Jewish Canadians for Decency and Righteousness

I get behind here because there’s so much to write about and many issues that deserve comment require a moral and spiritual stamina, and also a forbearance of the trivial, that I can’t always summon. So, for example, Prime Minister Harper, through his Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, erodes pay equity for women (in this case, women in the federal public service in Canada) by saying it’s a matter to be referred to the unions. Who would have thought in this day and age any government could get away with that? As for the trivial – for I cannot forbear – the media twist themselves into pretzels about Michelle Obama touching the Queen and concoct a fashion ‘war’ between herself and Carla Bruni. Good grief! Give the terrified jobless a break!

Something happened in March that, never mind it’s late, needs to be noticed. Over 160 Jewish Canadians, including persons such as Ursula Franklin O.C., Anton Kuerti O.C., and Naomi Klein, made public a signed statement voicing their concern about the campaign to suppress criticism of Israel currently being carried on in Canada. They are, they say, “concerned about all expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, and social injustice.” But they see the “Never again” for the Holocaust, as applying to all peoples. Thus, “It is a tragic turn of history that the State of Israel, with its ideals of democracy and its dream of being a safe haven for Jewish people, causes immeasurable suffering and injustice to the Palestinian people.”

It’s an extraordinary document, the full text of which is available at several internet sites, including: http://www.straight.com/article-206239/jewish-canadians-concerned-about-suppression-criticism-israel:

The statement concludes:

'It is crucial that forums for discussion of Israel's accountability to the international community for what many have called war crimes be allowed to proceed unrestricted by specious claims of anti-Semitism.'

'We recognize that anti-Semitism is a reality in Canada as elsewhere, and we are fully committed to resisting any act of hatred against Jews. At the same time, we condemn false charges of anti-Semitism against student organizations, unions, and other groups and people exercising their democratic right to freedom of speech and association regarding legitimate criticism of the State of Israel.'

The courage of these persons must be applauded. There are, no doubt, many other Jewish Canadians, and Israelis, who feel this way, and who will be reassured to know that these persons saw fit to make public their distress over behaviour on the part of the state of Israel towards its Palestinian neighbours.

Seems the mainstream media in Canada weren’t helpful in making the statement public.

As Massa God would have it, for as we keep saying here, him don’t sleep, at much the same time, news media were reporting that Israeli troops admitted that they had killed innocent Palestinian civilians in the Gaza war. The reports are hair-raising. Here is one soldier’s account: ‘When we entered a house, we were supposed to bust down the door and start shooting inside and just go up storey by storey – I call that murder. If we identify a person, we shoot them. How is this reasonable?’

He also told of an old woman who was crossing a road when she was shot by soldiers.

‘I don’t know whether she was suspicious or not. I do know that my officer sent people to the roof to take her out. It was cold-blooded murder.’

The accounts come from Israeli soldiers at a recruits’ training course at the Rabin Academy. Danny Mazir, head of the Academy, said: ‘We expected to hold a discussion about the war. We did not expect the testimonies we heard. We were in total shock.’

Palestinians say over half of the more than 1,300 Gazans who were killed were civilians. Israel disputes the figure.

Among other things, it is evil to require men and women to slaughter their fellow human beings in a way that they themselves can recognize as evil. No civilized state abuses its citizens in this way. As for the slaughtered Palestinians, the crying out of the blood of innocents is a continuing theme in the Holy Books. Those who murder unarmed women and children flaunt not only the conventions of men, but, far more seriously, the laws of God.

The converse applies equally to the Palestinians, but it would seem, in the immediate circumstances, that they are more sinned against than sinning.

Idolatry is a convoluted sin, and all manner of worldly things may become idols, including putting the worship of the state before the worship of God. Whatever else there may be dispute about, the first commandment on the tablets Moses brought down from Sinai, as recorded in Exodus and Deuteronomy (in Hebrew, the Devarim), is indisputable: “You shall have no other gods before me.” It would be imprudent of those who lead the state of Israel to set themselves against the God who called the Jewish people His. Indeed, that is to put it very mildly.

Is this a religious blog?

