There’s been lots of comment about Professor Gates's arrest in the media, which, as far as I'm concerned, is all to the good. I can't think why anyone would want to dampen down the discussion. It's fine to have a black man in the White House, an important positive development, as I've said, but that doesn't change the facts, one, for instance, being that black and Hispanic men make up almost 60% of the jail population in the USA. And it's not because they are born wicked. I’m not suggesting that some of them don't deserve to be there (though some of them don't), but that disproportionate presence is one symptom of a lot that's amiss where matters of race in North America are concerned, especially matters that impact black men.
And not talking about it, or ratcheting down the discussion isn't going to make that set of problems go away, by any means.
It's interesting to note, in the comments that have been made on many of the articles online, that ordinary folks repeatedly say that they need to be deferential with the police, a deference that clearly arises out of fear. I learned too that a great many police officers “demand respect”, especially when they are in uniform. More on that in a bit.
A couple points have emerged to fill out our picture of the incident. Seems Sergeant James Crowley, the arresting officer, felt threatened. He mentioned being aware of having to protect himself because his wife and children needed him. I can absolutely appreciate that. But it's fair to point out that Professor Gates is an older man who uses a cane, and that he had just come back, ill, from a long and tiring trip. So, a strong, armed young man was facing an older, sick man, who uses a cane and has done for a long time. Hmmmn. There’s a picture online of Professor Gates in hand cuffs. Worth a thousand words!
Where respect is concerned, I have two observations.
I was a teacher in another life. It's my experience that respect is not to be demanded, it's to be deserved. It was my business to earn my students' respect: by my own demeanour, by how I treated them, by my insisting that the circumstance in which we all learned reflected the fact of this mutual respect – a clean classroom, no rowdy behaviour, everyone having a chance to speak and be heard, etc., etc. The person with the authority is the one who sets the tone, calibrates the nature of the interactions.
True, my life may not have been on the line (not at that time, anyway), but a cop is like a soldier, and threats to life and limb are part of the territory. It's a hazardous job, and those who take it on know that up front. That defusing of bad situations is a cop skill as much as a teacher skill. (Malcolm Gladwell has written insightfully about this.)
Secondly, those who are likely to confront the police with “disrespectful” behaviour are often the people who most need their protection. They are people who are old folks with dementia; they are people who are mentally or physically ill, or temporarily off-balance, or inebriated, or high on dope. (Yes, drunks and dope heads are citizens too, and deserve protection.) Nor are the police without recourse. They have Mylar vests, guns, billies, tasers – the latter having, in too many cases, turned out to be lethal weapons in their hands.
Sadly, the instances of police shootings of innocent people are far too many. FSJL mentions a truly alarming one in his comments on our last post. Here in Toronto, the Asian man who was mentally ill and who was shot to death on a trolley downtown, his weapon a small hammer in his hand, comes to mind. So also does the case of the African-Canadian man, clad in colourful regalia and brandishing a wooden sword, who was shot to death by police on St Clair Avenue. Both were non compos mentis; neither posed a credible threat to anyone, least of all the police, at any time. And, more recently, there is the case of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski tasered to death just 24 seconds after being confronted by police in Vancouver International Airport.
It’s not that I’m without sympathy for the job that policemen do. As a young man, my father worked in Tower Street Prison. But there’s a reason that policemen carry guns, and we trust them to do so. And that’s precisely why it’s fair to expect them to be the ones who always keep their cool: if they lose it, the results may be irreversible. Nor does respect inhere in “Yes, officer. No, officer.” That respect is transient and superficial. The real respect is a community’s continuing trust in and support of their law officers.
Unless of course we are to degenerate into a Wild West in which we are all armed and dangerous…
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Henry Louis Gates Jr and Nightmare America
You’ve got to be grateful for the young Americans in Grant Park. You’ve got to believe in their upturned, eager faces. You’ve got to engage with their hope. Why? Because they are hitching their wagon to a faltering star – and I’m not talking about Barack Obama. It’s a star of longing that an America will emerge at some time in the not too distant future in which presidents, police, politicians, monarchs of the marketplace, all those who wield power will behave with basic human decency. I don’t say ‘common’ for it ain’t common no more, as the matter I am about to raise will amply demonstrate.
