Sadiqa de Meijer

Congratulations, Carolyn!

Etty Hillesum's thick book (dark red cloth cover with gold letters: ETTY HILLESUM HET WERK 1941-1943) lies on The New Quarterly, which is opened to my essay After Etty.

In this essay I follow the route of Dutch diarist Etty Hillesum from Amsterdam to Westerbork, and I'm grateful to TNQ for including it in their summer issue. One would like to be a balm on many wounds, are Hillesum's journal's near-last words. Please read her any chance you get.

Thank you! I love the theme of the issue, am honoured to have the essay included.

Thank you TNQ - & dear reader, I wrote about the remarkable Etty Hillesum.

Right 🧡 ? And one lily was wrapped around the stand.

A round orange reflective driveway marker on a thin metal post nestled in tall grass and day lilies.

When summer came, the reflective driveway marker was no longer lonesome in a white windswept vastness.

Mutual Aid Gardens FREE VEGGIE MARKET 2pm Sunday July 13th, 2025 Artillery Park Lawn 382 Bagot St. Lettuce Kale Chard Broccoli & more HARVEST WITH US

#ygk

On a cutting board, fuschia radishes, one halved and white inside, orange carrot sticks,end of a green cucumber.

However they pull these pigments out of the soil makes each of them a genius.

A metal jug on a wooden floor in the corner of a room under a low bookshelf. Sunlight is striking it making a water-like pattern of concentric rings on the floor around the vessel.

Free workshop with Cadence Weapon, J-Marsh, and Sadiqa de Meijer: From Page to Stage, Voicing your Verse. Saturday June 21st from 2 to 3 at Next Church at 89 Colborne St (brought to you by SPAF and WordLabs).

#ygk

A blackboard in the green and leafy front yard of a white-sidinged house says: Blossom time - suddenly everything ablaze with light. Matsuo Bashō Japan 1644-1694

Saturday June 21st! And thanks 🧡.

Thank you for coming, Liz 🧡.

Thank you, Liz 💙!

Cover of Brick literary journal, azure blue with a photograph of a clear inflated plastic bag & the author's names.

Hello to the Summer issue of BRICK 💙 & thanks to the editors for including my essay Dwaallichtjes (little-wandering-lights) ✨.

Pulling the room's chairs out in a widening circle, repeating names: it's with a ch, it means the sickle moon. Foil-wrapped dishes, gleaming cans of Orange Cream Coke Zero. Quick glances at the time on glowing phones. In Urdu they say children fast with half their jaw. My father would do magic tricks to make the waiting shorter. That longing to hear the azan in Tashkent. The minute comes: Medjool are thick, Sukkari dates are sweeter. The conversation is the whole room, is in pockets. Bowls of Algerian lentil stew, plates of pakoras, shepherd's pie. They won't divest, they said that it would only be symbolic. The moon's a symbol and it makes the tides. Where to find fatty meat in this city? Yogurt turns everything good. Tea is steeped, poured into mugs. A circle moving fluidly apart into the neighbourhood's slush-edged streets. In shadows, early crocuses, holding their saffron hearts.

Wrote this poem for the Skeleton Press issue on 'Gatherings' based on the conversation at a community Iftar in March. My thanks to all who attended 💚.

Part of a blue bike frame, the lock cradle fastened with gleaming gold duct tape.

Upgraded the bike to gold duct tape ✨.

Two marigolds and a budding sage flower in a shallow bowl of water on the back of a kitchen sink.

Cover of Zehra Naqvi's book 'The Knot of My Tongue' (poems and prose, a quote from Safia Elhillo 'Tender and rigorous') rose/gold background, collage image of a partial face (photograph) covered with birds made of patterned paper.

'Before you tell the story, you have to prepare the room for the story.' Zehra Naqvi

I'm fine with disagreeing on whether the arts are worth funding or not, and agreeing that affordable housing and food security need urgent municipal attention. We could even dream big and have both: social justice and art.

A message in sharpie on a metal post of Kingston's former Causeway bridge says: I'll miss the sound of your rumbling heart ❤️ ☹️ Val May 2024.

Hey #ygk, tell us what the Causeway meant to you & you'll be contributing to a collaborative community poem:

www.cityofkingston.ca/arts-culture...

Etty Hillesum (original in Dutch): One thing I already know for sure: I will never be able to write it down as life itself in its living letters wrote it down for me. I have read everything, with my own eyes and with many senses. I will never retell it like that. This could make me despair, if I hadn't learned to accept, that one must work with the inadequate powers, that one has, but that one does indeed have to work with them---

Thank you, Barbara! - the design is beautiful, yes. And congratulations on your book's multiple short-listings!

🧡

A very small leaf on a tulip tree, against the background of four fingers of a hand.

like something almost being said /

PLEASE SHARE! I am raising funds for a dear friend and member of the literary as well as arts communities.

$5 and $10 goes a long way! Reshares even further! We are just $800 from our goal and my hope is bluesky can take us the rest of the way. 💛💛💛

chuffed.org/project/1299...

Congratulations, Rob 🌨️⛈️🌤️☁️!!!

Through a latticed third floor window, a large gray stone courtyard with steps leading to a red tiled patio, large trees, another wing of the building across the yard.

I've returned from the Escuela de Otoño de Traducción Literaria in Buenos Aires with even deeper appreciation for the people who perform the sensitive transformation of a book from elsewhere into their own language.

Aw, very happy birthdays to you both 🧡!!

Cover of 'river in an ocean: essays on translation' has an image of a dark blue ocean with a winding white wake in it, names the editor Nuzhat Abbas and the authors Khairani Barokka, Yasmine Haj, Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, Nedra Rodrigo, Suneela Mubayi, Iryn Tushabe, Gopika Jadeja, Rahat Kurd, Geetha Sukumaran, Norah Alkharashi, Lisa Ndejuru.

Reading...