Poetry in the Move: Atelier 8.18: Place, Memory and Distance
CANDY RAIN (excerpt)
Sophea Heang
clouds taste
sweet rain
that drench
the green grass
and the black roof
of the house that never
moved on top of the hill
she walks slowly today
the girl hears a woman singing
the woman’s voice is soft lingers
in the wet pink petals
Inspired by visual artist’s Simon Fleming’s paintings from his “Every House Has a Thousand Stories” collection.
Painting: Chau Sambo Meas ©
ANGKor:THE LOST EMPIrE OF CAMBODIA ROYAL BC MUSEUM
Angkor Harvest was a proud sponsor of the museum’s opening gala. Sophea wrote and recited, ANGKOR, at the gala.
ANGKOR (excerpt)
Sophea Heang
From: Remember Me in Stillness
our mornings begin
in the soil while
the sun is still
floating beneath
wet lotus
petals
our restless hands
leap past sleepy
eyes dig
the dirt a red
current naiant
in flesh
Painting: Chau Sambo Meas ©
GOLD SADNEss ZACH GALLERY:PARALLEL VISIONS
Inspired by Alejandra Morales Garza painting (shown here): Nothing Mattered Than Anything Else ©
GOLD SADNESS (exceprt)
in the middle of the
mountain’s eyes is
where this golden chamber
lies sending its hot flames
into the moist river
our sadness glows
like those
fairy lights
setting up the stage
made just for
me!
This golden sadness
turns to his face
to try and trace
where the beginning
and end meet.
invoking memory
Sophea co-produced her first BC Culture Day’s Event at the Richmond Cultural Centre, September 2023,
Invoking Memory that Never Sheds its Potency.
Roots of Compassion
The observer dances around the sun
touched by rain, wind and snow
it knows breaking open will burn
(still), the awareness goes after itself,
it's water that moves
in and out of roots:
You know it's there.
You just can't see it...
GREEN PAPER VEINS Abstracted Identity at the Zach Gallery. Untitled. 3
GREEN PAPER VEINS
Themes arrive from the sky.
Themes emerge from the ground.
The tapestry becomes undone like
the buttons on my Khmer white lace blouse
wrapping itself around the pages…
wet as rain falls from the black sky…
What if each raindrop on the green
leaf was a life that I didn’t live…
What if I was living inside every
single raindrop on this leaf?
Brian Gleckman's painting, Wandering ©
WaLKING INTO KHAO-I-DANG hearts of freedom exhibit
Some stories are written inside the
body and carried over when
the night goes quiet under the
moon
soon light will peek through those
curtains
you and I
we’ve travelled with this
light and the glowing sun
countless times
each vertebrae stack on top of these
ancient book spines that have
breathed into the veins
bones and flesh of what
remains,
the wind blows
the first two pages
that land
on my
hand
Chau S. Meas ©
we are all storytellers:river beneath a river
Sophea co-produced a second annual BC Culture Day’s event, We Are All Storytellers: River Beneath a River
The Universe is made of stories, not atoms". Muriel Rukeyser.
Up high (excerpt)
warm waves
wash over my name;
now one with the
grains of sand.
I am still
what you call me
yet no letter
can ever
follow where
I am from
Painting: Chau Sambo Meas ©
the mountain that sees from the inside Roots of Compassion: Cambodian cultural centre inaugral event
We knew that Khao-I-Dang wasn’t our permanent home
We knew that our feet wanted to be free to roam
We forgot the face of the person holding the camera
But we will always remember the faces of our mothers
And fathers and their smiles that kept us close to our homeland
Khao-I-Dang the refugee camp is gone now
But where Mount-I-Dang still stands
it is green, it is lush
she’ll always be behind us
Chau S. Meas