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Enclosures
Check out this podcast from Reckoning Magazine where the editor Michael DeLuca talks about my essay Enclosures. You can read the complete text too or download the podcast to listen at your leisure … whenever and wherever . Enjoy! Podcast Episode 18: Enclosures https://reckoning.press/?powerpress_embed=3058-podcast&powerpress_player=mediaelement-audio Today I’m going to read you an essay by paulo da costa, “Enclosures”, from Reckoning 6. I think of this piece as a new perspective in an ongoing conversation that started, for me, with Kate Schapira’s essay “On Political Change, Climate Change, and the Choice to Not Have Children” that appeared in Catapult in 2017, and my editorial piece in Reckoning 2, “On Having a Kid…
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New Creative Essay in Prairie Fire
Fall 2020, Volume 41, No.3 $14.95 We’re all looking for a little more breathing space and something to hold on to during these troubled times. Living in a House on Fire asks how we live amidst the nameless despair that is constantly smouldering in the background of our lives. At times our despair rages like a forest fire as we grapple with the knowledge that we’re in the midst of mass extinction, leading to deep sadness, depression and anxiety. The stories, essays and poems in Living in a House on Fire give a voice to these worries, shine a light on the darkness humanity is facing, and offer a roadmap…
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New creative essay in Riddle Fence
New essay published in Riddle Fence, In Search of Spring. I am in the good company of Lindsay Bird, Alexandra Harvey, John Talbird, Beth Follet, Carmella Gray-Cosgrove and many more.
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New essay in Queen’s Quarterly
http://www.queensu.ca/quarterly/fal1603dacosta.html The Oak Tree Fearless in your short, four-year-old legs, your footsteps clap against asphalt and your knees nearly buckle racing down the forty-degree lane. I too ran down this steep hill, freed from the school day and sterile walls, and later, I too climbed even higher, farther up the now vanished woods to the high school on the crest of the hill. That was the first high school to be built higher than any church in the hills, signalling a change in the town and in the future of our lives. I brought you from urban Canada to the village of my childhood to experience a taste of…
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A Reader’s Response to Beyond Bullfights and Ice Hockey
Beyond Bullfights and Ice Hockey: A Reader’s Response By Emanuel Melo I overheard a conversation between a father, his wife and daughter while at lunch at Le Petit Château in Quebec City the other day. “What are you planning to do this afternoon?” he asked. “We’re going to the Museum of Civilization.” “Great. That’ll give me time to watch the game and then we’ll meet up after.” I could say that I found it shocking that someone would take the time to come all the way to Quebec City to stay cooped up in a hotel room to watch a game while ignoring the charm of the city, but…
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The Guest who refuses to be polite – impressions by Emanuel Melo
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Poetic & Lyrical – impressions by Irene Marques
Irene Marques on Beyond Bullfights & Ice Hockey (essays) Paulo da Costa has a poetic and lyrical voice that is beautiful. It is an appeasing murmur conducive to meditation putting into question the acceptance of the mundane or the fashions of the moment which are often guided by economic pressures that erase us all under a blanket of sameness. It is a voice that wants the power of the word to remain pure so that it can reach us at a deep level and have an impact that goes well beyond the facades of easy, cheap rhetoric. It is a writing that asks you to slow down, to pause, in order…
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Interview in Portuguese-American Review
original interview in Portuguese-American Review Portuguese-American Review – Congratulations on publishing “Beyond Bullfights and Ice Hockey: Essays on Language, Identity and Writing Culture”. What is this book’s genre or category? paulo da costa – The book can be seen as a creative non-fiction collection of texts that stretches its traditional essay-like boundaries past the more journalistic or academic essay by its irreverence, humour and often its embrace of a poetic tone to deliver thought through the vein of beauty. I hope it will be seen as a garden of beautiful words with philosophical substance. A poet at heart can never abstain from wrapping his thoughts in beauty. An edible…
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The Guest who refuses to be polite – impressions by Emanuel Melo
I’m hanging out with paulo da costa these days. On the crowded subway ride to work in the morning and again in the evening on the way home I listen to him; those around me don’t. But I prefer listening to him when I get inside my solitude, sitting on my sofa, in the quiet of my library, where I can be attentive without the pull of people’s chatter. Even at four in the morning, when I cannot sleep, he is still talking. Non-stop. He is the guest who refuses to go home at a decent hour and so, to be polite, I let him speak his words. He gives…
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Mass Storytelling
– paulo da costa Sunday morning in my neighbourhood. Cars pull into parking lots and doors slam shut. This domino of bangs echoes a timeless, proverbial Big Bang of life-changing events. The amiable people exchange smiles and jovial greetings as they stroll with purpose to their varied gatherings of devotion. In high-ceilinged buildings they will soon congregate and listen to stories of creation, parables of morality, illustrations on righteous conduct. They will sing hymns of worship and pray recurrent supplications for health, wealth and peace. On the radio, after having rescued the greedy, bankrupt bankers and the automobile barons, another politician extols the value of the goods economy…
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Beyond Bullfights and Hockey
– AN ARCHITECTURE OF MULTICULTURAL IDENTITY – Homens que são como lugares mal situados Homens que são como casas saqueadas […] Homens encarcerados abrindo-se com facas Homens que são como danos irreparáveis Homens que são sobreviventes vivos Homens que são como sítios desviados Do lugar Daniel Faria My first memories, first smells and sounds are of Angola, coloured by its African geography of heat and flavoured by its culture, spirituality and music. My experience of the continent was brief, since a handful of years later my parents returned to their homeland in Portugal, where I was raised in the northern grape-growing hills of Beira Litoral. Backpack…
