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Loss is the absence of something that used to be; it can be sudden or gradual, but it is an inevitable facet of life. Loss can be an overwhelming fear for many people, but it can also be an opportunity to start anew. We can adapt to newfound absence to the point where our pain is eased—even appreciated. This becomes the foundation we must use to continue creating. What unites our contributors is that they have all arrived at a moment where they can observe this loss, in its various forms, from a distance and create meaning from it.
Our three poems illustrate how coping with loss can come with its own struggles—whether it is mourning your past self, recognizing your love for someone through their absence, or facing discrimination in a new country. Our art piece demonstrates how creation comes from building and rebuilding and finding joy in the small things. Our submissions reveal that we must reckon with loss in order to appreciate life.
The team at Inventio would like to thank our wonderful contributors—Lauren Russell, Malak Elghobashy, and Rosemary Jaramillio—for sharing their talent with us. We hope you enjoy this issue.
—Written by Ayyub Hussain
Edited by Dunja Dudarin, EiC, and Jessica Lappin, AEiC
“Ignorance” explores the experience and sacrifices of a child in a first-generation immigrant household in Canada. Through their discovery of basketball, the speaker examines how dreams are crushed and born as they face discrimination in a new country.
In “long distance,” the writer reflects on the feeling of unrequited love and the emotional distance they feel towards someone that amplifies their yearning for the connection they crave.
“field of regret” expresses the speaker’s dismay over losing their youthful glow as they grow into a sorrowful adulthood.
“I was inspired to create this album cover for the song ‘Favourite Things’ in p5.js after hearing Pentatonix’s version of it. The most memorable lyrics of the song, ‘raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,’ became my foundation and reference for my artwork…”
Writing is a road to discovery. We make and find meaning through writing, language, and symbols, and we use these to communicate what we’ve discovered: knowledge, worlds, people, ourselves. We write through various modes of expression in the hopes of leaving an imprint on the world for others to discover.
Inventio is a student-run online literary magazine that publishes these discoveries. Since its beginning in 2017, through York University’s Professional Writing Students’ Association, Inventio has been a platform for the unique talents of post-secondary students. Whether they are thoughtful compositions of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or art, we share what you create.
We encourage creative expression in all forms, including experimental works that utilize, blend, and defy genre conventions. Much like its Latin root, Inventio serves as a canon for student invention that launches us into finding and establishing our own voices with the support of our writerly community.
We publish twice each academic year: April and December.
We would like to begin by acknowledging the Indigenous Peoples of all the lands that we are on today. While we meet today on a virtual platform, we would like to take a moment to acknowledge the importance of the lands, on which we each call home. We do this to reaffirm our commitment and responsibility in improving relationships between nations and to improve our own understanding of local Indigenous peoples and their cultures.
York University’s land acknowledgement may not represent the territory that you are currently on, and we would ask that if this is the case, you take responsibility to acknowledge the traditional territory that you are on and its current treaty holders.
York University acknowledges its presence on the traditional territory of many Indigenous Nations. The area known as Tkaronto has been care taken by the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Huron-Wendat. It is now home to many First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities.
We acknowledge the current treaty holders, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This territory is subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement to peaceably share and care for the Great Lakes region.
From coast to coast to coast, we acknowledge the ancestral and unceded territory of all the Inuit, Métis, and First Nations people that call this land home. Please join us in a moment of reflection to acknowledge the effect of residential schools and colonialism on Indigenous families and communities and to consider how it is our collective responsibility to recognize colonial and arrivant histories and present-day implications in order to honour, protect, and sustain this land.
In recognizing that these spaces occupy colonized First Nations territories and out of respect for the rights of the Indigenous people, please look for, in your own way, to engage in a spirit of reconciliation and collaboration.