A friend asked me a while back if this was a religious blog. No, I told her, it wasn't. Not that I don't talk from time to time about things that people refer to as "religious," but religion (I'm a practising Roman Catholic, and already I'm feeling the need to explain what I mean by that) is no longer a very nice word, bringing to mind, inter alia, physical and sexual abuse of children, forcing of young women into polygamous relationships, frittering away of tithes on la dolce vita lifestyles, support of unjust wars, vilification and violence towards those with opposing views, etc. And that’s just the religious folks of my faith! There are warriors, oppressors of women and children, dealers out of arbitrary and extreme punishment in other religious traditions as well.

So religion is an increasingly fraught word, having less and less to do with reverence for and love of God, however one conceives of that Great Spirit.

Another thing about this ‘religion’ word is that it can be reductive, shrinking a way of life into mere ritual and observance. I’m all for rituals: morning cup of coffee as you read the paper, bedtime stories with your children, Friday evening movie with your friends, once-a week dinner with the extended family. Rituals are the stuff of our lives, investing them with rhythm, marking them by repeated affirmation of what is good, comforting, worthy of being cherished. So it’s fine if religious people worship once, or twice or three times, a week, offer daily prayers, perform regular acts of charity like feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, visiting the sick and imprisoned. I just find myself nowadays preferring to think of these things as decent, good, spiritual, rather than religious. Maybe it’s a phase, but it’s certainly where I am at, these days.

I want my spiritual life to be ongoing, unremitting, and pervasive – to be my whole life, not a small, separate piece of it. That’s my ideal, what I’m working towards. I want God to be part of all my business, a God I recognize as Jah, Elohim, Allah, the Almighty, the Great Spirit and Olodumare, if it comes to that. I hope the discernment of the Spirit informs what I write here, whether it’s a poem or a rant against whatever social, educational, ecological, or political issue is currently exercising me. Hope, I said, hope. I’m not a mystic, nor a great poet, not yet (right Geoff? Donna?), and this is a matter of striving, an essential part of which is conversation with the online community whose responses, corrections and information all contribute to the process of enlightenment.

At midday mass today, the priest spoke of the 'economics' of Jesus, He who ran the merchants out of the temple, accusing them of turning his Father’s house into a den of thieves. Economics, the priest explained, is a word whose roots refer to home management. (I looked it up: oikos "house" + nomos "managing.") Jesus’ economics conceived of all of us as part of his Father’s household. Judas put himself out of the household by becoming a thief, not only when he dipped into the community’s purse, but also by treating Jesus, a person in the household, as if He were mere chattel, when he sold Him to the chief priests for thirty pieces of silver. It was a fresh take on the old story, and relevant, and I thank the preacher (a new one, whose name I don't know) for it.

The wily young clergyman never made it explicit (I’ve always appreciated Jesus’ embracing serpentine wisdom) but I’m sure he was talking about sub-prime mortgages and CEOs who pocket millions, never mind that they have destroyed the lives of countless human beings, treating them not as people but as things, much as Judas did Jesus, and ruining the world’s economy into the bargain. Small wonder some people expect Jesus to land anytime now, bent on hustling the moneychangers and hawkers out of a temple that they have made a den of thieves with their carbon emissions, depleted ozone layer and acres of oceanic plastic soup!

So back to whether this is a religious blog or not. If religious means concerned with God and matters of the spirit, and the great commandments Love-God! and Love-your-neighbour-as-you-love-yourself! the answer is, I hope, yes. But if it's all that other stuff tied up in rules and regulations, license for the law-giving shepherds and blind obedience for the flock, well, no, I really don't think so.

Selah!

"Will's Flowers" – another poem for spring

Will’s Flowers
For David

I never yearned for snow
though brand new clothes from fat
Sears-Roebuck catalogues
committed to the U. S. post
by Uncle Lannie’s faithful hand
in Cincinnati’s never never land –
those made me glad enough.
He stayed away for years
writing Aunt V long letters
casting box after box onto
the dead slow sea-mail waters
hoarding expiring pennies
for a car a house storing
for ever after the best time
of his life. Adult and old
I never thought, “Is how
him manage foreign? Not
a wife. No family, no kin.”
And so of course I follow him…

Now when spring reach T.O.
and the wild blonde from up
the street that tend to endless
cats and her small garden
with fierce care come forth
with spade in hand to set
again this year pot upon
pot of yellow daffodils
I think how we ex-slaves
enfranchised manumitted
free of snow white queens
Britannic motherland
I think we still don’t
understand the bard’s
peregrinations and sake
of that we dis poor Will
mightily do him wrong.

