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I always used to write. No one could keep me from writ­ing down my ever-chang­ing thoughts, my nev­er-end­ing stream of con­scious­ness. I was con­stant­ly writ­ing, but what am I doing now? I only write long after I am sup­posed to. I no longer write for fun—honestly, some­times I feel like I no longer write at all.

I have a friend whose dream is to help change the world’s per­spec­tive. Lit­tle does he know he has long had this gift to help oth­ers expe­ri­ence a more real and sub­se­quent­ly beau­ti­ful way of life. He once told me that moti­va­tion will not come to you. It is some­thing you must exer­cise every day so that you might ingrain your­self with a bet­ter ver­sion of your­self. You are more than your failures—and more than your fleet­ing suc­cess­es. You can be so much more. You need to keep push­ing your­self and forge moti­va­tion rather than wait­ing for the impos­si­ble to hap­pen.

So here I am, with pen to page—or rather fin­gers to keys—ready to start mak­ing good habits. I want to write, that much is true. I want to suc­ceed. 

Writer’s block is so much more than get­ting stuck. It is con­tin­u­al dig­ging. Bury­ing myself along the way. And when things start to set­tle, I am remind­ed that the world and all my loved ones are mov­ing on with­out me. With­out me?

So, here’s my start.

When you expe­ri­ence writer’s block, what do you do? Next time you find your­self in this sit­u­a­tion, remem­ber that it’s okay if you don’t write today—try again tomor­row. Pace your­self; if you expect to write for a dead­line, and only a dead­line, you won’t have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make your writ­ing your own. If you feel rushed, your cre­ativ­i­ty can be over­looked.

Take a breath. Free your­self from dis­trac­tions. Allow your­self to take breaks. Often, we feel pres­sured to write and think only about pro­duc­ing rather than cre­at­ing. As some­one who describes myself as a pas­sion­ate writer, I some­times dread sit­ting down to write and leave my projects until the last minute. Due to my pro­cras­ti­na­tion, much of my work feels rushed, and I don’t leave time to make my writ­ing into some­thing I am proud of. 

Don’t set­tle. That’s some­thing I had to learn the hard way as all of my assign­ments met the require­ments, but they didn’t sound like my writing—at least not some­thing I would be proud of. Push your­self to go beyond expec­ta­tions and prove what you are capa­ble of to the world.

Give your­self time to write and make it a part of your rou­tine. It’s okay to start slow as long as you con­stant­ly move for­ward, improve your skills, and learn how to love writ­ing again. As stu­dents, we need to make sure we are main­tain­ing our men­tal health, stud­ies, and rela­tion­ships; I pro­pose that we pri­or­i­tize our pas­sions and the recla­ma­tion of our writ­ing.

Good luck and keep writ­ing, my friends.

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Kira Keir

This post was pub­lished on the orig­i­nal UVic ESA web­site.

The ESA proud­ly presents “morn­ing” by Zoë Nil­son as the win­ning poem of the ESA’s Fall 2021 Poet­ry Con­test. 

morn­ing

not always, but some days
I wake up feel­ing new.
nes­tled in these sheets, I rise
care­less, but not clum­sy.
no one awake in this tight, tight house
only me, robed in fresh light
daybreak’s armistice

my mind rolls out like fog over hills until

a door slams, lovers howl
a bru­tal reminder of this suf­fo­cat­ing com­pa­ny
cacoph­o­nous in its casu­al­ties, my heart tight­ens rude­ly
wax­ing and wan­ing for some kind of empti­ness

so I slip out the door, before the prick­les and horns
sprout from my back, skull-tear­ing acri­mo­ny
for words that only serve to fill the emp­ty space
that hangs there, per­fect­ly vacant.

the house burns behind me
implod­ing ener­gy, eclec­ti­cism, eat­ing them­selves
but not me,
mold­ing into des­tined des­o­la­tion

not always, but most days.

This post was pub­lished on the orig­i­nal UVic ESA web­site.

