
ing” in the here and now. She is struck, 
as usual, by the emptiness of her large 
living room … a white leather sofa, 
a small table and the tv. Perhaps she 
should give a dinner party for people 
from work. That would mean buying 
a dining room set, unpacking her good 
dishes and finding her tablecloths. 
Whom would she invite and why, and 
could they even begin fill this vacuum? 
She doesn’t want small incremental 
measures of adjustment. What she 
wants is to scream, her voice piercing 
the sound-proofed walls. “Fools, hypo-
crites,” she wants to shriek. “You with 
your prayer rugs, crucifixes, jargon 
and silences! What do you really know 
about human suffering? What do you 
know about having to pick through 
shards and stones to construct a life 
you don’t want to live?”
Irene wants her thin hair to fly in 
unruly clouds around her blood-suf-
fused face, her veined eyes popping 
through facial distortions. She wants 
to be the very cartoon of a “Crazy 
Lady.” She wants to scrawl a letter in 
oily black ink, revealing to Phil the 
ugly but true passions that coursed 
through her during their many dispas-
sionate conversations: “How do you 
think I feel seeing what we built up 
together going to a bunch of eunuchs 
in Oregon?”
She won’t write to Phil. She knows 
he would not answer. His silence, she 
comprehends, will accompany all her 
brave efforts at living. It will be there 
for the duration. 
Greta Hofmann Nemiroff co-taught the 
first university-level Women’s Studies 
course in Canada in 1970. Over the 
years she has published numerous stories 
and articles in both English and French 
and also edited and written several books. 
She currently teaches English, Human-
ities and Women’s/Gender Studies at 
Dawson College in Montreal.
CAROLE GLASSER LANGILLE
Stir
I can hide like a thief
but the heart is a policeman at the crossroads
who forces me out in the open. Outside,
where the earth is seeded, day
cedes its place. Water has picked up
the last shred of light and carried it away. Hush.
Evening is a great brooding dog. I want to leave
and not be followed. If I know a psalm, it’s this: journey
is a type of singing, suffused with dance,
sufficing. The Sufis had it right. No one
is refused. The great lie is this: that voyage means
going. Each time I venture out,
I am always led inward, stumbling, hurtling,
as if falling were succeeding. Who holds up
whom? No one steals away.
Carole Glasser Langille’s fourth book of poetry, Church of the Exquisite 
Panic: The Ophelia Poems was published in October 2012. It was recently 
nominated for The Atlantic Poetry Prize.
A. MARY MURPHY
I don’t want to be an old crazy person
I don’t want to be an old crazy person
muttering around the streets
collecting cigarette butts
various brands
I don’t smoke
but what if I take it up
what if none of the butts are my brand
what if I don’t live somewhere warm
have to pick up stubby things
with mittens on my hands
being old will be bad enough
A. Mary Murphy’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.


