Montreal Serai

07/26/2025

Palestinian-Egyptian artist Nada El-Omari carries us deep into the sea currents, from Haiti to Palestine.

📸© Nada El-Omari

I tell you a little deaf girl said she can’t hear the bombs but what she imagines in her mind is usually reality. You tell us about a song you don’t sing anymore

07/22/2025

With “Degrees of Change,” Tahieròn:iohte Dan David concludes his four-part series for Montréal Serai as the first voice to carry the Rana Bose Memorial Grant and Writing Residency.

📸© Dan David

"You want to change the world? Then get them to sing your own song. But—first—you must find out what your song is. To do that, you must find out who you are, and be proud of that.” Harry Belafonte

07/18/2025

“Some lives are more important than others—
carved into the silence of lands unspoken,
a truth in the shadows, hiding in plain sight—
as if we could forget that dust settles differently
on each life, marking some with weight, others with wind.”

Dipti Gupta’s incisive poem is a stark reminder of the unequal value placed on lives in times of war.
Read it via the link in our bio.

📸© Severe Dust Storm in the Middle East - MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC, Public domain

... see which lives we lift and those we lay down in the silence ...

07/16/2025

Discover Vishesh Abeyratne’s three far-reaching poems—“Metaphor Shear,” “A Girl from Gaza” and “To Visitors”—that unsettle with their unflinching tone.

📸 © After the big destroy – Stathop, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Soon the veins and arteries of cities are clogged with caravans of the outraged.

07/12/2025

“Arnopoulos effortlessly transports the reader to far-flung locations and back to Canada in this engaging collection of tales,” writes Anna Fuerstenberg about Sheila Arnopoulos’ collection of short stories, “Out of Bounds.”

Discover her full review linked in our bio.

📸Out of Bounds by Sheila McLeod Arnopoulos (Austin Macauley, 2023)

Some were lied to about the truth of their ancestry, while others are drawn to cultures and lives very different from their own.

07/09/2025

“you ask the whooping crane
with its white plumage, crimson cap
to be forgiven”

Ilona Martonfi’s two latest poems seize our attention with hauntingly vivid imagery.

📸U.S. Department of Agriculture, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

... you ask the boreal forests named after Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind ...

07/03/2025

“Sarah was 17 when smuggled — this is indeed the ‘mot juste’— to Israel with a baccalaureate, full of heavenly dreams, after she and Mimoon, her classmate, had loved each other for three years.”

Read El Arbi Mrabet's new short story linked in our bio.

📸© Sadequi Benali

“The land belongs to the indigenous Palestinians — Muslims, Christians, Jews and others — whose forebears are the Canaanites. Did this Promised country fulfill its promises to you as it did to those of European origins?”

07/01/2025

“Cultural exchange often works in two directions,” writes Joseph Kary in his short but striking photo essay, captured on the vibrant streets of Toronto.

📸© Joseph Kary

Cultural exchange often works in two directions.

06/23/2025

Three probing new poems from Allie Duff, a writer, comedian and film worker from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.

I have to get up close and personal with the feijoa tree...

06/20/2025

Writer and filmmaker Nada El-Omari opens a dialogue of longing from Congo to Palestine in her poetic meditation, "from Uele to Hebron."

https://montrealserai.com/article/between-uele-and-hebron/

In Arabic, “wholeness” translates in a word that lifts when you say it rather than falling in your chest like in English.

06/10/2025

Sat. June 14 at 1:30 at Norman Bethune Square (métro Guy Concordia). Be the red line for Palestine.