Maria

Maria, a 32-year-old mother of 5 young children, one still at her breast, died of the flu in the great pandemic in November, 1918.
She lived in rural Manitoba on a poor farm. This video takes a poetic look at her sudden death and the shock on her youngest son. It is a family tribute, with Maria’s grandson writing the script and performing it, with her great-grandsons composing the sound track and shooting the video.

Maria is written by award winning Canadian poet, essayist, and playwright, Patrick Friesen. Patrick has published numerous books of poetry and has written several stage and radio plays. Friesen has also collaborated with choreographers, dancers, musicians and composers. His book, Blasphemer’s Wheel, was awarded Manitoba Book of the Year Prize in 1996; A Broken Bowl, was a finalist for the 1997 Governor-General’s Award; and Patrick was awarded the ReLit Award for Poetry in 2012 for "jumping in the asylum".

The original score is by Niko Friesen, a musician, composer, and producer based in Vancouver, B.C. Over the past twenty-five years he’s worked as a session musician, toured internationally, and played on over a hundred records, working with artists like Carly Rae Jepsen, Kelly Rowland, Shawn Hook, Hannah Georgas, Marcy Playground, and Jane Siberry, to name a few. He’s also collaborated and co-written with many artists including Molly Guldemond, Dominique Fricot, Hannah Georgas, Rykka, and Adrienne Pierce. Niko has composed and produced music in collaboration with award-winning poet Patrick Friesen (Niko’s father), with the 2019 release Buson’s Bell, and the 2023 release O’Keeffe Bones. In 2021 Niko composed music for the award-winning short film The Blactor (written and directed by Rukiya Bernard), for which he received a 2022 Leo Award nomination for Best Musical Score in Short Film. In 2023, Niko was commissioned to compose a piece of music for internationally acclaimed choreographer & dancer Margie Gillis. Remembered Premonitions premiered August 9th, 2024 at the Windhover Center for Performing Arts in Massachusetts.

Maria:
remembering the desolate farm, and a creek running through, shimmering fishes where it pooled in a small clearing among the trees,

there, in the midst of maps, this unmapped farm haunted in the fall, haunted by a death, a woman coughing in a fever, a hairpin falling to the floor, her hair undone, and nothing the same again, so the story goes,

the story the old man told, over the years, in pieces, remembering his young mother drowning in her lungs, and calling, terrified, the room turning, and someone closing the blinds to keep something out, the rooster at dawn, this is what was remembered in all the agitation, it was november 1918, and him becoming an orphan,

and the orphan asking who am I when my mother is dead, and who is she? his shoes lost at the creek, pants torn at the knees and, as if a ghost crossed their yard, the dog barked all night, that too was remembered and could be told, two horses grazing in the field, harnesses hanging from a fence post, that too, though it had nothing to do with anything,

the orphan carrying what no one remembers.