SEARCH: Meaningful Moments Poetry Contest Winner

Poetry Contest Winner

Art and expression is important to SEARCH Magazine. Each issue, we include a poetry column, but once a year we open our doors to submissions from anyone willing to rise to the challenge. SEARCH Magazine is pleased to share the results of our third-annual poetry contest.

This year’s contest is built around the theme of “Meaningful Moments.” There’s a long list of rules, but in these poems we asked to be moved by the moments that punctuate our lives. We received singular events and montages of memories. In the end, our winner shared “The Dance of the Owls.”

We hope you find it as peaceful and magical as we did.

The Dance of the Owls
by Melissa Spear

In the stillness of morning, before the light has awakened,
I hear the dance of the great horned owls calling out to one another.
I sit quietly and count the calls and depths of the echoes carried on
the fog-laced air to see how many are near.
Occasionally, I will catch a fleeting glimpse of silent wings slicing
through the black sky, spreading over to the next mysterious spot.
What a beautiful dance to hear.

Read about Melissa Spear and her poem in SEARCH Magazine‘s #YesItsArt issue.

SEARCH: Lights, Camera…Sing (or Paint)

Lights, Camera…Sing (or Paint)

by Michele Roger

The great thing about social media is that we get to know famous people on a much more intimate level. Sadly, we as fans and public in general think that once we know an artist, we know them for their ONE talent when in fact, many of our favorite musicians and actors create in more than one medium. It’s interesting to see some of our favorite artists through a different lens.

While we all know Zoe Kravitz for her film work and the show, Big Little Lies. What you might not know is that Zoe is also a successful R&B singer. She is the lead singer in the musical trio, Lolawolf. The group has been together since 2014 and produced such songs as, “Not Diana,” “House Key,” and “What Love Is.” Much of their music is featured across streaming platforms.

Keanu Reeves might still be John Wick in our collective consciousness, but in real life, he’s also a bass guitarist in the band Dogstar….

Read more in SEARCH Magazine‘s #YesItsArt issue.

SEARCH: Realizing Your Artistic Ability

Realizing Your Artistic Ability

by Kim Richards

I believe humans are intrinsically artistic and creative by nature. Why, then do so many of us believe we have no artistic talent? It’s a matter of our perceptions of ourselves.

Take Will, who is an electrical engineer. He attended a weekend writers retreat with his wife. He commented several times about how he wasn’t a writer. Yet, by the end of the weekend, he composed five haikus. He just needed to be in a safe space to express himself. By safe, I mean being surrounded by people who might appreciate his efforts—and they did.

Then there’s Irene, who decided to attend a wine and painting event to spend time with her girlfriends. Once she got into the flow and allowed herself to experiment with the shapes and colors, to try out the instructor’s techniques, her mind opened up to the artistic talent within her. She deviated from…

Read more in SEARCH Magazine‘s #YesItsArt issue.

SEARCH: Pop Stars in Your Pocket

Pop Stars in Your Pocket

by Elliot Thorpe

The phonautograph, invented in France in 1857 by Éduoard-Léon Scott de Martinville, is the earliest known device for recording sound. He committed to smoke-blackened paper (called a phonautogram) the French folk song, “Au clair de la lune” but only in order to study acoustics.

There was at that time no physical way to listen to the recording itself. It didn’t occur to anyone in the 1800s that there would be enough information in the phonautogram to be able to reproduce the sound.

Wax or soft metal cylinders followed, with a stylus scratching an analogue of the sound waves into the wax/metal. This technique heralded the disc—thanks to the German-American inventor Emile Berliner—and music quickly became commercially available as early as the 1880s. Vinyl replaced the highly fragile shellac 78s. Early 10” discs were known due to the standardized rpm speed and the new discs became “long-playing” 12” records that could contain a whole set of recordings at 33rpm on both sides, while 7”singles usually contained one song per side (hence the moniker “single”) and played at 45rpm.

The single was in many ways the next major music revolution and…

See the rest of Elliot’s article in our #YesItsArt issue.

SEARCH: Author Spotlight on Timothy Reynolds

Name: Timothy Reynolds
Location: Calgary, Alberta

Tell us a little about yourself: A bus driver by day and a novelist by night (really, really late into the night), my world revolves around my elderly dog and two cats. Once a month or so, when the weather is good, the dog and I hop in the car and do a road trip out to dinosaur country, up to the mountains, or even down to Montana, just to get out of the house for the day and blast a little fresh air into our lungs.

What do you like to write about?
The articles I write for SEARCH tend to be based on my life experiences, including my times as a magician, a paparazzo, and a room service waiter in a haunted hotel. Quite often with my novels, too, I blend in true events and people. My latest, She Runs with Wolves, He Sits with Kittens is an urban Rom-Com inspired by many of the romantic follies I’ve experienced in over forty-five years of dating.