Stir

Audet, Élaine

34 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
ÉlaIne auDeT
une mémoire à ta mesure et à ta démesure
de l’urgence pour chacune de nous
grandes ou petites d’imaginer
De créer des femmes nouvelles
libérées du moule masculin
imposé aux filles et aux femmes
depuis plus de trois mille ans
De remplacer la mémoire
prisonnière du passé
par le miroir du futur
d’inventer la stature rêvée
Pour les enfants de demain
concevoir des femmes
avec la trempe des héros
libres sans l’aval d’un maître
Je te vois désarmer les vents rivaux
réinventer des mots d’amour lents
sous le froid redécouvrir l’avenir
la lignée des femmes blottie en toi
Sappho Virginia Simone Neda
femmes de pensée et d’action
ou femmes jaillies de l’imaginaire
elles t’entraîneront dans l’inédit
Ces magiciennes veilleront à ce que jamais
tu ne doutes de pouvoir changer la vie
de réaliser tes rêves les plus extrêmes
d’envol de bonté de bonheur de beauté
Je t’écris à toi Naïma
qui viens à peine d’avoir huit ans
toi qui gagnes déjà
des combats de mots à ton école
Je voudrais en ce 8 mars
de l’an deux mille douze
pour la Journée internationale des femmes
te convier à livrer un autre combat
Le plus important de tous
celui de toujours t’appartenir
d’être toi-même comme aujourd’hui
unique intègre courageuse
De croire en toi en tes mots
en ton goût du risque et de la couleur
aux avenues non convenues
jaillies incertaines sous tes pas
De rejeter les appâts les mirages
les pièges pour te mettre en cage
surtout quand on cherchera
à te réduire à l’image désirable
À faire de ta beauté un corps étranger
que chacun pourra s’approprier
surtout quand on te fera luire
les avantages d’être la reine d’un roi
Louky une amie poète
parlait dans tous ses livres
Élaine Audet, poète et essayiste, a publié plusieurs ouvrages au Québec et à l’étranger dont «La passion des mots» 
(L’Hexagone, 1989), «Le cœur pensant—courtepointe de l’amitié entre femmes» (Loup de Gouttière, 2000). 
Elle est depuis 2002 co-éditrice du site et des éditions Sisyphe. Sa plus récente publication est «Sel et sang de la 
mémoire», poésie (éd. Sisyphe, 2009).


Une mémoire à ta mesue et à ta démesure

Martin, Linda

54 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
GiAnnA 
PAtriArCA
Disorder
how do I speak the words
to the woman who
looks at my face
and sees the angel
she is certain I am
what will I gain 
with my truth
will I live better 
with myself
my freedom
if I confuse the love
at home in her dry 
old eyes
will she see less 
of a woman
less of a man
less of the child
nonna
I’m gay
do you still love me?
Gianna Patriarca’s poetry 
and prose appears earlier in 
this volume. 
linDA MArtin
the Choice of listening
My mother is ninety-four and hard of hearing.
 She says, I can’t hear what you are saying.
I can hear everyone but you.
She puts in her hearing aids
but she still wants me to shout.
In the past, she would have shouted first, 
followed by my shouting, then her crying, then my crying.
We don’t cry together anymore.
Sometimes when I visit her in the retirement home,
or take her to the drug store for the adult diapers,
she cries a little.
Long ago I gave up talking with my mother,
I held an interior conversation
not giving her the choice of listening.
There are moments now when I almost speak.
My mother sits on the living room couch in her senior’s 
apartment,
sometimes I sit in a chair slightly to the side of her,
we can see each other’s faces,
other times I am beside her, holding her hand.
I think, This might be the day when I am able to tell her who I am.
I start a sentence and she will interrupt.
It could be as simple as What?
Linda Martin is a researcher, writer, librarian, and documentary filmmaker. 
The Healthsharing Reader: Women Speak About Health was published 
by Pandora Press in 1990. Hands on Farms, 2009, a documentary film 
about ten organic farmers in Ontario won the Green Apple Award at the 
Los Angeles Green Lifestyles film festival and Behind the Light, 2011, won 
second prize in the short documentary category at the 8th AnnualReelHeart 
International Film Festival in Toronto 2012.


