isobelmtl

Writing under a Montreal sky

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about

Isobel Cunningham has published short fiction and poetry. Her book, Northern Compass is available on Amazon. She was born in Wales but Montreal is her adopted home. She speaks French, Modern Greek ( it’s a fun story) and a little Spanish…oh, English too, of course. She welcomes comments on her blog and looks forward to chatting with you over cyber-space.

Author: isobel cunningham

  • Thank you Mr. Van Horne

    In the train, the first train to run over the brand new tracks sat Sonya. The clank, the hiss, the slamming of doors as the huge weight of steel, wood, coal, luggage, passengers, moved slowly out of Windsor Station. The jolts, sudden lurches, settled into a steady rocking flow out over the St. Lawrence plain,…

  • End of a drought

    Nothing has escaped the pen, the keyboard, the soft yielding lead of the pencil for a long time. It has been about three months since I was able to write anything. No sitting at the table before a blank paper, no jotting things down, no type and backspace – just a horror of writing anything…

  • Dem Bones, dem bones…Osteopathy

      I’ve been wanting to write about my visits to the College of Osteopathy Studies here in Montreal for some time. Some family members urged me to go and have someone look at my knee about two years ago. To my surprise, some gentle manipulations made me feel a lot better. Since then I have…

  • Hope on the table

        Do you know what this? It’s hope in the form of a shell. Yeah, I’ve missed you too. It’s been a long time since I wrote anything here, since I wrote anything at all, in fact. Some stuff happened that I’m not ready to write about but out of a deep well I dragged…

  • Mummies come to Montreal

      Mummies come to Montreal What is the fascination with mummies? Ancient Egypt is right up there with dinosaurs in kids’ obsessions. The difference is that almost all adults retain that awe-struck wonder about this beautiful and mysterious civilization. Our imaginations have been captured by countless books and movies on the lives and death rituals…

  • Urban beekeeping

        I live in a pretty densely-populated area of Montreal. Three years ago I noticed many bees congregating in my garden around a dripping hose I had been meaning to fix. Groups of twenty or more were quite common. My small city garden is not very well manicured. I planted some wild rose bushes…

  • Modesty

    A friend and I were shaking our heads over the antics of “president” Trump the other day and he made an unusual request. He said, “write about modesty”. Right away I knew he didn’t mean anything to do with bikinis… or burkinis. The idea simmered in my mind for quite a while. After all, even…

  • Good Furniture

      I never thought about how sturdy furniture has to be until I started to demolish a couch. Why demolish it? It came into the house through the good work of two wonderful movers – a guy and a woman who worked wonders. I actually wrote a poem about the miracles these people performed. It’s…

  • At Last

    Today in my garden. HARD SPRING Spring in Montreal is a breech birth. We can feel it coming. We can feel the earth groaning, absorbing the ice and snow of months of frigid darkness. The sun, it’s warmth no longer faint, fickle, theoretical, coaxes, wheedles the first snowdrops, crocuses. These are never picked. Now come…

  • Homesick for my garden

         How strange to be homesick for a grey sky. I was under an unfailing blue sky for months this winter – never shovelled a flake of snow, didn’t have to battle ice like my dear friends and relatives here in Montreal. Yet, in April I got restless. I longed to hear the sound…