Boxing for a Cause

by Amber Pinsonneault

When Windsor Review’s managing editor Marty Gervais walked into the ring Sunday February 15th at Riverside Secondary School, he was ready to go. After weeks of intense training at the Border City Boxing Club and with youngest son Gabe Gervais in his own basement, Marty knew many boxing moves to help defeat his opponent Mike Herrington.

After being introduced with their personal theme songs, Marty and Mike fought their hearts out in the first round. The minute the bell rang, it was like Pavlov’s dogs and saliva, and those fists were flying. Once the referee separated the two from really hurting each other, they took the second round to bounce around and catch their breath. Yet before you knew it, the third round was on and Marty decided to pull out some secret moves. With hooks and jabs, left and right, Mike stood no chance against Marty in the ring. With a gym full of cheering friends, co-workers, family and students, Marty shared the win with Mike. Yet, for anyone who was there…we all know who really won.

Aside from the fighting, Riverside Secondary School was successful in making approximately $1000 in funds from shirt, snack and ticket sales, which will go to help underprivileged boxers head to France this June

To all bystanders of this match and to all the readers of Windsor Review, a lesson was certainly learnt that day, age is not a factor and Marty Gervais certainly can.

Photo Credit: Cristina Naccarato
Check out more boxing pictures from this event on her website

Blast from the Past

Editor-in-Chief Marty Gervais reads a poem from his collection To Be Now

Jonny Flieger, guest editor of the upcoming Graphics Issue, has his say

 

I’ve been asked to do something for the ReView’s website, and since Marty Gervais won’t let me post the photos of him fighting lions with his bare hands, I suppose I’ll try this blogging thing.  

My name is Jon Flieger.  I”ve helped out at the Windsor ReView off and on for the last couple of years, and this year I’m serving as one of the editorial assistants.  We’ve had a weird year, as a university faculty strike and all the students who worked here last year moving on with their academic careers have made things interesting for us.  It’s all good, though, and we’re having fun, and more importantly, we’ve got some exciting things planned for the ReView.  We’re in the process of getting the next two issues together, and there’s some great poetry, prose, and art that we’re all really proud to be able to publish and share with you fine people. 

The next issue (42.1 for you archivists) is a general issue, and our editors have received many fine submissions.  We are formatting and laying the book out, and soon it should be in your hot little hands. 

But wait, there’s more!

Not ones to sit back, we’re also hip-deep in planning for issue 42.2, “the Graphic Issue”.  I’ve been asked by our publisher (and resident lion wrangler) Marty Gervais to serve as guest editor for this issue, and I’m foaming at the mouth at the prospect.  We’re interested in all things graphic, from concrete poetry, to prose and poetry that is highly evocative and imagistic.  Other meanings of graphic, from the gory to the scary to the whatever, we love it all.  We’re accepting submission now, by the way.  Hint hint. 

My personal interest in the graphic is storytelling using the mixing of text and image.  Comic books were my bread and butter as a kid (okay, fine, they still are) and graphic novels, art stories, and anything mixed media fascinates me.  To that, we’re looking to publish any and all kinds of good art, writing, graphic novel excerpts, whatever to do with the graphic.  We’ve got some in already I’m crazy excited about, but we’re still accepting submissions, so send them in soon so I can drool over your work, too. 

Now then, off to the zoo with Marty. 

Jonny

The Windsor Review Interviews Writer-In-Residence M. NourbeSe Philip

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Review staffers Amber Pinsonneault and Jasmine Elliott recently interviewed the University of Windsor English Department’s Writer-in-Residence M. NourbeSe Philip. We’ve provided an excerpt here; the full interview is available in the upcoming edition of the Review.

Q: What are your intentions with your work involving feminism?

A: The work is about feminism, but I’ve never considered myself a feminist writer, although the principles of feminism certainly infuse my work in the sense that I’m very much using the equality of men and women, and that women should be able to control their reproductive life and everything in their life. I don’t have intentions while I’m writing. I’m trying to clear something up for myself. I do it more for myself than for educating. It’s in everything, something that intrigues me that I don’t know or understand and that I’m trying to figure out. My writing is about figuring something out that I know I won’t figure out before I die – the pop culture moment, the “ah ha” moment. I often think I know what I’m going to say. I know what I’m going to write about – but then I figure out what I’m writing; the aspect of discovery, self-discovery.

“I don’t have intentions while I’m writing. I’m trying to clear something up for myself.”

Q: Would you say Canadian landscape has an effect on your writing as well?