The wait­ing room crack­les. Not in an excit­ed way; just stale. Kind of like every­one there is still recy­cling the ver­sions of them­selves they brought in last time. If you real­ly think about it, you prob­a­bly know most of them; there’s that old man with the plas­tic foot brace, and there’s that woman with the baby who won’t stop cry­ing. She hard­ly looks a year old­er than you. The desk clerk keeps shoot­ing her sur­rep­ti­tious glances.

The mag­a­zine on the small plas­tic col­laps­ing table is the same, too. You pick it up, feel its greasy skin soak into your pores. There’s a nice arti­cle in here about dol­phin con­ser­va­tion, if you remem­ber right. The pages fall open across your lap. A suit­ed man with very white teeth offers to sell your house right away.

You flip onwards, and the pages crack­le like the peo­ple around you. The clock on the wall seems ridicu­lous­ly loud. Your moth­er is late again.

Even­tu­al­ly the peel­ing swing-doors next to the clerk’s desk fly open, and a man strides through them. He scans the room, sees you, and glides over to clasp your hand. His teeth glit­ter. His palm is freez­ing.

“Your moth­er will be just anoth­er moment,” he says, his smile leak­ing cold into the words. “Can I get you some cof­fee?”

This post was pub­lished on the orig­i­nal UVic ESA web­site.

The hol­i­days have always been my favourite time to catch up on all the books I say I am going to read and nev­er even attempt to pick up dur­ing the school year. How­ev­er, in recent years, even that goal has become for­mi­da­ble at times. Study­ing Eng­lish tends to turn read­ing into work, no mat­ter how much we enjoy it, and recent­ly I have found it hard to want to read for fun after hav­ing read 16 books in one semes­ter. Last year that led to watch­ing a lot of movies with very few com­plaints. But this year, school is online and I am addi­tion­al­ly devel­op­ing an aver­sion to my lap­top screen, so back to books it is. I have com­piled a lit­tle list of strate­gies to address what I am call­ing Eng­lish Major Reader’s Block. If you also suf­fer from this afflic­tion, I hope this helps. 

1. Re-read­­ing! 

Some­times new infor­ma­tion can be over­whelm­ing. My brain is tired. I can’t learn any­more, but that does not mean I can­not read. When I am feel­ing espe­cial­ly tired, I have found it eas­i­er to return to old favourites and curl up with some­thing cozy and famil­iar rather than try to absorb a new set of char­ac­ters and plots. I rec­om­mend tak­ing a day to reread  Har­ry Pot­ter or Lit­tle Women or what­ev­er makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. 

2. Change up the Genre 

Unless you are tak­ing a spe­cial­ty course in graph­ic nov­els or YA fic­tion, the books that Eng­lish majors tend to read can get a lit­tle repet­i­tive and tend to stick to real­ist nov­els writ­ten between 1800 and 1980. I used to think the hol­i­days were a great time to catch up on the holes in my knowl­edge and cross big titles off of my nev­er end­ing read­ing list, but I have had very lit­tle luck with that. If you are able to read dense Russ­ian real­ism after a semes­ter of lit­er­a­ture, I salute you, but so far I have had no luck with that ambi­tion. That’s why my sec­ond tip is to change gen­res, try fan­ta­sy, sci-fi, graph­ic nov­els, mys­ter­ies, “trashy” romance nov­els or any­thing else that isn’t a part of the tra­di­tion­al lit­er­ary canon. I used to love fan­ta­sy and dystopi­an nov­els, but I have neglect­ed this first love for far too long—this win­ter break I am hap­py to be once again in its sweet albeit some­times dra­mat­ic embrace. 

3. Take it Easy & Don’t Get Ambi­tious 

See my ear­li­er point about dense Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture and extend it to Moby Dick and any­thing writ­ten in Mid­dle Eng­lish. This is not the time to take on ridicu­lous­ly heavy read­ing mate­ri­als or to try and tack­le the whole of The Can­ter­bury Tales. It is okay to read only one book over the hol­i­days if that is what you have time for, or to only read a few chap­ters of one book. Or one poem. Or noth­ing at all. Big ambi­tious read­ing lists are the ene­my over win­ter break and I have found the best thing for my read­ing has been to aban­don them all togeth­er. This isn’t always easy, and I have strug­gled to just read when I want to (if I want to) with­out wor­ry­ing about what I am read­ing or if I am read­ing enough. There is no shame in an easy read. Cur­rent­ly I am read­ing The Knife of Nev­er Let­ting Go by Patrick Ness because I saw the trail­er for the adap­ta­tion star­ring Tom Hol­land. Yes, it is aimed at 13 year olds and one of the three main char­ac­ters is a dog, and, yes, I am very much enjoy­ing it. 

