Sunday, November 15, 2009

Feature: Donna Gagnon Day 1

This week we welcome Donna Gagnon to our family of talented writers and artists. Donna and her husband Doug Pugh (already part of the *Mnemosyne* family) are both fountains of creativity. Doug has provided in depth interview questions for Donna's feature. Join us as we get to know her this week.

Welcome to *Mnemosyne*, Donna!

**** **** **** ****



BIO

Donna Gagnon (a born and bred Canadian) lives in a bright blue and yellow house in a small northern Ontario town. She writes poetry, short fiction and plays. Her work appears at The Fib Review, SmokeLong, Every Day Poets, Short Story Library, Rumble, Bewildering Stories, Pen Pricks Microfiction, Smokebox, Wingspan Quarterly, Twisted Tongue, Gold Dust Magazine, in Gatto Publishing's Short StoriEs e-anthology and in three anthologies published by The Write Idea. A collection of interlinking prose poems, Two Double Beds in a Comfort Hotel, appears in New Writings in the Fantastic, edited by John Grant (aka Paul Barnett), published by Pendragon Press. Her one act play, Deception, was presented at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2005. This play was recently chosen #1 out of 35 entries by Borelians Community Theatre, Port Perry, Ontario and will be produced during their first-ever Canadian Play Festival in May 2010.

With her husband, Doug Pugh, Donna co-administers the international online writers' forum The Write Idea and co-edits TheRightEyedDeer, a quarterly literary ezine. She thinks regrets are pointless but does wish she'd brought back WAY more Thorntons Dark Gingers from England in 2007.

**** **** **** ****



(photo taken in Churchill, Manitoba by Donna's daughter, Gillian Ottley)


Notes Scribbled on the Back of the New York Times, September 12, 2001

once
this
heart was
spongy soft
pomegrante red
sweet with healthy juice, fortitude

and
once …
(yesterday)
this muscle
trembled with hopeful
anticipation, knowing that

once
your
plane landed
we could laugh
beats would synchronize
tucked together, we’d save the world

the
phone
rang once
you told me
there was no power
left, no way to kill the bastards
once
this
evil
had taken
hold in the air, clouds
of angels descended, but they
could
not
stop you
or Satan
or anyone else
from this inexplicable fall
from
grace
into
grassy fields
splattered with wings and
blood and all of God’s intentions

once
this
heart was
full of you
now it is empty
waiting for the pain
to
be
erased
negated

… tell me it’s a dream …

by words from somewhere
that I can hear above this roar
of
rage
as I
read the Times

once upon a time

our hearts were immaculately
pure
safe
open
trusting but
that was yesterday
today, all is smouldering ash
that
will
soon choke
everyone
unless you come back
so we can start over again

© Donna Gagnon

(appears in Issue 3 of The Fib Review http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/issue3/index.html)

3 comments:

  1. Yay!- for the poem. And thank you for validating me -- a young man last week looked at my notebook page and asked "what is that?" I said, "a poem" He said, "oh, it looked like a column of words."

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Jesus.

    And Marc ... I think that's a great title for a poetry book: "A Column of Words". :)

    ReplyDelete