English

The Choice of Listening

Morrow, Jenny

Wanting Out

McCaslin, Susan

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 53
hugging her. I hugged her for what 
seemed like eternity until the green 
onion “perfume” became part of me.
Mama, through her sobs, told 
me how much she hated the smell 
too. She told me that every day she 
wanted to quit. But she couldn’t quit 
because of us, her children. She told 
me that it wasn’t easy finding a job as 
a foreigner in Canada. She told me 
that the type of work available for 
her now was either domestic work 
or farm labour. But she swore to me 
that one day, one day, she would find 
something else. She said that she was 
almost enticed by the job offer of one 
of her employers the other day. There 
was a lady whose house she cleaned 
who offered her a position as her 
children’s nanny because the other 
nanny quit. Mama said she almost 
took it because it meant she wouldn’t 
have to work so hard on the farm to 
pick the onions. She told me that her 
wages depended on the quantity of 
onions she picked and not the hours 
she worked. But when she calculated 
how much the woman was offering 
it was slave labour compared to her 
onion gig. Moreover, being a nanny 
meant that she would only get the 
Sunday off and she would have to 
find someone else to watch us.
I felt so selfish as I heard Mama’s 
story. I wiped her tears with my shirt 
and continued to hug her. 
“So you see Anabella, I hate green 
onions too. But the love I have for 
you and Jonathan is stronger than my 
hate. Never forget that. So forgive me, 
if I continue to bring this smell home 
but until I find something better it’s 
our best choice.”
I nodded. By the time Mama was 
done giving her speech, I also had 
tears streaming down my face. “I’m 
sorry Mama. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay baby, it’s okay,” whispered 
mama as she gently stroked my tear-
stained face.
Years later, I still remember that 
moment. Who would believe that 
green onions would have such an 
effect on my life? 
Mama eventually found a better job 
a year later, but she never found any-
thing stable as a professor, although 
she had adjunct positions here and 
there. Her employment was always 
precarious. Yet she managed to keep 
us fed and ensured Jonathon and I 
attended university. Jonathon got 
the job Mama never could get. He’s a 
tenured professor of Political Science.
Me? I write stories. I fight for im-
migrants’ rights. I decry the injustices 
of migrant labour policies. I don’t 
have direct experience. But I saw 
Mama live it. I saw the pain in her 
eyes. I saw her sometimes, when she 
thought I wasn’t looking, hold on to 
her back whenever she tried to bend 
over or do anything that proved too 
strenuous for her back.
Most importantly, I’ve found a way 
to find the good in green onions. I’ve 
found a way to make delectable meals 
with the help of green onions. 
I love green onions because Mama 
loved me.
Grace Adeniyi Ogunyankin is a Ph.D. 
candidate in the Women’s Studies pro-
gram at York University. When she’s 
not writing her dissertation, she loves 
to write short stories, plays and spoken 
word poetry.
SUSAn MCCASlin
Uttermost
I have been in my uttermost mettle
a mother, kind, unkind,
obsessive, crazed, outraged,
hungering for my child waif
to hunger for her womanhood,
to cup her day and drink.
Yet I too am Kore, a witness
in the land of the dark Lord,
and I mother with tumult and fanfare
or quietly as a reef
the self that, once marauder,
now is barely drawing breath,
ghosting the shore.
Susan McCaslin is a Canadian poet and Faculty Emeritus of Douglas 
College in Westminster, bc, where she taught English and Creative 
Writing for twenty-three years. She is the author of eleven volumes of 
poetry, including her most recent, Demeter Goes Skydiving (University 
of Alberta Press, 2011). The latter was a finalist in 2012 for the bc Book 
Prize (Dorothy Livesay Award) and the winner of the 2012 Alberta Book 
Publishing Award (Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award). Susan resides in 
Fort Langley, British Columbia.