Niggers still coming North
lured by the siren song
of work and decent pay
the chance to quarry out
a little life. Meanwhile
as dog nyam dog cold
carving up your carcass
vampire cops hunt you
for your dark blood this skip
of light this skemps of flower
that God promote from grass
rooted in blackness bent
on breaching ice just
pushing pushing up to
celebrate sun summer
unrepentant livity…

To rass! What a misguided fuss.
The blasted daffodils is just like us.

from Certifiable (Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions) 2001.

Cancerning John Ibbitson's front page commentary, “Obama Turns Left,” in the Globe and Mail

This is a re-posting of something I originally hung up yesterday, in which I suggested that there might have been racism at play in the matter under discussion. I have not repeated those comments because that’s not the issue of immediate concern. Besides, we can return to that aspect of things, and perhaps will, another time. My observations otherwise remain much the same. What I have added is more of what John Ibbitson said, and a link to the front page feature in the Globe and Mail. What have been lost are some asides, comments on the original post, and my responses. My apologies, FSJL.

I’ve blogged before about people who claim expertise but who really aren’t expert because they lack the attention to detail, the commitment to finding out what’s true, the bothering to check and double-check that identifies persons who care about their work, care about not misinforming those who repose confidence in what they say. Being expert isn’t easy and I’m glad that I make small claim in that direction. But if you say you are, then deliver the goods! If not, the price for those who believe you may end up being very high!

One presumes a considerable degree of expertise on the part of someone writing on politics for a major newspaper. I’m referring to John Ibbitson’s front-page piece, “Obama Turns Left” in the Globe and Mail of April 4. Before I make any comments, though, I have a story. It happened a while back, pre-election and just pre-Global Devastation, if I recall rightly. I’m watching a discussion on the Wall Street Journal’s website. I’m pretty sure that’s the source, but it doesn’t matter much if it isn’t. Can’t remember their names, but two men are discussing Barack Obama’s economic policies and one is describing European economies. He says they grow at about three percent annually, people are accustomed to taking four weeks or so of vacation time, workers are pretty laid back. These economies, the way of life, might be characterized by the word ‘equality'. While he’s talking, I’m thinking, “Good. Someone who sees the virtue of an economic engine with the goal of enabling producers to stop and sniff the flowers, enjoy their families, read, travel, have time to share stories with their children.”

Imagine my surprise when I discover this is not what’s being approved of at all. The European ‘equality’ approach is not such a good thing, it turns out, because it’s not the kind that allows for risk-taking, for the enterprise that has always been the engine of American industry and commerce, and underwrites the American way of life. It seems the American economy can be described by the word ‘liberty,’ its virtue being that people can take risks and become wildly successful entrepreneurs and concomitantly, production can grow, not by modest three percents but by leaps and bounds.

I’m relying on memory here but I’m pretty sure I’m reporting the essence of what was said. Certainly I was knocked over by the discussants not even admitting that the European approach had, as seemed obvious from their own descriptions, much to recommend it. Naaaah! I gathered that I was supposed to think that these economies might be ‘equal’ but were somehow less ‘free,’ and to be watchful lest Barack’s policies lead Americans down the backward paths to socialist unfreedom.

So now to John Ibbitson’s comments on Obama’s turning left. I quote Mr Ibbitson’s first two paragraphs:

“In the space of a few months, the United States of America has been transformed from the most entrepreneurial society on Earth to one so state-directed that even the Europeans are raising their eyebrows.

The government has become deeply enmeshed in the banking and insurance sectors, a chunk of which it now owns. It holds or guarantees $5-trillion worth of mortgages. It is directing the future of the automotive industry.”

Mr Ibbitson then refers to the [American] conservatives’ accusation that President Obama is a socialist and, in doing so, employs a courtroom device that we are all familiar with from crime shows on the TV. He proceeds to quote one conservative, thus…

' “The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics may be dead," Mike Huckabee, former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said recently, "but the Union of American Socialist Republics is being born." '

Ibbitson follows with the comment, “It's a wild claim.” But as in the case of the lawyer who asks and then withdraws a question when the judge rules it objectionable, the damage has been done. Obama’s policies have been tainted by the Russian connection (made by Huckabee, true, but effective nonetheless), and people have been frightened by the comparison between the USA and the USSR – an unthinkable one, prior to this!