Michael Mechanic, a senior editor at MOTHER JONES magazine, offers this comment on the arrest of black American intellectual, Henry Louis Gates Jr, in an opinion piece carried in today’s GLOBE AND MAIL entitled “Why you never, ever get righteous on a street cop.”
You don't talk back to the police. You don't question them. And you certainly don't call them racist, even if you think they're profiling you. (And they most likely are.)
Because you will lose. It doesn't matter whether you're a prominent black Harvard prof, a white kid on his way to attend graduate school or a Hispanic high-school dropout.
True it is that Mr Mechanic bases his opinion on his own encounters with police, white though he is. What alarms me is that he should feel free to offer such an opinion, and that the GLOBE AND MAIL should elect to retail it. That, in many respects, is more shocking than the incident of Professor Gates’s arrest itself.
Let’s face it. We live – have been living for quite a while – in an age in which people with guns and knives and other lethal instruments can wreak havoc on anyone at any time they choose. We are very equal in that respect – or lack of it. John Kennedy and Emmett Till, equally dead: one was a filthy rich white President of the most powerful country on earth, the other a poor black teenager, a citizen of the same country. They were both mortal and somebody decided to let them know it.
But when anything of this kind happens we are normally outraged. We mourn the deaths, not only of the murdered but of the values, courtesies and right behaviours that would have secured the lives of the victims, had they been observed. We affirm the most basic value: that human life is precious, that each human person is unique and irreplaceable and that every one of us deserves to be treated by every other one of us in a way that demonstrates that understanding.
The police in a country that purports to be democratic aren’t supposed to be arbitrary wielders of power. They aren’t a militia. They aren’t armed thugs. They aren’t guerillas waging war in support of any cause they privately support. They are, like the Pope, servants of the servants of God, in other words, us common folks. Paid with our tax dollars, they are meant to work for us and protect us. We are not supposed to be deadly afraid of tangling with them on account of what they might choose to do to us.
That is what is chilling about Mr Mechanic’s opinion piece. It tells me – I’d be very happy to be reading him wrong – that I need to adopt just such a cowering attitude when I encounter a cop, because otherwise I “am going to lose”. I infer that what I will lose is my intactness of person or my freedom or my life, or in the worst case, all of the above. This is the wisdom, gleaned from his own experience, that he offers his readers. This is the wisdom that he chastens Professor Gates for not having. (Poor soul: the Professor thought he was a free man in a free state.)
Mr Mechanic doesn’t say this is a terrible state of affairs. He doesn’t rant and rave about things gone awry. He does not complain that it’s a sign that the country is going to hell in a hand-basket when ostensible keepers of the peace can’t find a smooth way through an incident like this one and arrive at a win-win conclusion. I put it this way because, never mind how Professor Gates may or may not have behaved, I agree with Mr Mechanic in one regard: in a situation like this one, it is the police who have the upper hand. I conclude from this that the greater onus is therefore on them.
It does not seem to upset Mr Mechanic that, as he offers us counsel, he characterizes citizen and police as combatants, fighting on opposing sides.
All of which suggests to me that he might as well have been describing any old totalitarian country, any old banana republic, any old Cold War Communist state.
Let Mr Mechanic not therefore, in future, speak of the United States of America in the same breath as he speaks of democracy, or rights, or freedoms, or the pursuit of any kind of happiness. Let him always keep his feet firmly on the ground, and tell it like it is. This is an America in which the citizen who has his wits about him had better be scared of the very people who are supposed to protect him. This is bizarre, ghoulish, monstrous, Nightmare America.
Michael Mechanic, a senior editor at MOTHER JONES magazine, offers this comment on the arrest of black American intellectual, Henry Louis Gates Jr, in an opinion piece carried in today’s GLOBE AND MAIL entitled “Why you never, ever get righteous on a street cop.”
You don't talk back to the police. You don't question them. And you certainly don't call them racist, even if you think they're profiling you. (And they most likely are.)
Because you will lose. It doesn't matter whether you're a prominent black Harvard prof, a white kid on his way to attend graduate school or a Hispanic high-school dropout.
True it is that Mr Mechanic bases his opinion on his own encounters with police, white though he is. What alarms me is that he should feel free to offer such an opinion, and that the GLOBE AND MAIL should elect to retail it. That, in many respects, is more shocking than the incident of Professor Gates’s arrest itself.
