The Courtney Park Collection

There’s a story behind the scenes of the launch of the new title, The Courtneypark Connection published by In Our Words Inc. www.inourwords.ca.

The Courtneypark literary circle is a writers’ group that was formed five years ago and meet once a month in Mississauga. During the Fall/Winter months, the group meets at the Courtneypark Library in Mississauga.

As the story goes, the group began meeting once a month at the Courtneypark Library in Mississauga. As the group continued to grow so did the individual writers’ confidence.

Originally the group focused on poetry alone, but later challenged themselves by writing in different genres. There are now short story writers, novelists, artists and musicians attending on a regular basis.

The common bond was a love of writing. The group’s connections have spread across the GTA.

All 18 contributors to the anthology are Ontario writers. Brandon Pitts has edited the anthology.  The Courtneypark Library is to be thanked for providing the space to host the group every month for the past four years.

Contributing writers are:

·         Lindsay W. Albert

·         Rashmee Karnad-Jani

·         Pratap Reddy

·         Peta-Gaye Nash

·         John Ambury

·         Beverlee Blampied

·         Kim Cayer

·         Janine Georgiou-Zeck

·         Tasnim Jivaji

·         P.I. Kapllani

·         Cheryl Antao-Xavier

·         Mary Ellen Koroscil

·         Marlene S. Leighton

·         Brandon Pitts

·         Kumkum Ramchandani

·         Ivy Reiss

·         Trevor Trower

·         Zohra Zoberi

Here’s an excerpt from Kumkum Ramchandani’s story The Holy Man from the anthology. It’s about a burnt out Indo-American whose life is changed by his encounter with a sadhu on a train from Delhi to Chennai.

I quickly located my train compartment - air-conditioned first class as I had requested and paid for. I slung my overnight bag onto the overhead locker and with a sigh of relief sank down into my comfortable well upholstered seat. I had only one other person with me in the compartment but he or she hadn’t arrived yet. So, I told myself, here I am - embarking on a journey which was to be a final marker to where my life was heading. “What am I doing here?” I asked myself. “A US born Indian from Silicon Valley - the MD of one of the most successful start-ups, one that was destined to give Apple and Google a run for their money!” To put it in a nutshell - I was burnt out. A former workaholic who spent eighteen hours a day working for a six digit salary, with a palatial home in Palo Alto and a sleek Ferrari Sports, and all before the age of thirty five! But I was tired, I wanted a change, I knew my life was destined for transition. I wanted something else but I didn’t know what. So here I was, in the comforting lap of the country I should have been born in but had only learned about from my first generation parents, books and newspapers.

Read Sunil Rao’s (South Asian Focus) excellent news report on the book here: The Story Behind The Courtney Park Collection. 

TOK 7 Writing the New Toronto

Diaspora Dialogues released TOK 7: Writing the New Toronto yesterday at Gladstone. 

TOK 7: Writing the New Toronto
below covers of TOK 1 to TOK 6

This is the last TOK of the series, and has short fiction and poems from a new bunch of emerging writers and mentors. Helen Walsh, president of Diaspora Dialogues and the editor of all the TOK books, moderated an interesting panel discussion between three mentees – Zalika Reed-Benta, James Poputsis and Yaya Yao – and two mentors – Olive Senior and Moez Surani – who are among the contributors to the new collection. The discussion was interspersed with readings by Zalika, James, and Yaya. 

The TOK launches annually also serve as an alumni reunion with several mentees, some mentors, and Diaspora Dialogues staff in attendance. The indefatigable Natalie Kertes, working quietly to make sure that the launch was perfect. 

The launch It’s time to get and give updates, and share notes. Leslie Shimotakahara, Joyce Wayne, Brandon Pitts were among the many friends who were at the launch. 

I was in TOK 5 (in 2010) and therefore is the best of the seven books.

From 2012, the Diaspora Dialogue’s mentoring program will focus on full-length manuscripts. For more details, click here: DD 2012 Mentoring

Yaya Yao recited her poem 'where you’re going'

It’s reproduced here:

where you’re going

one ocean one
continent
from the place you were
born you are
dying, suspended
over university and elm
in February

with expert hands
chang ping aims into flesh long
needles
the tip connects to
the point opens
into the pathway and you
follow, she drapes a thin silk scarf
over your trunk
leaves the room for a
tea from timmy’s

she says to family, 3 to 5 a.m. the body
is weakest, it will happen
then, he is
tired his body is not
holding water call me
tomorrow

the path
you have taken:
shanghai to hong kong
hong kong to montreal
montreal to

toronto
parkdale to little portugal
little portugal to university and elm
university and elm to

3 a.m.
to 5 a.m. tides withdraw
from each meridian, that ocean
here to claim you, now as always in
between.

