Mary Meigs (1917–2002) was a writer and artist, author of Lily Briscoe: A Self-Portrait, The Medusa Hotel, The Box Closet, In the Company of Strangers, and The Time Being, all published by Talon, as well as many articles and essays.
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Mary Meigs
To My Death
I can measure you more or less In years, you in the shadows Of myself, and don’t I sometimes feel your Fingers round my throat? more
Freewriting
Mary Meigs and her friend Lise Weil, editor of Beyond Recall, met regularly to do freewriting together. For each exercise they chose a line or phrase from the work of a poet they both admired; then, inspired by that "prompt," both women wrote for five or ten minutes, recording whatever came to mind (and hand). more
Keystroke
Mary Meigs wrote this piece in spring 2001 while she was recovering from a stroke, and which is reproduced here exactly as she typed it, more
Beyond Recall
My greatest difficulty at eighty-five is to think coherent thoughts. I want to think about old age and instead my blurry eyes are drawn away from this paper by the movement of spring leaves, yellow-green, outside the window. more
The Cage of Time
Childhood photographs are merciless, and state the passing of time with inarguable clarity. We dig them out of our archives, learn how we were as children, as young women, and too often we do not recognize each other. more
Tripwire
They felt comfortable in their resemblances, too comfortable to note that the resemblances contained differences like tripwires cunningly laid and hidden. more
The Meeting
In the pre-time being, in the rehearsal period for the real, Marj wrote to Kate, "I’ve been doing exercises between visible and invisible, between imagining touch and really touching." At the moment of meeting they are not surprised by the alchemy th more
The Time Being
The real story is truer than fiction, Marj once thought. But where is the truth in an imaginary love story that grows from a correspondence between two old women, separated by the distance between New South Wales and Quebec? more
Off- and On-Camera
Out on the set, except for the fact that there is always someone to catch us if we stumble, or someone to set up folding chairs for us between scenes, we are beneficiaries of the semi that denies the passing of clock-time. There is nothing to remind more
Being in the Company of Strangers
Our film is a semi-documentary. We are ourselves, up to a point; beyond this point is the "semi," a region with boundaries that become more or less imprecise, according to our view of them. In one sense, it is semi from beginning to end, for we would more
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ADVICE FOR THE LIT-LORN
Do you have a simple trick for writers to remember
the rules on writing lie, lay, laid, and/or lain?
—Cuckoo, Cornwall ON
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