There’s no space here to properly analyze the article and the accompanying graphics, and, thanks to the Internet, readers may see for themselves – sort of. The graphics were pretty grand! Suffice it to say that, were I still teaching English, this would be an excellent piece to take into the classroom for students learning about bias and subtle manipulation in journalism.

So those reading this post can see the feature themselves, here is the url: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090403.wobama03/BNStory/International/home

One buys the Globe and Mail because of some good news reporting and some good columnists, and because one can almost invariably count on fine letters to the editor. The readers were quick to pounce. Ian and Angela Trowell asked, “What on earth were you thinking when you blazed across your front page a red striped text and a blue cluster of hammer and sickles? To inflame Americans, who are inherently fearful of socialism in any form, is utterly irresponsible.” Janis Svipilis rebuked: “The parody of the U.S. flag may have seemed clever, but it's a deadly insult to the democracy south of us… As the son of refugees from Stalinism, I find your front page offensive and, worse, morally incoherent.” There were no letters published that supported Ibitson's analysis.

I suppose one can argue that policy can be interpreted at will, and so John Ibbitson is within his right – ha-ha – to paint Obama pink. Ha-ha some more – a doubly ironic guffaw this time. It would be an occasion for loud cackling except that this (Canada) is a nation presently being governed by ill-advised conservatives, voted in by a too-small percentage of the enfranchised. Many Canadians don’t vote. One must conclude that they don’t grasp what will happen if they fail to exercise the franchise. In such a context, the importance of responsible journalism cannot be overemphasized.

There’s no doubt that Ibbitson got one thing very wrong. Early on he remarks: “Mr. Obama is the most activist president since Lyndon Johnson. Mr. Johnson's presidency failed.” Reader Kurt D Lynn to the rescue, this time, to point out that Lyndon Johnson’s presidency cannot be deemed ‘failed’ by any stretch of the imagination. “Mr. Johnson's legacy includes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Higher Education Act of 1965, Medicare (health care for the elderly) and Medicaid (health care for the poor). Moreover, with his focus on cleaning up America, it's not a stretch to say his presidency marked the start of true environmental concern.” Lynn allows that Johnson “expanded the war in Vietnam and that his public persona… left a lot to be desired,” but he concludes that Johnson’s “footprint changed the course of America's social consciousness.” All true. There’s evidence too that, but for some conniving on the part of Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War would have concluded on Johnson’s watch. Instead, Nixon’s intermediaries persuaded the South Vietnamese government to wreck all-party peace initiatives and kept the war alive so that it might be an election issue.

So, for those who know the runnings, i.e., how it really go, Ibbitson's comparing Obama to Johnson turns out to be flattering. If Obama lives up to anything like Johnson's legacy, he'd have done a great deal. Finally, one wonders how much John Ibbitson knows about Obama's chief economic adviser, Lawrence Summers. I do believe a recent Globe and Mail carried an article from the New York Times that should lay his fears to rest.

John Ibbitson and the Globe and Mail need to do much better next time.

"To No Music"

So it snowed, as it always does, in April, which is supposed to be spring. Here is my poem on the matter... Called "To No Music," it is taken from by third collection of poetry, Certifiable, which was published by Goose Lane Editions in 2001. (See details on this page.) I post it here as promised. Thanks to whoever asked for it!

To No Music

That is my quarrel with this country.
You hear them say: “April?
April? Spring’s on its way, come April.”
And, poor things, believe it too.
See them outside, toes blue
in some skemps little cotton skirt
well set on making what don’t go so, go so.
And think: this big April morning
it make as if to snow.
Serious!

That is something that must
make a body consider: if you can’t
trust the way the world turn –
winter, spring, summer, autumn –
what you can trust?

When it reach April
and you been bussing your shirt
for eight straight month just
to keep warm, you in no mood
to wait one dege-dege day more.
Not when you poor
and cold in the subway
cold in the street
cold where you work
where you eat
where you sleep.

But you don’t get a peep
of protest from these
people. “Well, it’s late
this year,” they say, toes blue
peeping out the open-toe shoe,
and hug the meagre little skirt
tight round them, shivering
for all they worth.

