Students, staff, and community members alike celebrated the launch of the newest Society, the literary magazine published by St. Peter’s College with a gathering on April 3.
This year’s edition features 44 authors and seven artists displaying their work from poetry to short stories and paintings to photographs.
Faculty Advisor of the publication, Barb Langhorst, says it felt wonderful to celebrate the 15th edition with such a variety of work and a diverse range of contributors.
St. Peter’s students, members of the writing community, and Saskatchewan based writers have all made contributions to the magazine, which included the fantastical to heartfelt portrays of reality.
Cooper Neufeld wrote the former with his piece, The Little Brown Mushroom, through Professor Allan Safarik’s English class.
One of the assignments involved writing a fable which inspired him to write about a little brown mushroom in a forest full of beautiful, brightly coloured mushrooms.
After being bullied by the other mushrooms he was still picked for the potion by the witch, writes Neufeld.
“They beat down the little brown mushroom saying you’re worthless, nobody wants you, nobody needs you. In the end it turns out that the one that’s been useless and not needed is the most important the entire time.”
Neufeld decided to contribute his story to The Society his, “fun, little story,” as a change of pace from other more serious submissions.
Tanner Reiss took a serious subject, being diagnosed with ADHD, and turned it into poetry for his class with Safarik.
This was the first time for Reiss to speak so openly about his time with ADHD.
“It’s time. It was something I’ve always wanted to write about but I’ve never really felt confident enough. It’s time to write about this.”
Writing about ADHD has meant showing people what it really is about because it is not how people think, says Reiss.
“To capture my interest and focus my attention,” he writes, “This is a battle I rage every second day and night.
Invisible to you, who think my inattentiveness is cause by carelessness.”
Reiss says that he had much more to say about his ADHD but the copy in The Society is a cut back version.
Besides authors reading their work, the celebration also showed the range of community support with many new members of the arts and literature community coming to support the publication.
The celebration also featured a new creation of the college, a Haiku Hijack.
MC and launch organizer, Maury Wrubleski, said everyone in the room is now a writer for taking part with Langhorst saying there is no escape for them now.
“Some people had never written poetry before but now we’ve indoctrinated them and they’re part of the crew.”
The contest started with each person writing a Haiku, a poem with a 5 syllable, 7 syllable, 5 syllable structure, and then being paired off to collaborate with another person.
The pairs then paired off with another pair to write another poem with the top two poems to be published in the 2019 Society.
It was an exciting evening, says Langhorst with everyone willing to participate in the fun and stretch their writing muscles, even students from other disciplines.
“That’s what writing is all about is being able to process what is around you,” says Langhorst. Working with other people gave them a new experience, she says.
The call out for next year’s publication will be sent out in December through the Saskatchewan Writer’s Guild and on the St. Peter’s College website.
