Letters from the Pandemic by Sasha Colby * Editor’s note: we are pleased to introduce Letters from the Pandemic: A 30th Anniversary Commemorative Public Writing Project of the Graduate Liberal Studies Program of Simon Fraser University (SFU). Sasha Colby, Director of Graduate Liberal Studies, provides an introduction (below) to the Pandemic Letters project. The letters…
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Ormsby’s summer fundraiser by Richard Mackie * Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Readers of The Ormsby Review, On behalf of The Ormsby Literary Society, its Board of Directors, and our Advisory Board (listed below), we must appeal to our readership for financial assistance. We are most grateful to the 96 donors who contributed to our 2020…
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Letters from the Pandemic 34: To Walter Benjamin by Linda Quibell * Walter Benjamin was a German philosopher, literary critic, translator, and cultural observer. He attempted to escape the Nazis, but in 1940 took his own life in Portbou, Spain — Ed. * February 20, 2021 My dear melancholic friend, Please, tell me about exile….
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Letters from the Pandemic 33: Letter from Baudelaire by Richard Fisher * This letter came to me from my spirit guide, Charles Baudelaire, through the medium of automatic writing. Inconveniently, I was also writing a letter to my Aunt Maud in Sittingbourne, Kent, at the time, so the two letters may have leached into each…
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Letters from the Pandemic 32: Hidden in Plane Sight by Keith Shapland * In 1969 when I was seven, Robin Shapland, my father, a Boeing engineer, hid me in the trunk of our 1967 Impala so that he could sneak me past security at the gate and onto Boeing Field in Seattle so that we could…
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Letters from the Pandemic 31: (De)facing the music by Jasper Lastoria * The dread of a tumble gives me more anguish than the fall. – Michel de Montaigne[1] Dear Reader, Anger is not a set of clothing I wear well; it fits me awkwardly, emphasizing the aspects of myself I’d rather de-emphasize. I have written…
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The Art of Losing: Loss and Gain During a Pandemic by Elaine Williamson Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. — Elizabeth Bishop * When my daughters started their final year of high school and university in the fall…
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Papyrus by Diane McGee * Spring… Too long… Gongula… — “Papyrus,” by Ezra Pound [1] Look: the ellipses speak. They shout, in fact, insistent. I see now; Covid has really improved my vision. It’s always been about the ellipses, never about the stated. Context confers definition, words are just vacant containers. Read or hear them, though,…
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Dear Geryon by Griffin Tedeschini * Dear Geryon “What is time made of?” This, your favourite question, trails behind me, thin free shadow. This pandemic robs me of anchor points, no solidity to hang memory on. Instead, time calibrates by his growth, when he loses his puppy teeth, his first eruption of a bark. He…
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ESSAY: Sacred Cows by Sheila O’Donoghue * At The Ormsby Review we are pleased to host Letters from the Pandemic: A 30th Anniversary Commemorative Public Writing Project of the Graduate Liberal Studies Program of Simon Fraser University. Since December 2020, we have uploaded 27 letters and essays described by program director Sasha Colby as “moving…
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Covid 19: Living the Blues by Teresa Stolarskyj * Dear friends, In the days before Covid-19, indeed, for many years before it, I held residency on Saturday afternoons at Vancouver’s Railway Club. Immersing into the blues and rock n’ roll for a few hours a week, as regulars and newcomers alike took turns on the…
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Dear GLS family by Jordan Johnston * “It is in times of security that the spirit should be preparing itself to deal with difficult times,” said Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger, known to posterity as Seneca. The Spaniard, who rose to prominence in the Roman Empire, wrote those words in 65 CE. He knew what…
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The Elms by Katherine Krampol * Dearest V., Too long without words — forgive me. It was such an effort adjusting to this new life of perennial solitude and I lost myself in it. But today, the air is fresh and hopeful — Spring is coming! You were the first I thought to write to….
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Letters from the Pandemic 23: Letter to Mary Magdalene by Lilian Broca * Dear Mariam, Who would have imagined at the time we first met a few years ago that our newly formed relationship would be interrupted for several months due to a pandemic threatening the entire world? I certainly didn’t and I suspect nor…
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Letters from the Pandemic 22: Dear Covid-19 by Al Jones * Dear Covid-19, You seem so very hungry You have run all over the world You need to cling to us You bring out the best in us You bring out the worst You don’t care where we are from You don’t even have life…
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Letters from the Pandemic 21: Dear Sylvia by Jenny Lee * We danced, Sylvia, oh how we danced. Truth be told, my stomach bopped rather more than the rest of me and my sandals caught on the grass, slowing each enthusiastic twist and turn, but the live band lifted our feet. Would you believe this…
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