They don’t agree with the coldness
and they don’t disagree;
they walk to no music
and that is misery.

More on whether there is one literature, or there are many...

In this post, I'm using a comment from Geoffrey Philp (as ever, thanks Geoff) to further think through the matter of whether there is one literature or there are many literatures, and, as an example, whether there is room in Canadian literature for a Caribbean voice.

Geoff says:

"... a literature has to do with community and memory, so to the extent that a poem/short story or novel captures something that is important for that community to remember, then it becomes something cherished. SNIP (New paragraph) This does not, however, take into consideration community politics, etc. where a writer's work may be ignored for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the work. This is along way of saying yes, there may be room in Canadian literature for a Caribbean voice, but it will depend upon the Canadian community to decide whether that voice will become part of their collective memory."

I keep saying that twenty men in the world now decide much of what the rest of us get to read. (Okay. It may be a few more than twenty, but not that many more.) It is they who decide what gets into books, and books are the modern collective memory. Thus, in many cases, the community may never get to hear the poem, short story or novel of a particular writer, and so may never get to choose to remember or to forget it.

American poet, Emily Dickinson helps to make the case: Fewer than a dozen of nearly eighteen hundred poems that she wrote were published during her lifetime. Had her sister Vinnie not found the poems and been determined that they should be published, the community might never have known of Dickinson's poetry. Furthermore, according to Wikipedia, "The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time..." Indeed! And, "Until the 1955 publication of Dickinson's Complete Poems by Thomas H. Johnson, her poetry was considerably edited and altered from their manuscript versions..." Ha! Those twenty men at work...

Out of her story, some points to be made. (1) Many writers are recluses. (2) The community needs to value those who make songs and stories, support them, and seek them out, if necessary, or else it is they who will lose the prize of the work. (3) Scholars, when they function well, do what Johnson did. They find the work, respect it, make it available. (4) Good presses are needed to complete the process of delivering the work to the world.

A community is not twenty men. That's why the small press movement is such an important one. It gives people other than those twenty men the power to make the choice about whose stories and poems get sent out into the world, whose songs have a chance to be heard so that the community may make its choice about what to remember and what to forget. That's why the Internet is so important as well. Indeed, the more I think about it, the more it seems that it's the Internet that will cut through this Gordian knot by making everything available to everybody.

There has been a fuss recently here in Canada about literary prizes, and who gets them, and who decides on who shall get them. It has been noted that only one of the three judges for this year's Griffin prize is Canadian. And that that is good. It's certainly to the point of our present discussion, for it's a way of working us towards that big fat global notion of what is song and story. The fact that the Griffin is awarded not just to a Canadian but also to an international poet of distinction is also a step in that direction. Nor does that international poet need to be a poet who writes in English! We should note that in 2006, Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite was the Griffin international prizewinner, thus demonstrating at least that Canadian ideas of the very best poetry certainly do include Caribbean voices.

This discussion isn't done, by any means. For instance, here in Canada we need to talk about why Québec does so much more publishing than the rest of Canada. It's not a matter of size, so it must be something about how the community values song and story, how it arranges for the discovery of singers and storytellers, and enables their works to reach the people who will choose to remember — or not. For sure we can't ignore that it so happens that the community is French.

So. Canadian literature. French Canadian literature. English Canadian literature. French Canadian literature that includes Caribbean voices. English Canadian literature that includes Caribbean voices. French Canadian literature that includes Caribbean voices in English. English Canadian literature that includes Caribbean voices in French. And, good people, we've only just begun to look at the songs and stories of Canada...

Is there room in Canadian literature for a Caribbean voice?

As you will know if you visit here, I’ve been thinking recently about whether there are many literatures. The differences in people’s languages, histories, contemporary experiences and worldviews, in the very fact that some people sing and recite their songs and stories while others write them down, seemed to make a strong argument for separate literatures. In the last few days, however, someone wrote me with questions that put these considerations into a precise context and I was driven beyond pondering, to try for answers. In today’s post I reproduce, with some alterations, the questions and my response.

The Questions

Where does culture specific literature fit in, in a setting such as Canada, where many attempts are made at creating a ‘Canadian’ identity that presupposes various cultures, but (for the most part) merges them together? Is the Caribbean-Canadian poet speaking with a different voice from the Caribbean poet?

