A Cruel Light
Cyndi MacMillan Crooked Lane Books, 2023 Click here to view or order on Amazon. The Ekphrastic Review: Tell us a little bit about you and ekphrasis, whether in poetry, stories, or mystery novels. Cyndi MacMillan: I wrote ekphrastic poetry before I understood what it was. Several years ago, a fellow poet and friend sent me a link to The Ekphrastic Review’s Twenty Poem Challenge. The rest, as they say, is history. Thanks to this journal, I discovered that other writers also felt a strong connection to visual art—an almost indescribable art-inspiring-art bond that is far more kinetic and synergizing than a reaction to a prompt. It’s as if the artwork has more to say, and I have been entrusted with its backstory. The Ekphrastic Review: Why is art history important for you? Tell us about some pivotal, meaningful moments in your relationship with visual art. Cyndi MacMillan: I really thought on this question, and I’ve decided to talk about wallpaper. When I was fifteen, we moved from Quebec to Ontario. My sister and I were each budgeted a hundred dollars to decorate our rooms in our new home. She stretched her amount to buy a bedding set, matching curtains, a can of paint, and a few posters. Meanwhile, I fell head over heels for a wallpaper pattern. The pattern showed a mill with a stream, bulrushes and reeds—rather like a Dutch masterpiece. I spent every penny on that wallpaper. I didn’t care! I’d lose myself in that print, stepping into that scene like Alice through the looking glass. I never regretted my choice, and even now if I close my eyes I can still see that mill and stream. I’ve dabbled in art since I was a child—mostly drawing and painting. At seventeen, I had to choose between a career in the arts or teaching—I chose to study Early Childhood Education. I have to say that encouraging preschoolers to be creative was a joy to me; helping little ones explore colour, texture and shape was fulfilling. I feel that visual art brings history to life, and it provides it with dimension. We not only catch a glimpse of the way life was—the values and views of that era—but the way the artist saw the world or wished it could be. The Ekphrastic Review: How did you get interested in mysteries and thrillers? What led to your decision to write a mystery novel? This year I finally donated my collection of Nancy Drew books to a thrift shop—forty of those iconic yellow hardcovers. I have enjoyed mysteries since I was a girl. At fourteen, I used to read four romantic gothic books a week—those pulp fiction classics with women fleeing a coastal mansion. Why write a mystery novel? I enjoy challenges. A mystery is penned backwards. Because motives, crimes and consequences span time, mystery novelists must also bridge the past to the present. Also, I like puzzles, and I like seeding my work with enough clues to merit a second read. Writing a mystery is rather like juggling lit torches. On a unicycle. The Ekphrastic Review: Tell us how your thriller became entwined with a mysterious painting. Cyndi MacMillan: My book is such a hodgepodge of genres I’m not even sure it is ‘technically’ a thriller. Early reviewers have enjoyed it, regardless of how it’s been classified. I’m not uncomfortable with the classification, but I’d say A Cruel Light is more a gothic mystery with plenty of suspense. In the terms of the chicken and the egg, first came the idea of a painting holding cryptic clues that could solve a cold case, and then as I worked on the outline, the story became darker, grew to include more harrowing scenes. The more that Annora cleaned the painting and exposed the clues hiding within it, the more the antagonist urged me to make it harder for her, placing her in more and more jeopardy. I strongly recommend that readers watch the movie The Man Who Invented Christmas. It is one of the most accurate portrayals of writing fiction I’ve ever seen. The way a book comes together, the merging of its elements, is wholly character related, and sometimes it feels like the author is just taking notes as our main character dictates to us what happens next! The Ekphrastic Review: Why did you choose to use an art conservator as a detective? What was the process like for you, getting to know Annora? Cyndi MacMillan: Art conservators often think and act like detectives. They need to research the artist. They run sample tests to analyze compounds—what mediums were used. They may need to find old photos if a painting is so damaged that parts of it are completely missing. They dig below the surface, investigate cause, and a commission could be compared to a ‘case.’ Annora is an intelligent, caring, passionate woman with her own set of flaws. I give her the freedom to change the plotline, to take me in a direction that I hadn’t expected the story to go. She can frustrate me , as she’s brave when it comes to risks, but more timid around establishing relationships. The Ekphrastic Review: An important part of your story depends on Annora’s ability to integrate with the art she is working on or looking at. What does that mean to you, to integrate with an artwork? How does said integration impact our engagement with art as ekphrastic writers? Cyndi MacMillan: Integrating with a work of art is about immersion! Recently, art immersion has come to mean that the artist’s oeuvre has been given the 3D treatment; through the magic of technology, projections, holographs and virtual reality, viewers ‘enter’ the artwork physically, thereby becoming one with it. However, viewers can experience artwork in a metaphysical way by using imagination and hyper-concentration. This type of dream-state focus requires time and attention. As ekphrastic writers, our responses incorporate both gut-reactions with a visualizing process that closes the gap between the creation and the viewer. Ekphrasis removes the distance—we become the medium, the texture, the light, and the message. It’s an embodied experience that blends intuition with interpretation, enabling us to zoom in and out, feeling the impact of each detail and being wholly present in both the forefront and background. Ekphrasis is more than analysis—it’s willfully being swallowed by the whale so you can feel the vibration of its heartbeat. The Ekphrastic Review: One of the themes of your book is light, something woven into the murder mystery itself and the strange events that unfold throughout the narrative. What drew you to this theme? Cyndi MacMillan: Ooh goody, one of my favourite topics is chiaroscuro—the artistic treatment of light and shadow to produce a sharp contrast. Both light and darkness are two of the underlying themes in my mystery. Chiaroscuro can be used within fiction to highlight what is revealed and what is kept secret. It can also add nuances to characters—highlight the good, add heft to the bad. We all have a dark side, and most of us have fond moments where we were given a chance to shine. Writing a mystery that revolves around hidden art that has been shadowed by time and neglect allowed me an ‘in’ to explore the festering nature of secrets. The Ekphrastic Review: Your plot depends on the conviction that art speaks across years and centuries, and that giving respect and space to art allows us to see and hear important truths. This is shown in the mural Annora is hired to restore, with key symbols as clues planted by the artist helping folks in the future understand the town’s past. It is also shown when vandalism takes place of much older indigenous rock art. Clearly you hold strong beliefs on this subject. Tell us. Cyndi MacMillan: I believe in authenticity within fiction. I’m also mindful of the difference between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation. Having chosen Northeastern Ontario as my setting, I looked at the geography, population statistics and the locations of First Nation reserves. I refused to exclude the Mississauga peoples from my story. While researching the area and Mississaugi traditions, I found an article about pictographs being vandalized at Matinenda Provincial Park in Ontario (2017). My character, Annora, has a strong emotional response to the destruction of that art—and to anyone intentionally damaging any art. Conservators have a code of ethics not unlike the Hippocratic Oath. So, I as I wrote from her point of view, I shared what I learnt. Fiction has long relayed messages about recognizing wrongs and truths. That being said, everything within a novel should be related to character and plot—no preaching on the page. I came close to crossing that line, but as characters became friends and the bonds became stronger, it also made sense for Annora to get involved. She could no longer remain a bystander. The Ekphrastic Review: It's wonderful to have a story set in Canada, specifically in small town Ontario. You live in Ontario (as does The Ekphrastic Review!) but could have chosen any part of the world for your setting. Why was it important to you to set your story close to home? Cyndi MacMillan: I love Canada and being Canadian. I love its multiculturalism, peoples, landscapes and seasons. I am grateful to authors Louise Penny and Giles Blunt; their books proved Canada makes an ideal setting for mysteries and thrillers. I would say that the North—its wilderness, smaller towns and vistas—made the perfect backdrop for my gothic, not unlike the moorlands so vividly described in the Bronte sisters’ works. (Aside here, I pitched my novel as Jane Eyre meets The Da Vinci Code.) My husband said I should have applied for a grant from ‘Destination Ontario’ as A Cruel Light is so chockfull of Canadiana that it could second as a tourist guide. The Ekphrastic Review: What’s next for Cyndi MacMillan? Cyndi MacMillan: I am nearing the completion of the second Annora Garde novel. I have also started to outline a stand-alone gothic horror set in a former logging town in Northern Ontario. Ekphrastic writing will continue to motivate and delight me--if a poem wants to be written, I will write it. I plan to make appearances at bookstores for signings, submit articles to magazines, and take a much-needed vacation with my family. Thank you for the opportunity to share my writing journey with your readers, Lorette. ** Cyndi MacMillan's "When Alice Became the Rabbit" was nominated by TER for the Best Microfictions Anthology and was chosen to be included! Read Cyndi's poem, "Swallows," after Canadian painter Benjamin Chee Chee. Read Cyndi's poem, "Bathsheba," after a painting by Jean Leon Gerome.
