Michael Fraser: Coffeehouse Cabaret

I met Michael Fraser about a year ago at Helen Walsh’s home when some of the mentees of the 5th round of Diaspora Dialogues met with some of the mentors.

Michael asked me who my mentor was, and was envious when I told him it was MG Vassanji.

Shyam Selvadurai was his mentor for the

program. Shyam publicly praised Michael for his writing at TOK 5’s launch last month.

Undoubtedly, Around the Way is among the better stories in the collection.

Earlier this month, I attended another one of Michael’s poetry readings – the Coffeehouse Cabaret – at the Black Swan tavern (Broadview x Danforth). Michael also manages the Plasticine Poetry series at the Central in Mrivish Village.

Evidently, Michael knows the importance of public reading and does it like a champion.

After his reading session I bought his book of poems – Serenity of Stone. Reading it over the last week, I was awestruck with Michael’s felicity with words and simplicity of expression.

The broad theme of the collection is his adjusting to Toronto as an immigrant. As a newcomer myself, I identified immediately with it, although I couldn’t possibly have written about it with such a cadence of words, sounds.

I envy poets. In a few deft lines they convey feelings that are often indescribable.

Michael’s poem Lawrence West Bus is about so many of us newcomers who commute on TTC, in perpetual wonderment at what we observe, never tiring of the sights and the sounds that this city has to offer.

Lawrence West Bus

8 a.m people draped
in walking clothed anthems
garlands of language
unfold and perch
like syncopated doves
in our armchair ears
wingless sounds
soft in flight

through shaded smog windows
each house number
is a full year
overgrown with time
how satellite dishes hold
crushed skies in grey irises
inside we are surrounded
by breathing clocks
feverish seconds eat themselves
and disappear

bus wheels peel pavement
a burnt kiss
flashed in rubber and stone
road lines open up
symmetrical
as a zipped dress
secured in material arms
the baby feeds itself with sleep

The other poem that leaves a lasting impression is Dog Days and his father’s “long white Thunderbird” which finds a prominent mention in Around the Way.

And a memorable line: birds eat words from a tree.

Read an earlier post on the poet: Click here: Michael Fraser:

Images:
http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2665/138/63/52181867554/a52181867554_1643805_6604180.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/diasporadialogues/4666355968/in/set-72157624070896381/

Festival of South Asian Literature & Arts

The Toronto South Asian Review (TSAR) organised a conference of writers of South Asian origin from the Indian subcontinent, the Caribbean and South and East Africa in 1983.

It was a breakthrough event that formalised a genre in Canada. The conference resulted in a slim yet seminal volume A Meeting of Streams: South Asian Canadian Literature, edited by MG Vassanji.

Last week (September 25 and 26) TSAR commemorated the ’83 conference by celebrating FSALA – the Festival of South Asian Literature and the Arts.

My sole purpose of going to the event was to meet MG Vassanji. I met him briefly and introduced myself. He was too busy with the festival.

Priscila Uppal, Ameen Merchant, Padma Viswanathan and Shyam Selvadurai were the speakers that evening.

The poems Uppal read were fascinating, especially the one about her mother’s family. It had a memorable line of women in her mother’s family being unhappy in different languages.

Selvadurai’s story of the troubled relationship between his mother and grandmother was searing.

It had an unforgettable scene of his mother collecting coins that his grandmother had deliberately strewn across from the floor.

Then the narrator starkly concludes, “At 29 my mother’s life had ended.”

Backbreaking housework kept me away from the next morning’s sessions.

I did attend the evening session because I wanted to hear Bapsi Sidhwa. She read a passage from Ice Candy Man (now called Cracking India).

Deepa Mehta’s fantastic film Earth is based on this novel.

Anosh Irani and Tahira Naqvi were the other writers who read from their works.

The evening concluded with inDance’s exquisite dance performance The King’s Salon. I don't understand Bharatnatyam. I didn't need to. It was exquisite.