Learn more about Tim Reynolds in our #YesItsArt issue.

SEARCH: Is It Still Art with Two Left Feet?

Is It Still Art with Two Left Feet?

by Tim Reynolds

The Art of Dance… Was it still art when I was eleven and dancing in a square in a barn in rural Nova Scotia and fell in love with the cute twelve-year-old girl who dragged me onto the dance floor? Was it still art if I forgot to ask her name while I was swooning?

Was dance still art when I did it for nine hours for a United Way dance-a-thon the day after I ate thirty raw eggs to raise money?

Was it still art if the dancing was The Robot done to David Bowie or The Beatles instead of The Village People? Was it still art when a talent scout spotted my partner Dee and me and had us do The Robot on a television variety show because we were the only act of our kind in the entire city of Toronto?

Was dance still art when I spent three summers hanging out at Silver City Night Club in Banff and looked like I was having a seizure on the dance floor…

Read the rest of Is It Still Art with Two Left Feet? from Tim Reynolds in SEARCH Magazine‘s #YesItsArt issue.

SEARCH: Luxury Looks with Thrift Florals

Luxury Looks with Thrift Florals

by Kristin Battestella

Unlike grandma’s dusty, plastic, tacky florals; I’ve been populating my home with sophisticated looks for less with thrifted foliage, vases, and upcycled holiday topiaries. Don’t spend on expensive swags or centerpieces when a little hunting and ingenuity can yield affordable florals reborn as luxury accents.

Real plants demand care and can be messy with kids and pets, but revitalizing a second hand item feels good, becoming a conversation piece when a houseguest asks where I got my doctored wreath or candlescape. Recently, I’ve begun disguising the insightly utilities in my basement studio with faux greenery, lucking out at my local Goodwill in finding vines, lighted floral strands, and more for five to ten dollars.

Of course, stretching our decorating dollar is often overwhelming and put on the back burner as doubt interferes with creativity. What if my redo is cheap and terrible? Rather than…

Read the rest of Luxury Looks with Thrift Florals from Kristin Battestella in SEARCH Magazine‘s #YesItsArt issue.

SEARCH: Diversity in Speculative Poetry

Diversity in Speculative Poetry… is on the Rise

by Sumiko Saulson

Most of us have had some experience with speculative fiction poetry. Considered the father of the horror poetry genre, Edgar Allan Poe uses metaphor to compare a human body to a crumbling castle in “The Haunted Palace.” “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” and “Ligeia,” are all thought to have been inspired by the death of his wife, Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe, who died from tuberculosis.

Like Poe, I draw inspiration from personal life tragedies and current events. My release, The Rat King: A Book of Dark Poetry was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, the most prestigious award in horror, as well as the Elgin Award for speculative poetry.

One challenge I have faced as a poet is…

Read more of this article and the rest of the magazine in our #YesItsArt issue.

SEARCH: Table of Contents for #YesItsArt

Read our #YesItsArt issue!

Table of Contents

• #YesItsArt – Diversity in Speculative Poetry
• DIY – Luxury Looks with Thrift Florals
• Humor – Is It Still Art with Two Left Feet?
• Author Spotlight – Tim Reynolds
• Music – Pop Stars in Your Pocket
• #YesItsArt – Realizing Your Artistic Ability
• #YesItsArt- Lights, Camera…Sing! (or Paint)
• Poetry Contest Winner – “The Dance of the Owls”
• Food- Pan-Roasted Vegetables with Sausage
• Fitness- You Should Be Dancing
• City Spotlight- Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
• Autism – A Feast of the Senses
• #YesItsArt – Poetry

Read it all in our #YesItsArt issue!

SEARCH: #YesItsArt Editor’s Letter

SEARCH Magazine #YesItsArt

Editor’s Letter

We’ve all had a moment where art struck a chord. I loved watching shows with my kids just to see them gasp the very first time they saw a well-known trope happen. For them, it was a revelation that the prince and pauper could exchange places, or the princess knew the way home all along. Art strikes us differently, based on our lived experiences and we’re allowed to have favorites both high and low. My love of Marvel films and black-and-white noir don’t come into conflict.

We don’t always recognize art. I have a friend who stacks beautiful produce in the grocery department, and it is pleasing to look at. Her small act, among the mundanity of shopping, is a hidden gem. Our world is a better place when people impose themselves upon the storm of chaos that is life in order to make sense of it in a way we didn’t. Our comprehension grows from their interpretation.

I love art, in both simplicity and complexity. In nature and in artifice. Creativity comes from a natural place and is also a ton of work. So, where in your life are you finding out that #YesItsArt?

Heather Roulo / Editorial Director

Read the issue #YesItsArt.