1 Comment
My Rose of Damascus We stared at her for twelve minutes. She was kind enough to indulge our fascination, to not comment on our goldfish-esque gobsmacked expressions or the tearing of our eyes in the white overhead lights. Whatever picture you see of her is wrong, dragged through matte mud and desaturated camera shutters. It was the purple. The purple. Mauve, thistle, orchid, heliotrope, liseran, mulberry, purpureus, eminence, byzantium, pansy, palatinate, tyrian, whatever you call it, no dictation can encapsulate it. The Rose of Shiraz. You have my nose. I whispered to her. Have we met before? Yes. In your Teta’s perfume, your Amu’s garden, your sister’s baklava. I love you. I cried. That’s not true. She said. Because to love me would be to love you. I. Perfume Your Teta loves roses, my mother would say as she loaded our cart with rose-scented candles, moisturizers, soaps, lotions, perfumes. She’d spray the violet bottle in four places three times a day: wrist, wrist, neck, neck. We’d get her bouquets whenever possible. With wrinkled hands she would rip each petal off and rub it on her aching joints, her skin tags, her whitened roots. Her scent lingered in a room hours after she departed it, carving her presence into the olfactory. They grew roses in Damascus, she told me. I remember their smell. Her mind retreated somewhere further than I could see, tangling with an aroma only she could remember. She perched like that, stone-still, for hours at a time; the trance ended when the perfume wore off. The whites of her eyes popped like a cornered rabbit, as if she herself would fade with the perfume. Wrist, wrist. Neck, neck. ll. Garden Am I doing it right? he asked. Is this too much? He shied from the hose, pulling back the stream of water from the rosebed. You’re doing great, Amu. They need a lot. His hunched form curled farther into itself. Sorry. She always watered them. His niece softly smiled, patting his shoulder. I’ll show you how to take care of them, like she did. She absentmindedly began to prune the leaves. The shears reached for a dead rose. With a rattling gasp, he jerked forward, the hose spraying forward onto the petals. Sorry. He pulled away. Sorry. Can you…let them fall on their own? She acquiesced. You don’t have to apologize. Sor—... His lips sealed. His eyes welled. She turned. They returned to their positions like sentries on a battlefield. She fiddled with the lavender bush. He watered the roses. lll. Baklava ½ cup rose water ½ cup water 2 cups sugar
At first it was just for the baklava. A cold pour over hot filo pastry, meant to melt into the pistachio and glue the layers together. My sister held out the spoon for me to taste. I was hooked. I began to pour it on everything sweet: cookies, cakes, teas, crepes, biscuits. Can you make me some more? I’d ask her monthly when the jar ran out. She’d indulge her youngest sibling with a smile—pleased to be needed. I kept using it—pleased to need. Once the sides had been scraped she’d pull out the sugar and the Cortas rose water like clockwork. I would help her stir, and when I complained of the heat burning my fingertips from the short spoon, she’d take over easily. She always had thicker skin. Stirring and stirring and stirring, she scrolled on her phone. I peaked over once—magenta-doored apartments, texts with her boyfriend, job posts. My rose-syrup heart dropped. I began using more. I poured it on everything: pasta, pizza, salad, chicken, lamb, bread, eggs, rice. I asked her monthly. Weekly. Daily. Can you make me some more? My lips would smack together as I spoke, glued slightly together as the syrup oozed out of me. She began to hesitate, but never deny. Standing on a ladder, she’d stir the sugar with a broomstick, storing it in a pantry-sized jar. I saw her glancing at her phone. With a nudge, she dropped it into the vat of syrup. I used it always. I breathed it, bathed in it, bled it, until it was all I had. Can you make me some more? I asked, unbeknownst to me, one last time. She frowned at the glopping mess of rose syrup I had become. No. I need to leave now. She brushed my cheek, her skin stretching as she peeled it off. I lept at her, arms outstretched. But my syrupy legs hindered my movement, and I fell into a heap. She apologized before turning away, leaving me to my rose-scented misery. Sophie Najm Sophie Najm is a young Lebanese American author from the San Fernando Valley. She’s a UCSB undergraduate for Writing & Literature, and has been published in Laurel Moon and The Catalyst magazines. A true “Valley Girl,” Sophie spends her free time ordering complicated Starbucks drinks, buying ridiculous earrings, and creatively incorporating “like” into her vernacular. The Seat of Improbable Contemplations Frame unsteady, back broken, better days I've seen, the epitome of elegance, once resplendent in scarlet velvet; now threadbare and moulded; a welcoming seat of respite, no longer for the weary, nor a place of rumination, sipping tea, sitting quiet, in a room in a house by the sea I rue the day a child mistook me for a ladder, to climb for candy in a jar, on the topmost pantry shelf, small feet first upon my seat, then unsteadily upon my back, his weight, too much to bear; came a creaking, then a cracking, down fell child and I, in pieces broken on the floor Unforgiven, I sat, vertebrae unmended in my lap, a symbol of their irreparable grief in a lonely corner of a locked room; the dust of creeping, careless years, falling upon my shrouded frame, until one night, the broken family, hastily, abandoned their seaside home leaving the murderer behind Dilapidated, antiquated stain worn, fabric torn; in time it came to pass, instead of carpet beneath my feet, now grows grass wearied to the splinter, no more am I asked to take the weight of anyone's respite, nor be their site of rumination, no longer do I stare at walls My legs of wood, remembering they once were trees, will again, take root, reaching down into earth, soft moss, stealing over velvet frayed, small flowers, sheltering in my shadow; my back, grown supple as saplings, mended over the wax and wane of seasons beneath a mercurial sky; I've become a seat of improbable contemplations, dreaming on the silent street of memory, leading forever down to the sea Melissa Coffey This poem was first published at Medium. Melissa Coffey is a writer and poet based in Melbourne, Australia. Her work often explores themes of desire, power, transformation & sexuality, sometimes via a feminist lens. She was once an artist’s model, where she fell in love with art. Melissa’s short stories, poetry and creative nonfiction are published (sometimes incognito) in various international and Australian anthologies (The Mammoth Book series, Stringybark Stories), literary journals (Not Very Quiet, Illura Press) and online. She co-edits Scrittura, a poetry publication on Medium.com. Melissa has recently sent her first poetry chapbook into the world. More are planned. The Psychic Shape of Place “…We know nothing. Everything is in constant change. Whether we like it or not…” Leonora Carrington If you put me in the cavern of that lantern I will howl. Not at the moon or the sun but into your eyes. I will refuse the imperative to illuminate, to be your muse. I am no longer the obedient convent girl, scrubbing Italian tiles with a toothbrush and lye. I would rather visit a hyena at the zoo, crawl into his lair where smalltalk isn’t required, where I would bury my face in the motley matt of his neck. There I will play my saw, like I used to do in the attic, bowing it with the chalice of my hands, my fingers catgut strings, plucking out squalls with overtones, on desecrated teeth. I will make sound where there was only silence. Jagged chromatics. I want to wrap myself in elastic bandages, a labyrinth of gauze and glue. And I will set fire to the wrappings. Watch their edges fray and frazzle inside the flame. I will douse the conflagration with tequila. But you know I prefer Earl Grey tea and a cigarette simmering in the afternoon’s ash heap. This morning I woke after trying to claw my way out of the bedroom window. One has to protect oneself against demons. I had no hammer to spiderweb the glass, no implement to disassemble my escape. Only my fingers clawing away at the window. Bloody stubs they were, raw down to the fragmented cuticles. My frock composed of live bats, sewn together by their wings. Such delicate stitching. Filigree of loops and lattices. They beat against a symphony of horses’ hooves. A practical magic I cannot ferret out of books. I want to drag the outside inside. Turn the whole wild of the world inside out. Like a woolen sock with seams exposed. Run my fingers over the ragged edges, floss my teeth with the thread aching through the seams. My father told me making art was beneath my station, a bewitching relegated to the scarves and the raucous rattle of a gypsy’s tambourine. He