A: Yes, I love winter the most, actually. It is a fascination; I miss the Caribbean most in the summer time, and the winter is so different. I love the stillness that descends upon the land at that time. I think it’s magnificent. In the summer time, it is close enough to the Caribbean but not the Caribbean. You don’t get the same smells; the vegetation isn’t quite as dense as the Caribbean. There is more of a sense of longing, close enough to remind you about it – but with the winter it is so different, so it’s not like anything I’ve seen in my young life. Cape Breton I fell in love with, it reminds me of Tobago; I wanted to bow down. Which in a sense is the effect of beauty that the landscape of Tobago has on me; my only response is to want to pray, and that’s what I felt when I was in Cape Breton. There are also places up north like Lake Superior that is magnificent, majestic in a way. The lake looks like an ocean; you can’t see the other shore. It plays with my head because it reminds me of the Caribbean. It’s not salt water, it’s fresh water. Canada plays a major role for me. Having or loving another place makes it much easier to love another place. Once you have a mother’s love, you can love other people. If you don’t have that bond, it is difficult for you to create other bonds. I think that I take that metaphor to the land; loving Tobago makes me love this land. It doesn’t replace it, but it allows me to love it. I get this sense driving up north, and I got a sense of what Native people feel. I don’t know much about Native spirituality, but I just had an inkling of what it is they talk about and how the land speaks to them and how much of that is lost by this materialistic culture.

“I think that I take that metaphor to the land; loving Tobago makes me love this land.”

Q: How do you feel about the widespread study of your work?

A: It’s fun; I like it. I get e-mails from students all the time saying they have an exam tomorrow and they need help. It’s so amusing, especially with how things have changed. Most of the authors we have studied were dead, so we can’t write to the authors and ask them about their poetry or what they thought. It’s reassuring and comforting that there are people in the world reading my work. Years ago, someone told me they were hiking in a big trail in the States and somebody was quoting Hawkins and I remember thinking that was so exciting and I wish I could hear someone was hiking somewhere and reading and reflecting my work. Someone told me a year ago that they ran into someone’s bathroom and a copy of She Tries Her Tongue was there and I was so excited. I thought, “My God, my poetry is being read in someone’s bathroom.” I will take the attention wherever it comes.

Visit NourbeSe’s website to learn more and listen to audio of her unique poetry. Thanks goes to Cristina Naccarato for the photos.

Coming soon…Interview with Writer-in-Residence NourbeSe Philips

Keep an eye out for The Windsor Review’s interview and audio of the author reading her poetry.

The Windsor Review interviews hockey mask historian Fred Addis

By Heather Greene

Featured in our upcoming Spring 2009 edition, Fred Addis has combined his love of history and hockey to create a presentation full of vignettes and memories from the rough, early days of goal-tending. His presentation covered the history of the goalie mask: it’s creation, introduction, and the controversy that surrounds facial protection in the league even today. Review staffer Heather Greene interviewed Mr. Addis after his reading on October 31st. When he’s not researching hockey masks, Fred Addis curates the Leacock Museum in Orillia.

Review: How did you get interested in goalie masks?

FA: It was as a response to all the bar-room bravado I heard growing up. There’s a lot of bullshit surrounding hockey that is accepted as fact, and I wanted to peel back the layers, to find the real story between the fact and the anecdote. For the fans, watching hockey can be like sitting in a theatre, and I want to shift the focus, to tell the story of the people who live the reality: the players. I want to separate the confusion of history with entertainment. During my research, I’ve met pioneering goalies, and I’ve found that knowing the stories really enlivens the statistics. Personalities like Don Cherry use a technique where screaming beats the facts every time, but I dislike that sort of buffoonery. You don’t need to take it to that level. It alienates the thinking fans, they tend to get overlooked.

Review: You presented with Randall Maggs, author of “Night Work: The Terry Sawchuck Poems”, and your topics went well together.

FA: Yes, and I was careful to leave his story alone during my talk. His writing is so full of emotion. The topics he covers have become mythologized; it’s really a marriage of story and history. I think poetry is the greatest vehicle for that.

Review: Goalie masks and Stephen Leacock – these seem like pretty disparate subjects. Any connections?

FA:      They’re both about creating alternate identities. And they both are very much about history, and literary heritage. You have to be a good listener for both types of stories, because emotions transform the facts. Leacock’s writing is like that, yet he hasn’t been put on a pedestal by Canadians. My interest in history definitely applies to both topics, and the goalie masks are a passion that I’ve pursued around my career.

Review: Could another link be that they are both uniquely Canadian stories?

FA: Hockey exists as a tradition in other countries as well, not just ours any longer. Especially European countries, whose hockey has informed and enriched ours today. But hockey was uniquely Canadian in its infancy. It’s like Canadian literature today – it has an audience all over the world.