Windscript Volume 24, 2007-2008 - Saskatchewan Writers' Guild

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The Magazine of Saskatchewan High School Writing prose Prose Editor’s Foreword to windScript It’s been an exciting process, acting as Prose Editor for this issue of windScript. Reading over all the pieces pulled me right back to my own experiences submitting to high school literary journals. If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed for me, it’s the anticipation I feel sending work out to magazines and the absolute thrill I continue to get when I receive an acceptance letter. I applaud all the writers who submitted their prose, as submitting is always a risk. You’re risking, not just your work, but a part of your identity. The payoffs are sometimes few and far between, but they’re so satisfying that we continue to take that risk. What amazed and excited me the most while reading these submissions was the passion and the commitment to the process these writers have taken. After I chose the accepted pieces, I had several email exchanges with many of the writers, sending drafts back and forth. These writers not only love to write, they take such pride in the rewriting and editing process, and are not afraid to experiment with their work to create stories that are fresh and potent. For me, these pieces are important because they don’t shy away from intense emotional experience and complex language. They can reach the reader on a variety of levels. I didn’t have a specific idea of what pieces I was looking to accept when I began reading the submissions. This process, for me, was more about feeling out the work, seeing what sparks curiosity in me, what pulls me into a fresh world and allows me to disengage from day-to-day reality, or (even better) makes the everyday a complex and unique experience. Much of the work I chose is not just well crafted, but walks the careful line between image and narration, allowing the reader to both hear and feel that specific world being created. There’s tension in these pieces, often raw and unyielding, and a touch of the absurd. There’s beautiful language, lines that made me feel like I was getting punched in the stomach. What amazes me about the work in this issue is the attention to detail and voice. Each piece, no matter what the subject matter or content, was true to its voice. windScript 2 This was a major factor in my decision to award both Annette Nedilenka, author of My Blunt Obituary, and Amanda Ahner, author of Toothflesh, the Jerrett Enns Award for Prose for this issue. Though both pieces are extremely different, both have maturity in voice and craft. My Blunt Obituary reached me immediately with its wit and honesty. To use humour successfully in prose is an incredible accomplishment, as it opens the reader up, breaks down barriers, and creates a connection between the reader and the writer. I was equally impressed with Toothflesh, and while it isn’t in traditional prose form, it is a skilled cross-genre piece, combining the long lines of prose with intense poetic images. In the end, I couldn’t decide which piece was more deserving of this award, and so we have a tie. Congratulations to Annette and Amanda! Thank you to everyone who submitted to this year’s issue of windScript. It was a pleasure to read your work and I hope you continue to share and create your stories. Prose Editor Adrienne Gruber volume 24 Adrienne Gruber
The Magazine of Saskatchewan High School Writing poetry 17 for life: A foreword by Jennifer Still Poetry is about possibilities, about saying what normally eludes words, definition. It’s about pinning down that which is fleeting, bursting open the minutiae into myriad worlds. If this was 17 years earlier, I would be sitting down at my PC 286 (floppy-disk drive) in my basement bedroom, scented candles lit and flickering, the green DOS cursor (yes, DOS!) pulsing the 14” monitor, blinkblinkblink. I’d be writing about my recent break-up, my fight with my parents, the desperate poverty of the world. I would be holding close the words of my high school teacher (keep writing, you have talent) and listening to a voice that is simultaneously the loudest and quietest part of myself, the most genuine and the most hidden. A friend recently told me how she is eternally 17. I agree with her. There is a fearless, hopeful, ambitious part of ourselves that remains this youthful being filled with potential. It is that time when we are just beginning to figure out who we are, or, as Ceara Caton so aptly writes, when we are “waiting for (our) perfect picture.” And despite the fact I needed Wikipedia to enlighten me on the meanings of such terms as “emo hair” (with thanks to Ben Whittaker, and for those who are no longer 17, this is a style that is “emotional, sensitive, shy, introverted or angsty”), in reading the submissions I was instantly 17 again, connecting in a very present way to themes of loss, identity, suicide, poverty, bullying, relationships, drug abuse, family. And as I sunk into the work and worlds that connected so deeply with my youth and early risks as a writer, I realized it is not so much an age that places these young voices as it is an immediacy, an experience, a presence that is less reflection and intention as it is desire and action. As serious and grim as much of the content is, the poems remain rich with life, with hope, with the experienced voices of those deeply in the presence of this particular moment. It is these first wadings into language that will feed the work, in some form, for the rest of their lives. It was an absolute thrill to read this work and to engage in discussion with these writers who not only have the talent, but the dedication, the curiousity, and the bravery to listen to their voices and address their deepest concerns through words. It is such a gift to have a venue for these original, stunningly aware and imaginitive voices. Thank you to the Saskatchewan Writers Guild for providing the stage that is windScript, an immensely important publication. A special congratulations must go to Arden Angley, winner of the Jerrett Enns Award for Poetry, and Jocelyn Lukan, winner of the Currie-Hyland Prize. Arden’s poem “Your woman, soft and small” immediately struck me for its incredible imagination and arresting imagery. Arden’s navigation through landscapes such as “She paddled her rowboat in the gaps of your gums, waved to your childhood before it was swallowed” instantly broke language into new possibilities for me. Arden’s intuitive approach to writing, combined with her deft sense of language, narrative, and dialogue is very much at work in the poems published here. And Jocelyn Lukan’s suite of poetry has the efficiency and efficacy so desired in poetry. From the subtle suggested metaphor of “smoke billow ascends up / smoothstretched / Saskatchewan skies // I sprinkle your ashes / upon taut forehead flesh” to the sharp and gut-punching directness of “naïve candy virgin / waiting / waiting / waiting to be”, Jocelyn transposes the ephemeral with the particular, the particular with the ephemeral in a language that is as resonant as it is focused, as reaching as it is grounded. And finally, congratulations to everyone who took the risk of putting their concerns, their observations, their passions into words. The stack of poetry I received was enormous. Hundreds of poems were whittled into various piles and various piles into yet smaller piles that became, eventually, a handful of poems. The subjectivity involved in selection is inevitable. I read for surprise, for music, for originality. I looked for an image that challenged me, a subject that evoked, a music that lifted. So thank you all for some fine reading this fall. It was no small job to make the final selections. The work published here, though varied in tone and content, shares a common attempt to say the unsayable, to place the world, if only momentarily, into a tangible, clarified state. On behalf of windScript and all the readers, for your words, I thank you. Poetry Editor Jennifer Still windScript volume 24 3 Jennifer Still
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Windscript Volume 24, 2007-2008 - Saskatchewan Writers' Guild

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