tries to give me away to the marriage market, a place where women are bought and sold to parsimonious entrepreneurs. I would rather read Aldous Huxley beneath a persimmon tree. I would rather fill a canvas with the opalescence of egg yolks and distilled water. But my mother fed me under the kitchen table, under the space beneath the stairwell. She spooned surrealism into my emaciated mouth. And I fell in love with the rocking horse in the woods, with the witches composing their magic over a cauldron of medieval animals dancing to crone stirrings long into the night. I have been an incantation of fit-inducing drugs, of the shrapnel of electric jolts to places inside my head that I cannot see. An asylum maiden lacking the virginity and decorum. Now I am an old woman. A member of the human species. But I have always been allergic to collaboration. Find working in isolation, being my own muse, electric. I take a loitering drag on my cigarette, ingest my scalding tea. Conjure smoke and acid on my tongue. I draw a protective halo around my feet, bind myself in its circular safety. Here, I abandon the strait jacket. Here, my elbows become wings, my fingers talons, my belly a body with a thousand and a thousand legs, my hooves pawing the ground. Marianne Peel Marianne Peel: "I am from the spicy-sweaty-brow noodle shops of Guizhou Province, China; from the deep coal veins of Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania; from the clang and clamor of Downriver Detroit auto factories of Michigan; from the Anapurna Range of mountains in Pokhara, Nepal; from the sea glass mosaic tiles of Istanbul, Turkey; from the sunsets along Lake Peewee in Madisonville, Kentucky. I am passionate about music that tugs at the centre of my chest, poetry that literally makes me stop breathing, hands that create warm winter afghans for my friends, the poetry of Simon and Garfunkel that is timeless, playing my Native American Flute in gazebos in the forest, and dancing until I am dizzy in Juke Joints of Mississippi. I worked for thirty-two years as an English teacher, spending my days with adolescents that I fell in love with hour after hour. I've read Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible at least ten times, and continue to learn life lessons from Albee's Zoo Story, Williams' Streetcar Named Desire, and Shaffer's Equus. You can find me on Facebook as Marianne Peel Forman, where I post pics from everyday life, birds from Florida nature preserves, and photos of my four daughters. I am known for finding beauty in the ordinary, everywhere I journey. I have been published in several journals, including Muddy River Review and Comstock Review. I have a full length book of poems entitled No Distance Between Us, published in 2021 by Shadelandhouse Modern Press of Lexington, KY. Two Butterflies The rock garden reminded my mother that thirst is a perennial stream, waves raked in the gravel years ago or yesterday. The boulders preserved no memory of our motel room, the day’s water cut at noon, my mother warming on the stove a pail’s worth to bathe me. Instead, the standing stones fossilized a butterfly like the one I imagined when my mother made a metaphor of divorce-- she was a Great Purple; my father, a lizard too heavy to lift over a river. My mother had assured herself that there were plenty lizards, rivers, and all too pert butterflies, one of which escaped the allegory, flapping its way to the rock garden. As if in a courtship display, the butterfly’s scabrous suitors extended their gorgets; she, in fear, her wings. From what earthen pore, like these lizards, had dalliance reared itself? My mother simpered at her new boyfriend; he could not yet leave the rock garden and its arid nature, nor I his. That night, in the motel room, he’d shower in our last ration of water, the butterfly waiting for dew to pool in the rake’s trail. Alejandro Aguirre This poem was written during a residency with the Harn Museum of Art in 2022. Alejandro Aguirre was a finalist for the Atlanta Review’s Dan Veach Prize for Younger Poets, and his poems have been published in Rattle, I-70 Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and elsewhere. In 2022, Alejandro served as a poet in residence, alongside Debora Greger, at the Harn Museum of Art. www.alejandromaguirre.com |
The Ekphrastic Review
COOKIES/PRIVACY
This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you. Join us on Facebook:
Tickled Pink Contest
May 2024
|