I hope this sil­ly lit­tle list helps you pick up a book, any book at all, over the hol­i­days. I enjoy read­ing, but I also enjoy mak­ing lists and since I can’t make a read­ing list, I have made a how-to-read list instead. In the past few years these strate­gies real­ly have helped me to aban­don my expec­ta­tions for win­ter break and actu­al­ly take advan­tage of the break from com­pul­so­ry read­ing to just enjoy a good book. I hope this helps you and that you have a won­der­ful New Year, book in hand or not.

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Madison George-Berlet

This post was pub­lished on the orig­i­nal UVic ESA web­site.

The ESA would like to con­grat­u­late the win­ners of the 2020 Poet­ry Con­test! First place was award­ed to Ojo Taiye for “Moira Camp: The New Colos­sus”, and sec­ond place was award­ed to Kather­ine DeCoste for “Eden”.

Kather­ine DeCoste has giv­en per­mis­sion for us to share her poem. Read “Eden” below!

Eden

You think they’re all dead bod­ies,

but the crabs just molt this time of year,

their soft flesh forc­ing itself out gaps

where claws were once. Float­ing down like

corpses on the stink­ing tide for you to pick

out with curi­ous, uncar­e­ful hands and break

between your knuck­les. So there it is.

 

The water clear between the body

and the break.

The stink of it, the shit in it, the smell

of brine you thought fresh for a week

or two, before sum­mer spoiled it and you.

You could, almost, toss his corpse out

into the cur­rents that chill the sea here

so that no mat­ter how far south we get

the water always gnaws at bone.

 

You used to have faith in some­thing.

Cold clear voice in the night

like a child’s, tin rap of the drum. Here

where the moss grows, the catch and release

of the spi­der in the arbu­tus’ nook,

its neck slope, nes­tled

and you could build a cross from this. From

where the spine curves in its pri­vate

pain. From the holes you imag­ine

in your palms when his eyes go cold.

 

You could res­ur­rect this.

Or set the whole beach alight.

No birch, no bomb. Only smoke

in the night. But the bro­ken things bend

under the Pacif­ic breeze and you labour

up the reluc­tant reach of the hill.

His shad­ow cast over you.

So you smear ash there, between the skin

and the shame. Between the moon

and the cove it hits. Between the gar­den

and the snake, the body and the break.

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This post was pub­lished on the orig­i­nal UVic ESA web­site.

In Flan­ders fields the pop­pies blow

Between the cross­es, row on row,

    That mark our place; and in the sky

    The larks, still brave­ly singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sun­set glow,

    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

        In Flan­ders fields.

Take up our quar­rel with the foe:

To you from fail­ing hands we throw

    The torch; be yours to hold it high.

    If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though pop­pies grow

        In Flan­ders fields.

John McCrae’s “In Flan­ders Fields” is what I think about every Remem­brance Day, so it seems to be the per­fect time to reflect on this poem and what it stands for.

Grow­ing up on Van­cou­ver Island meant that this poem was a promi­nent part of Remem­brance Day. As “In Flan­ders Fields” has become some­what of a sym­bol of Cana­di­an remem­brance, the poem was read aloud every Remem­brance Day cer­e­mo­ny. It was some­thing that all of us stu­dents came to expect, and we used it as a tool to hon­our the fall­en sol­diers. 

Before we dis­cuss the mean­ing of this famous poem, we should delve into the man who wrote it, John McCrae.

John McCrae was born in Guelph, Ontario in 1872. He was enthu­si­as­tic about join­ing the mil­i­tary, and enlist­ed when he was just 17 years old, hav­ing been involved with the Cadet Corps since he was 14. While being inter­est­ed in the mil­i­tary, he was also an avid poet, and he attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to on a schol­ar­ship. 

