In Transit is a collection of work representing the culture of Montreal’s underground in relation to the 68 metro stations. The STM is the beating heart of the city, the transitory pulmonary vein that breathes life into each borough. We are looking for visual art, poetry, fiction, and non-fiction that convey the subterranean particularities of our city.
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Emily Tristan Jones’ In Transit poem “A Nature God on the STM” invites the reader into the anatomy of a moment where youth and yearning meet. Montreal’s metro line not only functions as the setting of this poem, but becomes a muse inspiring nostalgia, romance, and surrealism.
Sophie Edell’s paintings give us a peek into the practice of painting in Quebec townships by collecting rooms and landscapes as symbols of a quieter life. Edell chats with us about transitioning from urban to rural, developing a personal style, and the intersection of illustration and painting.
Finding beauty in public spaces, Dean Garlick’s photography serves as a reminder to allow yourself the joy of looking. The striking architectural compositions find rhythm in geometric forms, with dark recesses patterned by radiating light. (SP)
Margaret Sullivan’s two poems "Hurricane Betsey" and "Our Cottage" present a nostalgic look at haunting memories, reminding us of why certain moments never leave us.
Cole Henry Forster's In Transit piece "ADAGIO FOR THE BLUE LINE" may be relatively short, similarly to its muse. Nevertheless, through poignant images and existential questions, it encapsulates the eccentric energy that the metro lines carries from Snowdon to St-Michel.
Bjornerud and Jerezano’s series speaks to collaboration, communication, observation, reflection, and human responsibility. The work is a poetic approach to art-making that depicts a conversation spoken slowly and solely through drawing. Two pieces (not pictured here) from the Nosotros Injertáremos (We are Grafters) series have found a home in our 2.2 print issue.
Yanita Georgieva was introduced to Yolk during her first trip to Montreal. In her poem "Boarding", Georgieva presents her beautiful understanding of Montreal through the sweet sentiment of the warmth brought by snow days.
Michoacán, Mexico; barren, secretive, Holy. There is a volcano, Paritucín, with a church bell half-buried in the porous rock; there is memory, myth and cosmology, but what else is there for a French-Canadian to discover—to relate to?
The work's intention is to represent psychedelic visionary states both with abstract and symbolic images. Each piece is based on a particular substance and environment, and named accordingly. I am in general inspired by the contrast between the awe and horror that can both occur in those altered states. The drawings themselves are done in sharpie, and further altered digitally.
Our Managing Editor, Curtis John McRae, had the chance to sit down with Montreal-based author Ceilidh Michelle to discuss her latest book, Vagabond, as well as her experiences in creative writing programs and residencies, her early inspirations, and the writing advice she received from Denis Johnson shortly before his passing.
Arundhathi Anil's poems "Stains" and "Moony" are an exploration of human intimacy and all that feels unexplainable. While the two poems differ greatly in subject matter, they unite with the common theme of temporality.
Kayla Penteliuk's In Transit poem "Friction" captures the essence of Montreal's metro system. Although she details certain stations and draws upon how each resonate with her in a specific way, Penteliuk comes to the final conclusion that it is through the metro system as a whole that she feels not only close to the city, but the people within it.
Thomas Elson’s two works of flash fiction demonstrate a circular narrative forbearance that contains lifetimes. In “Among the Licence Plates,” we move from one seat to another—the State Capitol Building, on stage with Johnny Cash, on a mother’s lap, in the crowd amongst prisoners—to contemplate the various perspectives of one historical event. By juxtaposing these insights, we are asked to consider our own actions and the impressions we leave on people.
William Doreski’s poems “Photoshopped” and “SX-70 Redux” discuss the concept of our personal image of the world versus reality through the metaphor of photography. In “Photoshopped”, a narrator finds himself incapable of removing himself from tampered photographs, and thus legacies, of various writers. In “SX-70 Redux”, memory becomes altered and in a constant state of flux when Poaroid pictures are exposed to the elements.
Some dogs hover beneath tables for scraps of meat, while others wag their tails at the sound of an opening cabinet. For Buick, a red and white Greyhound, hardly any coaxing can stir his sickening body–that is, until one day, he hears someone purloin his pills.
“VENDÔME” is an ekphrastic poem that explores temporality and the relationship between the internal world of self and the external world. Through Marcelle Ferron’s sculpture, located at Vendome station, the poem investigates what it means to be in constant flux.