Let’s face it. We live – have been living for quite a while – in an age in which people with guns and knives and other lethal instruments can wreak havoc on anyone at any time they choose. We are very equal in that respect – or lack of it. John Kennedy and Emmett Till, equally dead: one was a filthy rich white President of the most powerful country on earth, the other a poor black teenager, a citizen of the same country. They were both mortal and somebody decided to let them know it.
But when anything of this kind happens we are normally outraged. We mourn the deaths, not only of the murdered but of the values, courtesies and right behaviours that would have secured the lives of the victims, had they been observed. We affirm the most basic value: that human life is precious, that each human person is unique and irreplaceable and that every one of us deserves to be treated by every other one of us in a way that demonstrates that understanding.
The police in a country that purports to be democratic aren’t supposed to be arbitrary wielders of power. They aren’t a militia. They aren’t armed thugs. They aren’t guerillas waging war in support of any cause they privately support. They are, like the Pope, servants of the servants of God, in other words, us common folks. Paid with our tax dollars, they are meant to work for us and protect us. We are not supposed to be deadly afraid of tangling with them on account of what they might choose to do to us.
That is what is chilling about Mr Mechanic’s opinion piece. It tells me – I’d be very happy to be reading him wrong – that I need to adopt just such a cowering attitude when I encounter a cop, because otherwise I “am going to lose”. I infer that what I will lose is my intactness of person or my freedom or my life, or in the worst case, all of the above. This is the wisdom, gleaned from his own experience, that he offers his readers. This is the wisdom that he chastens Professor Gates for not having. (Poor soul: the Professor thought he was a free man in a free state.)
Mr Mechanic doesn’t say this is a terrible state of affairs. He doesn’t rant and rave about things gone awry. He does not complain that it’s a sign that the country is going to hell in a hand-basket when ostensible keepers of the peace can’t find a smooth way through an incident like this one and arrive at a win-win conclusion. I put it this way because, never mind how Professor Gates may or may not have behaved, I agree with Mr Mechanic in one regard: in a situation like this one, it is the police who have the upper hand. I conclude from this that the greater onus is therefore on them.
It does not seem to upset Mr Mechanic that, as he offers us counsel, he characterizes citizen and police as combatants, fighting on opposing sides.
All of which suggests to me that he might as well have been describing any old totalitarian country, any old banana republic, any old Cold War Communist state.
Let Mr Mechanic not therefore, in future, speak of the United States of America in the same breath as he speaks of democracy, or rights, or freedoms, or the pursuit of any kind of happiness. Let him always keep his feet firmly on the ground, and tell it like it is. This is an America in which the citizen who has his wits about him had better be scared of the very people who are supposed to protect him. This is bizarre, ghoulish, monstrous, Nightmare America.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
"Everybody get flat – a dub"
In 2005, THE TRUE BLUE OF ISLANDS, a book dedicated to my brother Richard, murdered in Jamaica in 2004, appeared. Not long ago (on April 28), I posted the title poem, which is an account of his death. Today's post is a dub, another version of that death, to remember him because he recently had a birthday. The book of poems, never mind its subject (violence in its several manifestations) witnesses to his life. It celebrates an ordinary man. It mourns, not him alone, but all those who die brutally, as well as all those who suffer abuse in the course of their lives.
We who are left, pursuing our ambitions, hopping on planes and boats and trains about our business, have failed miserably to guard our kin – our relatives by blood, by six degrees of separation, by simple living on this planet together. I beat my breast and confess that failure. Had I invested more, and earlier, had a larger heart, been more generous with my time, more earnest in my prayers, more ready to share what I have, he might not be dead, and the person who killed him might not have been impelled to murder. The same applies to all of us, with respect to all those who have died arbitrarily and to all those who have done murder.
Mea maxima culpa.
So here is "Everybody Get Flat."
Happy Belated Birthday and Rest in Peace, my brother.
Everybody get flat – a dub
Where is the poem
that explains
what happens
to you when
they shoot your brother
and you hear
that his brains
spilled over the seat
to the back of the car
and you have to tell folks,
“No it wasn’t a war.
No, he wasn’t
caught in crossfire
No it wasn’t a fight.
Yes it happened at night
but no, not in town
out in the country
not a God soul around.
No, he didn’t launder money.
No he wasn’t into dope.
Just a man with a plan
and a fervent hope.
What was the motive?
The police can’t find
not a rhyme not a reason
why they kill the man.
Just a random execution –
So, no, we don’t have a clue
why he might have been killed.
