One of the many surprises I promised the people of 20scene is of the poetry variety. So here it is, I’m posting one of my early unposted zines; A pamphlet size collection of prints with black coil binding along the top titled: “PROSE IN VIEWS”

Published in the free Canadian online medical journal Ars Medica Vol. 14 No.2 (2019)[LINK HERE], Prose In Views was the evolution of a series of poems I wrote with illustrated sketchbook pages utilizing a typewriter. One might ask, “ARE YOU ONE OF THOSE HIPSTERS WHO USES AN OLD SCHOOL TYPEWRITER?”. Yes, however, not for no reason!! And I also fancy myself more of an “indie kid” but that’s besides the point…(I’d rather be called emo than hipster, I don’t even own a striped sailor shirt).

To be concise, the poetry started years back just before I dropped out of high school when I moved to the big city(Toronto) with my family and was suffering from the big city blues. I wrote some prose and free form on the subway and in the stairwell of ECI(the high school from mean girls but IRL) and years later got back into it in my mid 20’s. Around that time I split the tendon on my thumb doing dishes when my favorite glass salad bowl broke under hot water. I was doing a lot of daily writing at the time for my mental health recovery and so I figured spend the last bit of money I had on a typewriter. It turned out to be a great investment, I had all these old sketchbook pages lying around with drawings on them and shortly after brining the old Brother “Charger 11” home I began ripping pages out and typing poetry on them for fun. The first in the series was typed beside a skull with a letter “D” and “T” for eye sockets. The original is owned by my good friend George Rivard(gonna link to his YouTube channel [HERE] because I keeps it 100%) Not sure if he still has it but I dug up an old picture I had of it so, for all you gichy types, here is the October 6th 2018 poem titled: “Denied Trouble”

Denied trouble as I walked
down the street unmoved as you drank
your beer on that patio,

Resentment brewed on a shit day,

I bet you made small talk and forgot
the horrors you heard on the radio
Denied trouble as I stared at the
smiley face on your coat reminding me
shit happens,

A vivid memory came and passed,
funny how the rain forgave you and left me rinsed

BUT WAIT THERES MORE!! Eventually I joined a study on the intersection of art and mental health and at the time was paying my good friend Michael Vuong small sums of money to draw me little drawings of stuff in the corner of sketchbook pages. At this point I was actively going to a local poetry book shop knife | fork | book (check out their site for awesomeness [HERE]) for poetry readings and gearing up to eventually read the poems of this series around the city at various open mics. Around then is where I would tuck away into the George Brown College library on King street and edit these poems into unique views that I photographed across the city. I’ve always been into photography ever since a class I took one of the many times I dropped out of high school; long story short I had some photos lying around and made some text based ones as well(big ups to 20scene’s own cap’n OWEN for his contribution).

Well that’s the story of the series. There is a typo on the date of this one, it was actually 2019. I don’t remember much of that new years day aside from that I missed my grandpa and decided to write a poem about how his ghost haunted me one night when I was visiting Morocco back in the day. I’m not gonna go much into the story of it aside from to say that I saw his ghost clear as day, and to this day I take people seriously when they tell me their ghost stories.

Gonna try and upload these as quick as possible, watch out on Facebook/Instagram for upload posts as I have about 6 more to be posted prior to the new 20scene VOL 5 – ISSUE 1!!