Chloe's Gallagher-Smylie's collection "interiority, otherwhere" celebrates the intimate moments which create meaning in daily life. Here, community and comfort are demonstrated to be the foundation of the home, reflecting the lived experience of those who occupy the space.
Sasha Manoli’s poems abruptly confront topics such as identity, sex, relationships, and society. The play on form and language creates a poetic landscape that is dynamic and full of momentum.
What do rocks and fame have in common? Well, other than being a rock 'n roll star who may perform at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado - nothing, really. However, Glad thinks there is more.
A conversation on translation featuring Edem Awumey, author of "Mina Among the Shadows", and the work's translators Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott.
Both poems by Alana Dunlop are propelled inwards by speakers that are not afraid to delve into the disturbing, uncanny, and sometimes gross parts of the world and the self. The poems unapologetically investigate both the body's vulnerability and its strength as a barrier between these external and internal ecosystems.
This travel photography series documents how Lucinda Everist, and us as viewers, occupy and observe foreign spaces. With a focus on bold structure and unfamiliar color palettes, we visit Mexico City along with the artist.
Light, and sometimes humorous, these poems invite us into small risks we sometimes take. In their individual worlds, everything becomes familiar, even the serial killers in the woods.
This mixed media project couples together Madison Phyper's poetry with Adrienne Gantenberg's visual art. Together, their work exposes quotidian dangers to a painfully surreal perspective.
What does it mean to be Canadian? What part does it play in our identity? These questions, alongside familial tension, guardianship, and division are brought to the forefront in Ben von Jagow’s poems.
A “sundog,” or parhelion, is defined as an “atmospheric optical phenomenon that consists of a bright spot to one or both sides of the sun”; or, as Aristotle and our narrator put it: “accidents of matter, a.k.a fuck-ups off-script.”
Here are the winners of Flash-Fried 2.0, yolk's short form poetry contest.
While weaving underground on the city’s great pulmonary track from one metro station to the next, Mathieu pauses at Papineau to capture both the stillness and the frenzied rush of being alone, together.
In part two of Labrosse's story, Oriana's two pursuits become one. Discover the space with her.
From Cartagena, Colombia, to Montreal, Canada, follow Oriana underground, as she discovers the architectural history of Montreal’s metro stations and embarks on a journey that takes her back to the 1976 Olympic games.
If the plate came back around anyway I might pinch my quarter back, or at least take some change for it, a dime and a nickel, say. That would still be a sin but less of one.
But they still had a few minutes. And so Millie mooed. Cate mooed with her. The cow stared at them.
The lights on the ceiling look like the blue cars and mimic our movements; snaking through tunnels, bending at curves, and eventually, bifurcating in opposite directions.
"Nothing really bad happened, no one got hurt, but that night I was eaten by a huge, red-eyed, big fanged, foamy-mouthed python."
Denbeigh Whitmarsh's work serves as a cultural milieu between the rural and the urban.
Yolk stands in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.
“She would fill herself up one night at a time on the Love Train towards Place-Saint-Henri metro station. She watched herself in the window for four stops and listened to the boots tread around her heart for another.”
“Come on,” Jim said, and he held out his hand in a high-five. “I know you love the handshake.”
A familiar setting turned unfamiliar by poet Drew Coble.
A conceptual poem documenting a trip through Montreal's underground.
When asked about his series, Fabrizio said, “Being a student at Dawson College made me take the metro everyday of the week. Traveling from Cartier to Atwater became a routine for me, so much so that I found the people looked more and more like strange shapes….I think the routine transformed them into shadows.”
We're happy to present the winners of Flash-Fried, our first short form poetry contest. Crafting a poem comprised of less than 140 characters is difficult, but the poets who submitted these selected works found the formula to achieve just that.
Perhaps every city has its peculiarities, but we have our metro lines, our buskers, our pedestrians, and all those familiar faces we pass by every day in transit, or purgatory, or simply in the morning, before we take this very same line back home. Perhaps, you wrote it down and submitted it to yolk.
'Keep a prayer on your lips and a good deed in your back pocket.' He pulls a smoke without a filter from a Ziploc and bites it like a toothpick. 'Funerals,' he announces. 'Get used to ’em.'
Behind the palazzos, he went on to explain, is an interconnected series of corridors that lead to various courtyards where the real pulse of the city lives, where you find the sordid pith of St. Petersburg.
Yolk told the Montreal literary community to show up, and show up it did.
As conceptual concrete poems, these pieces balance the weightlessness of information with the weight of the material from which that information has been gathered.
Yolk began as an electric conversation around a picnic table in Saint Henri Square.
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