Uttermost

O'Donnell, Rachel

Rainy Season

Przybylo, Ela

44 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
.
sur la société. De son côté la jupe, essayez de le nier, est 
une pierre d’achoppement, sinon un empêchement de 
danser en rond. Ce n’est plus « pardessus le moulin » C’est 
la tunique de Nessus qui adhère à la peau mais qu’il faut 
arracher à tout prix même si elle emporte avec elle des 
lambeaux de chair. Et on parle d’allonger les robes pour 
qu’elles remplacent les balais de la Corporation et nettoient 
les rues de leurs immondices et propagent les microbes! …
Quand érigera-t-on en principe qu’à « même peine, il faut 
même salaire »? Ce serait trop simple, trop honnête, trop 
juste. Il faut toujours faire des subtilités, des distinguos 
spécieux, sans cesse la femme sur un plan d’infériorité.…
Ces pharisiens qui essaient de nous faire croire qu’ils 
ont brisé les chaines de l’esclavage où languissait le beau 
sexe, qu’ils ont rendu à la femme la dignité de son sexe! 
…On a voulu la mettre sur un piédestal pour l’empêcher 
de s’asseoir sur un rond de cuir, sur une chaise tournante, 
I. (slime and other discrepancies) 
—after Virginia Woolf’s “The Mark on the 
Wall”
slime and other discrepancies
when my foot touches down upon the life of 
a snail
and that little life is pressed into my shoe
this must be a day for mourning
on the wall, on the stairs, a speck or dent
or curved shadow
a pause or sprint
snail imagines – who knows what?
the sorry landscape
after a night of rain
and perhaps the lunching of a bird or two
an indefinable smear
between this mess and yesterday’s crunch
I am jarred awake
by the massive space of the still clouds
the brief cachinnations of the winded trees
II. (to know death, impossible)
To know death (impossible)
is to drag out our hair
along our bodies
and to rub our feet with sleep
as cicadas
to know death (impossible)
is to stare into the night
till only breath
and in the black new silhouettes
to know death (impossible)
is to drift with the wind
with eyes that follow a winded scarf
with breath that is lost in warming air
to breathe into the night
dense, polluted
to know death (impossible)
is only through hushed hands
through longing
through stories of extermination
dans une stalle de député, dans un fauteuil de sénateur, 
sur un trône, comme c’est malin! Qu’ils sont généreux nos 
législateurs! Quel respect, quelle vénération pour celle qui 
les a portés dans son sein, qui les a nourris de son sang, 
qui les a bercés sur ses genoux, qui les a soignés, dorlotés 
et élevés! Cette jupe qui devrait être comme un drapeau 
et solliciter des hommages et des saluts, on en a fait une 
entrave, presqu’un opprobre. 
This article was orginally published in 1937 in Le monde 
ouvrier. Eva Circé-Côté (1871-1949) was an iconoclast 
journalist who wrote more than a thousand articles for 
Montreal newspapers and magazines at the beginning of the 
century. She rarely used her name, preferring instead male 
pseudonyms (such as Julien Saint-Michel). She was appointed 
first librarian at the Montreal Municipal Library in 1903, a 
fact rarely acknowledged, and was also the author of four plays.
ela PRZYBYlo
Ela Przybylo is a Ph.D. student in t he Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies Program at York University. She is 
the author of the collection of poetry, Threats of Intimacy (2008), and more recently her poetry has been available in 
Branch. Haunted by times once present, now fading, she assembles words to remember and anticipate personal, familial, 
and collective traumas and joys.


II. (to know death, impossible)

Soutar-Hynes, Mary Lou

68 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
MArY lOU SOUtAr-hYneS
Variations
     Take note of turbulence
    the way a collar frames her face,     blouse  
    loosely falling —   
      irruptions 
    of red admirals,     jewels on the wing      
    Claim all lands     between high and low tide
        create ordinances 
    then a guard around 
      your heart’s perimeter —
     a chain-link fence
    Safer    to rough it on the margins,     rocked 
      by lines of poetry               
    dreaming icebergs,     edges sharp,     a lucent 
        greening — 
      all dues paid             
Mind over Matter
       Today the air is still,
    a raw sienna     settling ash —
     mists curl between conifers
    in the ravine,    
    the lake     all curves,     undulations  
   
     Spanning the river,     
    the bridge recedes,     languid,     alert,        
      arcing — 
    invitation’s  quiet utterance
    
     All those unbridgeable 
    reaches across the years,     striving for closure
    Just kiss the rock, 
      she said, move on 
    while memories breach the levees —     tattered, 
      whisper-thin
Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.


