Ariadne’s notes: In a special World Poetry Café Radio Show hosted by Ariadne Sawyer and guest host Anita Aguirre Nieveras, we had the pleasure of welcoming Paulina Constancia, on tour from Singapore and Alan Girling presenting his new chapbook: Less talk.
Also a beautiful peace song by World Poetry Empowered Award Winner Honey Novak added joy to the show. To hear this wonderful show CLICK HERE! Link is not working at this time.
Alan Girling lives in Richmond, works in Vancouver, and writes in his head and in his heart. His work has appeared all over, in digital, in analog, in person, and once even in a shop window in Hamilton, Ontario. He was a finalist for the 2003 Larry Turner Award for non-fiction and winner of Vancouver Co-op Radio’s 2006 Community Dreams Poetry Contest. His short play, ‘Whatever Happened to Tom Dudkowski’ was produced for Vancouver’s Walking Fish Festival.
Here is the cover for the new chapbook:
Lasagna
The woman there
smartly hatted & dressed
with the dish of lasagna in her lap
was actually sobbing
trying to contain her tears
for public transit’s sake
so I asked
was there anything I could do
though it was clear
there was nothing to do
but listen:
to her story
of the people she’d baked it for
the people not
her friends
who never could be her friends
even after the party
even with the lasagna
she just knew
it to be the case.
It could be she saw me
eye the dish
I didn’t say how good it smelled
or she may have sensed something
truer than false in me
because when we reached the next stop
and the doors opened
she gave me a fixed look
shy piteous glistening
and placed the dish in my open hands
nodded once
and then stepped off.
That evening the talk was of
the wisdom
of eating a stranger’s food
but I knew
from her look
a kindred thing
that some things given and
with grace received
no matter who, how or where
mean communion
and further event
consummation
and I felt
for the moment
along the clogged fissures of my heart
that no one needed to taste.
this woman’s lasagna more
than I did.
Alan Girling (C)
Paulina Constancia (b. 1970) is a Filipino-Canadian artist and poet. Her works have been exhibited in the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Mexico, The Netherlands and in various cities in the USA and Canada. A permanent collection of her works is showcased at the Paulina Constancia Museum of Naïve Art [MoNA] in Cebu, Philippines. Paulina currently lives in Singapore with her husband and son. She actively creates and teaches arts and crafts as well as conducts art therapy for women and children in the Asia-Pacific region. She has recently finished a 6-nation traveling exhibition and workshop series entitled Moments of Motherhood {M.O.M.}. She integrated scrap fabric and other materials into her paintings to symbolize the shared moments between mother and child. She believes ‘it’s these little moments that matter, it’s these little moments that we remember.’
Paulina Constancia has published a bilingual collection of poetry “Brazos Abiertos/Open Arms” (Vancouver, 2003) and a bilingual collection of short stories “Cuentos Hispanofilipinos /Hispano-Philippine Stories” (Manila, 2009). Her poems have been featured in Revista Filipina (e-magazine)and Contra Tiempo (Latin American magazine in Chicago).
For more info about the artist and her works, please visit
her website: www.paulinaconstancia.com
and her blog: www.daily-dose-of-art.com
For more info on her books
Brazos Abiertos/Open Arms
http://central.com.ph/bookstoreplus/products/AAB307/
Cuentos Hispanofilipinos/Hispano-Philippine Stories
http://central.com.ph/bookstoreplus/products/AAB535/
Motherhood
You birth.
You cherish.
You protect.
Mother,
be you feathered,
whiskered, shelled
or legged,
such noble task
you’ve been assigned.
The rewards that await-
divine.
from Paulina Constancia’s book -“Brazos Abiertos/Open Arms” (World Poetry Publishing, Vancouver, 2003)
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