Yes I guess you could say
God must have willed
it. What? God willed it?
No the priest said.
God don’t will
no slaughtered dead.
God allow us our own way.
So we turn into a place
with a theme song that say
“Everybody get flat –
dog coming through!”
And dog mean gun
and is all in fun
don’t mind people
have to run
down in the ghetto
every God-sent day
from the teeth of the dog.
But I guess we have a way
to grit our teeth
and carry on through.
Till a bullet come
and you pray
it’s not for you.
© Copyright Pamela Mordecai, author of THE TRUE BLUE OF ISLANDS and PINK ICING: STORIES.
All rights reserved.
No part of this blog may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations.
We who are left, pursuing our ambitions, hopping on planes and boats and trains about our business, have failed miserably to guard our kin – our relatives by blood, by six degrees of separation, by simple living on this planet together. I beat my breast and confess that failure. Had I invested more, and earlier, had a larger heart, been more generous with my time, more earnest in my prayers, more ready to share what I have, he might not be dead, and the person who killed him might not have been impelled to murder. The same applies to all of us, with respect to all those who have died arbitrarily and to all those who have done murder.
Mea maxima culpa.
So here is "Everybody Get Flat."
Happy Belated Birthday and Rest in Peace, my brother.
Everybody get flat – a dub
Where is the poem
that explains
what happens
to you when
they shoot your brother
and you hear
that his brains
spilled over the seat
to the back of the car
and you have to tell folks,
“No it wasn’t a war.
No, he wasn’t
caught in crossfire
No it wasn’t a fight.
Yes it happened at night
but no, not in town
out in the country
not a God soul around.
No, he didn’t launder money.
No he wasn’t into dope.
Just a man with a plan
and a fervent hope.
What was the motive?
The police can’t find
not a rhyme not a reason
why they kill the man.
Just a random execution –
So, no, we don’t have a clue
why he might have been killed.
Yes I guess you could say
God must have willed
it. What? God willed it?
No the priest said.
God don’t will
no slaughtered dead.
God allow us our own way.
So we turn into a place
with a theme song that say
“Everybody get flat –
dog coming through!”
And dog mean gun
and is all in fun
don’t mind people
have to run
down in the ghetto
every God-sent day
from the teeth of the dog.
But I guess we have a way
to grit our teeth
and carry on through.
Till a bullet come
and you pray
it’s not for you.
© Copyright Pamela Mordecai, author of THE TRUE BLUE OF ISLANDS and PINK ICING: STORIES.
All rights reserved.
No part of this blog may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Strategies for keeping on blogging
I have to arrive at some strategies that will enable me to avoid these hiatuses. This one's not as long as it may have seemed. I was blogging all through May (I did mention it in a previous post) at Open Book Toronto. It was a very enjoyable gig. Many thanks again, to Amy, Clelia, and OBT! And also to my inimitable, generous, joy of an editor, Gillian Rodgerson.
But I've not been here for all of June and a big chunk of July. Too long! I'm thinking that if I can't find the time to write something coherent, I'll post a poem or a part of a story, or maybe a whole story. On the subject of whole stories online, I visited Neil Gaiman's site recently. If you've never been, go have a look. Amazing!
That brings me to another strategy. I'll post interesting people and events I've come across, actually or virtually - worthwhile stuff, hopefully, as this blog won't ever be about whether or not I've been having a headache or bought a new toothbrush or had a fight with my best beloved. Not that those things are unimportant, but I'm not called to write about them, not here anyway.
So, because this has to be a quick one, here are some recent encounters.
Saw Kate Story, author of the novel BLASTED, this week. Am reading the novel, at the minute. She's funny, and funny ain't easy to write!
Saw JAMAICA FOR SALE http://www.jamaicaforsale.net/ a documentary by Esther Figueroa and Diana McCaulay at the Caribbean Tales Film Festival today. (Plaudits to Frances-Anne Solomon for the Fest, in its fourth year!) It's overwhelming. It's heartbreaking. It's how to ruin a small island with ostensible 'tourism development'! It's a formidable piece of work. And it has a ten second clip of yours truly, doing an interview for JIS-TV too long ago to even remember when. See it if you can. Support the effort to save a collapsing environment and the livelihoods of the 'small people' who depend on it.