McCrae went on to become the brigade-sur­­geon of the First Brigade of the Cana­di­an Field Artillery dur­ing World War I. It was here where he penned the now famous poem “In Flan­ders Fields,” after see­ing his friend killed. McCrae noticed the many graves sur­round­ing the area where his men were sta­tioned, and saw the famous red pop­pies grow­ing upon their makeshift graves. “In Flan­ders Fields” was the sec­ond-to-last poem he would ever write. 

“In Flan­ders Fields” was writ­ten to memo­ri­al­ize the mil­lions of deaths from World War I, but it has come to sig­ni­fy the sac­ri­fice of many oth­ers in lat­er wars. Our wear­ing pop­pies as a sym­bol of our remem­brance and respect for the fall­en orig­i­nat­ed in this poem. Remem­brance Day is all about hon­our­ing those who fought for our free­dom, and John McCrae was one of those peo­ple. 

For me, this poem is big­ger than just a mes­sage to remem­ber. “In Flan­ders Fields” rep­re­sents a free­dom that so many peo­ple were not for­tu­nate enough to get. Every year I remem­ber read­ing these words and think­ing to myself, “I can’t even imag­ine what see­ing this must have felt like.” John McCrae gives us a first-hand view of the dev­as­ta­tion of war, yet still man­ages to notice the small beau­ti­ful pop­pies that mark the graves of his fall­en fel­low sol­diers and friends. This imagery alone is enough to make us re-read the poem year after year, and the mean­ing it holds to so many peo­ple con­tin­ues to show us it’s impor­tance. 

All of this being said, Remem­brance Day is a time for us to reflect on the priv­i­lege we have and take a moment to con­sid­er what so many peo­ple gave up their lives for. So, if you haven’t done so already, I hope you take a moment to reflect and remem­ber all those who laid down their lives for us.

Bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion cour­tesy of poets.org and poetryfoundation.org.

Errin Johnston-Watson

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This post was pub­lished on the orig­i­nal UVic ESA web­site.

I think it’s safe to say that we’ve all seen a hor­ror movie or two (some more than oth­ers), but I’m a big scaredy-cat and don’t want to be too pre­sump­tu­ous. But where do these mon­sters come from? This thought led me down a rab­bit hole that I’m hop­ing you’ll take a moment to dive down into with me.

Goth­ic hor­ror, as it came to be known, began in the 18^th cen­tu­ry, with many peo­ple attribut­ing the first hor­ror nov­el to Horace Walpole’s The Cas­tle of Otran­to. Now if you don’t know this book, not to fear, this is prob­a­bly the only time I’m ever going to talk about it. Goth­ic fic­tion, in brief, shows dark sub­lime scenery and a lot of fog, with roman­tic and super­nat­ur­al ele­ments. I could go into it in a lot more detail, but that just wouldn’t be fair to any­one. The main point I want to make is this: goth­ic is gloomy, and with­in that gloom are the many famous mon­sters that we know and love.

When I was grow­ing up, Drac­u­la was a name that I heard every Halloween—he’s the sta­ple vam­pire in everyone’s mind, aside from maybe Edward. Who hasn’t heard of him, or of Frankenstein’s mon­ster (yes, I said mon­ster, Franken­stein was the doc­tor)? And these mon­sters don’t just show up in books and movies, they’re in everything—there’s even a Franken­stein musi­cal if that’s what you’re look­ing for!

All of this got me to think­ing about why these mon­sters are the famous ones. What makes Goth­ic mon­sters some­thing uni­ver­sal­ly scary, to the point where they are heav­i­ly fea­tured in the hor­ror genre? Mod­ern nov­els and films have end­less ideas for new mon­sters, and def­i­nite­ly ones that are far more scary. So why did these ones stick?

In the end, I think it all comes down to the fact that these mon­sters have some­thing strange­ly human in them. If you’ve read Franken­stein, I’m sure you remem­ber that giant tem­per tantrum the mon­ster had on a moun­tain. These goth­ic mon­sters reflect a lot of the inse­cu­ri­ties we have about our­selves and our lives. Drac­u­la dis­plays how hard it is to cope with loss and death, and Franken­stein shows how des­per­ate­ly we want to fit in, and, in Frankenstein’s monster’s case, just to be human.

