EMBASSY CULTURAL HOUSE
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Bob Black

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Bob Black is an award-winning poet and photographer currently based in Toronto. Born in California, Bob lived part of his childhood in Taipei, Taiwan before returning to the U.S. He has published his poems, essays and short fiction in Canada, Australia, Russia, France, Japan and the U.S. He has exhibited his photographs in group and solo shows in Canada, Japan, Russia, Australia, France, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the US and has been included in a number of photography publications and books. Twice a finalist for the CBC National Poetry award, and recipient of writing awards in the USA and Europe.  His book of poetry 鬼故事: A Love Story, Vol. 1 will be published in late 2021.



“If you are not better tomorrow than you were today, what need have you for a tomorrow?”


一期一会,

​
alive

Poetry and Photography by Bob Black


​Amsterdam Song, New Year’s Day: 1994

​
"I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.
  I want to be entered and picked clean.” - Charles Wright

"Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul." - Marguerite Yourcenar


Life still occasions 
and beneath the sky, lives bike over the ice and the hills and the North Sea
bows and names it language, your bones’ ache and falling
this cold, winter day, as the new year clicks a door stop open.


How quietly we fall from the sky:
  how like a heard of trains,
  how like a broken face with a smile the belly of rain,
  how like the shadows eyes cast on the coats of long and unlimbered limbs,
  how like lovers who pen their flesh love letters with snow on their teeth,
  how like the tales you shared with the War widow on the train running from Wierum
       beach’s splayed hair,
  how like the dying, firecrackers of gun burst, toward the cold mouth of Amsterdam,
  how like the skin separated by fingers and excavated Victorian keys,
  how like the sleep of grass, a song muscular over water,
  how like the buildings swelled with guarded light and the patter of feet,
  how like the ghosts of grammar haunting the morning with drunken forgetfulness.


How quietly we fall from the sky:
  a white pebble on the bed of green leaves, left behind from a boot stumbling,
  a blue lock dancing between a black bike over tin water, the rusted hearts gazing at
       their mirrored shadow,
  a half-moon of red lights arched and bridged over dreaming canals.


How quietly we fall from the sky.


Pick these things apart and feed them to others,
Softly,
And without breath.

​
Life still occasions the miraculous, our lives picked clean,
The Chronology of our meaning, spun.
Let us do the arithmetic.

Let us, spin.
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EDITORIAL TEAM

ONLINE FOUNDER
Tariq Hassan Gordon

COFOUNDERS & CURATORIAL ADVISORS 
 
Jamelie Hassan 
& Ron Benner

ADVISORY CIRCLE
Samer Abdelnour, Marnie Fleming, Wyn Geleynse, Fern Helfand, S F Ho, Lorraine Klaasen, Judith Rodger, Ruth Skinner, Mary Lou Smoke, and Lucas Stenning 

COORDINATING EDITORS
Tariq Hassan Gordon & 
Olivia Mossuto

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Blessy Augustine, Anahí González, Jared Hendricks-Polack, Jessica Irene Joyce, Ira Kazi, 
Shelley Kopp, Jenna Rose Sands, Mireya Seymour, Venus Tsao, Diana Tamblyn, and Michelle Wilson. 

VIRTUAL TOUR
Andreas Buchwaldt

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OUR STORY
Artists Jamelie Hassan and Ron Benner and jazz musician Eric Stach founded the Embassy Cultural House (1983-1990) located in the restaurant portion of the Embassy Hotel at 732 Dundas Street in East London. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Embassy Cultural House was re-envisioned as a virtual artist-run space and website. 

The Embassy Cultural House gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the London Arts Council through the City of London's Community Arts Investment Program.
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The Embassy Cultural House is thankful for the mentorship program established by Western University's Visual Arts department and the continued support of the students and Faculty of Arts & Humanities.
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Our Partners

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E M B A S S Y  C U L T U R A L  H O U S E . C A

The Embassy Cultural House (ECH) is located on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Chonnonton peoples, at the forks of Deshkan Ziibi (Antler River), an area subject to the Dish with One Spoon Covenant Wampum and other treaties, colonized as London, Ontario. The ECH strives to create meaningful relationships between the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island and our contributors. The ECH honours the stewardship of the many Indigenous peoples who have resided on these lands since time immemorial.

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  • Home
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  • Community
    • Advisors & Editorial Team
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    • Governor General Laureates
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  • Exhibitions
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    • Past Programming >
      • Exhibitions 1983-1990 >
        • Index of Curators
        • Index of Photographers
        • Index of Visual Artists
      • Film 1983-1990
      • Music 1983-1990 >
        • Index of Musicians
      • Performances 1983-1990 >
        • Index of Performers
    • Embassy Hotel History
  • About