Variations

Stewart, Sheila

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 67
JUne SteVenSOn
Silhouette on the Snow
Her silhouette cavorts on the new fallen snow,
Elegant, hat and sweeping coat,
A lone figure, gray and white.
Beside me the shadow moves,
Long and lean and lonely.
Are those diamonds in this Christmas snowfall,
Sparkling, twinkling, or are they the tears
That run cold and crisp down my cheek
As the long, lone figure strides with me,
A comfort in the night, silent, sympathetic?
Together we drift into the snowflakes,
Away from the cozy fire of friends and family turned strangers,
Their lives intact, untouched,
Their smiles reflecting the frost of uncertainty
And inability to deal with the broken wing,
The once in-law, now outlaw,
She who goes with me into the swirling wind,
Footfall after footfall, soft crunches
Muffled by the mounting depth.
Point the boots in the direction of home,
Empty apartment, no more hearth and mistletoe
Or presents by the tree.
Just the cats and me
And the ghosts of Christmas past.
Misfits, stray pieces of a puzzle now discarded,
The shadow shortens in the streetlight
Now fat and dumpy, more like I feel.
Then in the burst of opaque light, suddenly gone,
Flattened like the snow beneath my trudging feet
That push reluctantly forward, dawdling like a child;
Out of the light my companion recedes into the background
Dodging my footsteps.
I turn, she dodges back, cat and mouse.
Let her go that elegant lady with the hat and sweeping coat
She is me who was and is no more.
L. June Stevenson (the L. is for Lorna but she goes by June) is an award-
winning writer and editor now retired. For 24 years she edited a publication 
with the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Her many greeting card verses, 
poems, articles and daily devotionals have been published internationally 
in both denominational and secular sources.
SheilA SteWArt
A Fugue on the World
              The world is not an object
              such that I have
              in my possession the law
              of its making.
             —Maurice Merleau-Ponty
  The world is a 
(not) object — a table, a street,
a classroom. Yes, table,
street, class
room making — not possessing
the law. My tenuous
relationship with the text
book. (History
  with author/ity.)
  I sit midlife, clear
some papers to place my palm
mid-desk, my mother’s desk.
I remember her taking the front panel
  to be re-stained.
         My mother’s mid-
   back. Her sway-
back. You could rest a tea-cup on the 
small of my back, my mother said. The 
world is a knot-poem saying:
World, you are holding
too tight, be 
  holding.
Or is it me?
Sheila Stewart’s poetry appears earlier in 
this volume. 
JUne SteVenSOn
Silhoue te on the Snow
Her silhouette cavorts on the new fallen snow,
Elegant, hat and sw eping coat,
A lone figure, gray and white.
Beside me the shadow moves,
Long and lean and lonely.
Are those diamonds in this Christmas snowfall,
Sparkling, twinkling, or are they the tears
That run cold and crisp down my ch ek
As the long, lone figure strides with me,
A comfort in the night, silent, sympathetic?
Together we drift into the snowflakes,
Away from the cozy fi e of friends and family turned 
strangers,
Their lives intact, untouched,
The r smiles reflecting e frost f uncertainty
And inability to deal with the broken wing,
The once in-law, now outlaw,
She who goes with me into the swirling wind,
Footfall after footfall, soft crunches
Muffled y the mount ng depth.
Point the boots in the di ction of home,
Empty apartment, no more hearth and mistletoe
Or pr sents by the tree.
Just t e cats and me
And the ghosts of Christmas past.
Misfits, stray pieces of a puzzle now discarded,
The shadow shortens in the streetlight
Now fat and dumpy, mor ke I feel.
Then in the burst of opaqu  light, sud enly gone,
Fl ttened like the snow beneath my trudging feet
That push reluctantly forward, dawdl g lik a child;
Out of the light my companion recedes into the background
Dodging my footsteps.
I urn, she dodg s back, cat and mouse.
L t her go t at elegant lady with the hat and sweeping coat
She is me who was and is no more.
L. June Stevenson (the L. is for Lorna but she goes by June) is an award-
winning writer and editor now retired. For 24 years she edited a publication 
with The Presbyterian Church in Canada. Her many greeting card verses, 
poems, articles and daily devotionals have been published internationally in 
both denominational and secular sources.


Not a member yet

Stir

Une mémoire à ta mesue et à ta démesure

The Choice of Listening

Wanting Out

Uttermost

Rainy Season

II. (to know death, impossible)

Variations

A Fugue on the World

Memoires des femmes

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