One of the best things we can take away from these goth­ic mon­sters is that it’s okay to be human—desirable even! I may be over­an­a­lyz­ing, slight­ly, but hey, I am an Eng­lish major. Now, with that all being said, I hope you all get a chance to watch some clas­sic hor­ror movies this spooky sea­son, and try not to read into too many metaphors for the human con­di­tion!

Hap­py Hal­loween, folks!

Errin Johnston-Watson

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This post was pub­lished on the orig­i­nal UVic ESA web­site.

At the begin­ning of this pan­dem­ic, or what some cru­el­ly call a sum­mer, I am sure I was not alone in cre­at­ing a far-too-ambi­­tious read­ing list. I had dreams of com­ing back to class in the fall semes­ter as an entire­ly remod­elled Eng­lish stu­dent; I was imag­in­ing some­thing Dead Poets Soci­ety-esque, except with more Shake­speare.

These dreams were quick­ly dashed, as I found myself strug­gling to even pick up books I’d pur­chased for plea­sure read­ing and instead chose to leave the books yearn­ing in var­i­ous cor­ners of my room while I start­ed yet anoth­er trashy real­i­ty show on Net­flix. The only book that was able to cross the bound­ary from my bed­room floor into my hands was The Name of the Wind by Patrick Roth­fuss. The only rea­son this book made the cut was because I had already start­ed this nov­el, so it felt like less of a daunt­ing task to re-enter Roth­fuss’ fan­ta­sy world com­pared to start­ing a new one.

            I am a per­son who usu­al­ly shies away from fan­ta­sy nov­els, steer­ing more towards cre­ative non­fic­tion, which are all usu­al­ly depress­ing and not the sort of thing I felt moti­vat­ed to read dur­ing quar­an­tine. Roth­fuss’ books offered a won­der­ful escape from my real­i­ty; it has been a long time since I have found a book as cap­ti­vat­ing and immer­sive as this one. His world-build­ing is impec­ca­ble. The read­er is left guess­ing and pulling at threads that seem to have no end­ing, at least not in this one nov­el. NoTW is the first in the Kingkiller tril­o­gy, but before you pick it up you should know that the third book has not been pub­lished. It has been nine years since the sequel was pub­lished, so fans of the series are slow­ly los­ing hope. If unfin­ished busi­ness in sto­ries excites rather than frus­trates you, you will find your­self at home with Roth­fuss’ loy­al read­ers. An online fan­base remains active to this day, con­tin­u­ous­ly upload­ing new the­o­ries and dis­cov­er­ing new details. Roth­fuss does not write a sin­gle word that does not car­ry a deep­er mean­ing, which is why I think this series appealed to me—the close-read­­ing skills I have learned as an Eng­lish stu­dent height­ened my enjoy­ment of this nov­el and allowed me to dive deep­er into the hid­den mean­ings than I would have pre­vi­ous­ly thought were pos­si­ble or even exist­ed.

            This nov­el opened the flood­gates, so to speak, and restored my love for read­ing. My read­ing habits also changed over the sum­mer: now, I find myself going for walks or runs while lis­ten­ing to audio­books of Made­line Miller’s nov­els The Song of Achilles and Circe or read­ing col­lec­tions of sto­ries by David Sedaris. I even pur­chased and began to read a lit­er­ary critic’s book on Ham­let. 

            So, like the unex­pect­ed pair­ing of Ham­let and car­toon lions, this unex­pect­ed sum­mer became irrev­o­ca­bly inter­twined with unex­pect­ed sum­mer read­ing. 

Josiah Lamb

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This post was pub­lished on the orig­i­nal UVic ESA web­site.

The Eng­lish Depart­ment wants to wish a warm wel­come and wel­come back to all of our stu­dents. COVID-19 has changed our teach­ing for­mat this this year but our sense of com­mu­ni­ty is still strong. To view the wel­come video, click the image below.

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This post was pub­lished on the orig­i­nal UVic ESA web­site.