A few books

During the last couple of months, I’ve liked these books.

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Karvitz: Mordecai Richler

Duddy is a young Jew in Montreal – not yet of a legal age to enter into contracts. He is mean, arrogant, determined and without any scruples. An entrepreneur, he is always networking and turning chance meetings into opportunities, and using everyone to push ahead to fulfill his dream of buying land near a lake, because “a man without land is nothing.”

Mordecai Richler’s story of Duddy Kravitz – published in 1959 – has achieved iconic status in the world of books. Surprisingly, several books (fiction and non-fiction) published that year have gone on to attain similar iconic status. The fiction list includes The Tin Drum by Günter Grass; Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D Day by Cornelius Ryan; The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe.

Malcolm Bradbury published his first novel Eating People is Wrong and Jack Kerouac had a particularly productive year with two books (Dr. Sax, and Maggie Cassidy) and a collection of poems (Mexico City Blues).

The non-fiction list includes The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson; The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer;  and The Second World War by Winston S. Churchill.

However, few, if any, books published in that year would be relevant today thematically or stylistically. Duddu Karvitz does, and that is the importance of Richler.

Pressure to Sing: Brandon Pitts

Brandon is a young poet who published his novel a month or so before this poetry collection. And as with his fiction, religion is a significant part of his poetry, too. Many poems in the collection are exquisite, and this one is my favourite:

Living Will

Marksman aims but cannot hit

The inept stumbles upon the gold mine

The dead are revived through television

Vitality given to the couch

            A living will, turn off the coma

The karmic debtors are now rich

She was once young and beautiful

He was once old and fat.

Translating Partition: Editors Ravikant & Tarun K. Saint

This volume of short stories and critical commentaries on Partition literature would be an admirable companion to Stories about the Partition of India (editor: Alok Bhalla). This volume has Sa’adat Hasan Manto’s Pandit Manto’s first letter to Pandit Nehru. Both Manto and Nehru were Kashmiris, and Manto wrote the letter in 1954 and it ends thus:

“You know there was a poet in our Kashmir, Ghani, who was well known as “Ghani Kashmiri.” A poet from Iran had come to visit him. The doors of his house were always open. He used to say, “What is there in my house that I should keep the doors locked? Well, I keep the doors closed when I am inside the house because I am its only asset.” The poet from Iran left his poetry notebook in the vacant house. One couplet in that notebook was incomplete. He had composed the second line, but could not do the first one. The second line ran this: “The smell of kebab is wafting from your clothes.” When the Iranian poet returned and looked in his notebook, he found the first line written there, “Has the hand of a blighted soul touched your daman?

Panditji, I am also a blighted soul. I’ve taken issue with you, because I am dedicating this book to you.”

                                                                - Sa'adat Hasan Manto

Puzzle of Murders

Brandon Pitt’s first novel, Puzzle of Murders, is a haunting, gripping tale.

Sam Giltine is a young man who embarks – rather inadvertently – on a killing spree when he fails to kill the man who raped his sister.  

The novel has a multi-layered structure that unfolds rapidly.

There is a strong physical dimension to the book.

The robust, solid descriptions of Sam’s world – Faridemidland, the deadbeat, forgettable and wasted hometown he runs away from, to the polluted and permeable back alleys of Los Angeles.

There is also an intangible, amorphous dimension of the varied ways in which Sam’s mind works.

It is at this level that the book transcends from a story of a serial killer and transmogrifies; it becomes an exploration of transformations of a mind that is prone to involuntary callisthenics.

In this world, religion and spiritualism take on hues that make them unrecognisable from each other.

Brandon adroitly acquaints us with Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the concepts of Avatar in Hinduism, Rasool in Islam, the philosophies of Bodhisattva and Zarathustra.

Brandon Pitts

This is clearly Brandon’s forte. 

He makes these discursive excursions into spirituality and understanding the meaning of realisation evocative without ever becoming preachy or pompous or hallucinatory.

The other aspect of the novel that stays with you  is the soft, pastel shades Brandon gives to all his women characters, especially Eisheth Percy.

He is masterly when he describes Sam’s love-hate and lust for Lilth Jahl.  

I personally would’ve liked if there was a bit more of Kali Naamah, Tamara and the stripper, the Avatar of God.

But, ultimately, the book is about murders – the coldblooded and the random manner in which Sam kills people.

This is what makes Puzzle of Murders a page turner.

There is pure horror in the psychotic pleasure that Sam derives in plunging a knife through his victims and sees the “life force” leave their bodies.

BookLand Press continues to experiment with different genres and manages to unearth undiscovered talent. 

Images: http://brandonpitts.com/Brandon_Pitts.html