The Response

If it is true that “many attempts are made at creating a ‘Canadian’ identity that presupposes various cultures, but (for the most part) merges them together,” then one must question the extent to which such attempts have been successful.

We have lived for 15 years in a neighbourhood in Toronto where, for the most part, Italian and Portuguese people have made their homes, some for close to four decades. We have neighbours who still can't speak more than a few words of English, never mind that they have lived here for so long, worked here, and raised their children here. It's true that their children learn English and many forget or never learn their parents' languages. It's true that their children learn new behaviours and so ‘acculturate’ to more or less extents. In that case, we have to ask: Are these new, adopted mores and behaviours, Canadian? Or do they derive from American TV and Hollywood movies? If they are Canadian, how would one describe this ‘Canadianness’? Maple syrup, hockey and curling?

Further, concerning a ‘Canadian’ identity: Is it English or French? And aren't both those groups of long-ago imperialist invaders merely earlier ‘immigrants’ of a nastier sort? Aren't First Nations the only people who have a true claim to a Canadian identity?

In Toronto there are clearly demarcated ‘towns’ and ‘settlements’ of Chinese, Koreans, Italians, East Indians, Portuguese, Maltese, Ethiopians, Senegalese, etc., etc. Immigrant communities, cultures and religions in many cases remain intact, even after having been here for very long periods of time. Sikh communities in Western Canada are a good example. Indeed, Canadian multicultural legislation in some respects nurtures and preserves these differences. Some languages in the former Russian satellite states, superseded by Russian in their own communities, survive in Canada.

Perhaps Canada could better be described as a mosaic society, one in which many different cultures live side my side, within their own contained sub-communities?

So many questions...

All that having been said, my task as a Jamaican born Canadian citizen who earns a living from writing is straightforward: it is to write, honestly and truly, about the things that I know best, in the languages that I know best. I lived more than half of my life in the Caribbean, emigrating when I was over 50 years old. Jamaica is my home by virtue of an extensive investment in time and experience. Jamaican Creole is one of my two first languages. It is a language of extraordinary literary power and I often choose to use it for poetry, prose fiction and for the theatre, though I write in English as well, and with equal ease, and occasionally use other languages for my purposes.

I have never ever found the fact that I write out of my Caribbean history and experience, in the languages of that region, to be a problem with any Canadian audience. Quite the contrary. I recently read DE MAN, a book-length performance poem about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ written entirely in Jamaican Creole, in a church in Calgary. It went so well they wanted to bring me back to repeat the reading on Good Friday. On each occasion that DE MAN has been read in Canada, the response has been the same – overwhelming. It’s a good poem.

So literature might well be culture-and-language specific, but it's equally human-and-earth specific. It's the same – and it's different. It is this difference-in-sameness and sameness-in-difference that empowers it. And now, something else is happening – perhaps akin to the phenomenon in music called ‘mashup’? The languages are interpenetrating (Chinglish, Spanglish) and the literature is using the linguistic admixtures, as well as traipsing across national and cultural boundaries, roping in everybody’s histories, refusing to respect traditional separations.

The business of scholars and critics and publishers is to keep up with where literature is going, and perhaps it is fair to do a little quarreling here. Is it that scholars have become less assiduous? (We’ve talked a bit about that on this blog.) Might there be a problem with the way publishers decide on the works they publish? With the people they choose to collect anthologies? (I’ve had a bit to say about this too.) Should we reconsider the basis on which the judges of literary prizes are chosen? Overhaul the criteria those judges apply in selecting prizewinners? Do something about the very fact that the literary marketplace is so prize-driven?

Now that we are faced with literatures that are crossing borders and languages and ethnicities, sometimes carrying over a particular ethnic and linguistic burden, sometimes setting the burden down before the crossing to take up a new one, or half-abandoning it, a Caribbean/Canadian writer may be doing any – or all – of these things! So might a Caribbean writer, looking north to the Canadian diaspora, or to Euro-Canada... Chances are that a Caribbean-Canadian poet might be more attracted to write about Canadian life and society and landscape and experiences, but as for a difference in voice? I’d be very careful about making hard and fast judgments about differences there. Individual circumstances would dictate particular cases. Man would jus haffe look an see!