Grain Magazine
Grain is published quarterly by the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild. This particular issue marks editorial changes, with new fiction, poetry and general editors taking the helm for a three year period. The momentum of the issue is strong from the start. There’s a reference in the first poem, for instance, that gets picked up in the fictional piece that follows. This occurs throughout the book – the idea of leaving, a cloud, an animal exchanged for another, old age, children – marks of editorial vigor. Just as I’m about to confirm my earlier concern that this is all about old people, I’m pleasantly surprised near the end of the magazine by Bonnie Dunlop’s “Kenny”, where a kid’s the narrator. Shifts like this happen at the right moments. And so they should, for a seasoned publication that enjoys receiving an average of 125 submissions per issue, the quality of the words that “fill-out” its pages is good. “Swami Pankaj” by Rabindranath Mahoraj was a great story about a popular farmer in Trinidad who leaves his family behind and moves to a suburb of Toronto, where he spends the rest of his days working as a Taxi driver, convinced by a dream where Canada’s only a pit stop to get to India’s Himalayas region. Much of the work shares an immediate affinity to rural nature or the desire for slow living. Coupled with poems like “Beatrice” by Mary Maxwell, about a feisty woman’s last days spent in a hospital, or the much stronger poems, “Everyman” and “Meals” by Glen Sorestad, with similar subject, I’m left feeling a bit sinister and removed from the portrayals of life… Maybe I’m too afraid, too resistant, or too young to face them yet. I hope upcoming issues aren’t this depressed and engrossed about growing old. (PVP)