True Crime: An Interview with George Elliott Clarke
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George Elliott Clarke, OC ONS* is one of Canada’s most important literary artists, distinguished in poetry, prose, and drama. An internationally known figure of letters, he has lectured, taught, and read across Canada, in the United States, and Europe. From 2012 to 2015, he was Poet Laureate of Toronto, and for 2016–17, he was the Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. He is also widely known for his writings about the history of the African Canadian communities of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, which he calls “Africadia”; he graced AAR ’s pages as guest editor of a critical and poetical special issue on the Africadian experience, or African Canadianité.
In our catching up, I learned of this latest episode of his career, and we corresponded for this interview via email this past November.
Just for the sake of background, we first met briefly in the mid-1990s, when you were part of an MLA panel of African Canadian writers; you were there with Cecil Foster, Afua Cooper, and a fourth, another woman writer, whom I regret I don’t now remember—could it have been Dionne Brand, perhaps? Your then-most recent collection of poetry, W hylah Falls, had just been released.
Nathan, your recollection is better than mine. I believe that you are thinking of an MLA panel that occurred in Toronto in December 1993. My second book of poetry—Whylah Falls (Polestar, 1990)— was still young (yet, I’m thankful that, a Jesus-age—thirty-three years—later, it remains in print), and I do remember sharing the recitation stage with Cecil Foster and Afua Cooper. I don’t recall Dionne’s presence. No matter: If she was absent, her corpus—her work—would still have resonated.
Anyway, years later you came to guest-edit an AAR special issue on African Canadianité in volume 51.3 (Fall 2018). That was our second intellectual venture beyond the United States, and you were also guest-editing from various points across Europe, I believe. That was a big issue for us, and also a lot of fun—but also a lot of work for you, so I hope it was also fun!—once again, many thanks.
I don’t say this to curry favor, but African American Review —along with Callaloo —was a dynamic factor in my (race) consciousness and on my moral conscience when I began to articulate the distinct existence of African Canadian literature within the larger frame of African diasporic literature while I was a junior professor at Duke from 1994 to 1999. I remain also very [End Page 157] grateful for a landmark review of Whylah Falls that appeared in AAR .1 It’s been a privilege to appear in its pages as poet and as scholar.
And so we meet again, but this time under less felicitous circumstances, unfortunately. Your very most recent work—or one of them, J’Accuse. . .! — was written out of a kind of necessity, and it also shouldn’t be lost that you were writing it during the pandemic. But can you talk about what compelled you to write it?
Yes, as you say, J’Accuse. . .! is a whole book “written out of a kind of necessity,” and so your question solicits a book-length answer! But here’s the shortest reply.
In autumn 2019, I was invited to give a lecture at the University of Regina (in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada), for January 23, 2020. I dreamt I’d thunder against a most grievous social injustice, namely, the murders and disappearances (likely also by murder) of Indigenous (Amerindian Canadian) women. I planned to explore writings by a quartet of Saskatchewan resident (or Native-born) poets, Indigenous and Settler (white), and male and female, for what their verses could tell us about racism and misogyny endured by Saskatchewan Indigenous women, but also for what the poetry could reveal about Saskatchewan Settler intelligentsia (artists, scholars, judges, etc.) attitudes regarding these women.
I felt moved to explore this topic because I am—like many African Canadians (and African Americans)—part Cherokee (a...