Also if you haven't been here http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/ just GO! Listen to poets reading their work, Guillaume Apollinaire (yup!), Kamau Brathwaite and Christian Bok and endless other. No Walcott, though. Wonder why?
Heard from Rethabile Masilo, who is about to travel from Paris to this side with his family. Travel safe, and have a great time, Rethabile.
Liz Hearne, wife of the late Jamaican author, John Hearne and mother of super editor at UWI Press, Shivaun, died recently. Our condolences to her family and loved ones. We'll miss Liz.
One more big piece of news, but it'll keep till next time. Walk good meantime.
But I've not been here for all of June and a big chunk of July. Too long! I'm thinking that if I can't find the time to write something coherent, I'll post a poem or a part of a story, or maybe a whole story. On the subject of whole stories online, I visited Neil Gaiman's site recently. If you've never been, go have a look. Amazing!
That brings me to another strategy. I'll post interesting people and events I've come across, actually or virtually - worthwhile stuff, hopefully, as this blog won't ever be about whether or not I've been having a headache or bought a new toothbrush or had a fight with my best beloved. Not that those things are unimportant, but I'm not called to write about them, not here anyway.
So, because this has to be a quick one, here are some recent encounters.
Saw Kate Story, author of the novel BLASTED, this week. Am reading the novel, at the minute. She's funny, and funny ain't easy to write!
Saw JAMAICA FOR SALE http://www.jamaicaforsale.net/ a documentary by Esther Figueroa and Diana McCaulay at the Caribbean Tales Film Festival today. (Plaudits to Frances-Anne Solomon for the Fest, in its fourth year!) It's overwhelming. It's heartbreaking. It's how to ruin a small island with ostensible 'tourism development'! It's a formidable piece of work. And it has a ten second clip of yours truly, doing an interview for JIS-TV too long ago to even remember when. See it if you can. Support the effort to save a collapsing environment and the livelihoods of the 'small people' who depend on it.
Also if you haven't been here http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/ just GO! Listen to poets reading their work, Guillaume Apollinaire (yup!), Kamau Brathwaite and Christian Bok and endless other. No Walcott, though. Wonder why?
Heard from Rethabile Masilo, who is about to travel from Paris to this side with his family. Travel safe, and have a great time, Rethabile.
Liz Hearne, wife of the late Jamaican author, John Hearne and mother of super editor at UWI Press, Shivaun, died recently. Our condolences to her family and loved ones. We'll miss Liz.
One more big piece of news, but it'll keep till next time. Walk good meantime.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Visit to Calgary: Part Three
My last engagement in Calgary on this winter 2009 visit was at St Stephen’s Church downtown http://www.ststephenscalgary.org/ where, on Friday March 6, Howard Gallimore, Jamaican-Calgarian who had read with me on my previous visit, joined me, reprising his role of Samuel, as we read my Good Friday poem, De Man. I read Naomi. I am a Roman Catholic, as is Howard, but, as the Lord would have it, the readings of this poem in Calgary have, on both occasions, taken place in Anglican churches. We are grateful to our Anglican brethren for hosting us on both occasions.
The story of the reading was a Jamaican pumpkin vine story, running off in different directions as it put out its blossoms and then bore fruit. Dr Cecille DePass, a Professor at U of C, and a good friend and supporter, had, when she heard I was coming back this year to visit the University once more, offered to put me up once I’d fulfilled my obligations to the University. In addition, since the visit would again be in Lent, she had proposed that I do a reading of De Man, as I had done in 2007. Professor DePass is that rara avis, that endangered species, an enabler. So she undertook to find a church that would host the reading. Enter Dr Jean Springer, Rector’s Warden at St Stephen’s and a good friend of Cecille’s – and, unknown to me, an old friend of my husband’s family. In fact, his father was married in her parents’ house, the Barretts and the Mordecais having known one another from Columbus came over. Jean agreed to approach Rev. Brian Pearson, the rector at St Stephen’s, and we were delighted when we heard that he had agreed. Jean and I spoke on the phone, I discovered the family connection – I knew Jean’s sister, concert pianist, Nerine Barrett – and when I came to Calgary, Jean took to me to lunch and we got to know each other a bit better.
Which was how, on the evening of Friday March 6th, Rev. Pearson came to be welcoming Howard and me and introducing us to a small but welcoming audience at St Stephen’s. We could not have been more received more thoughtfully. We had met the associate priest, Rev. Cathy Fulton, and also Brian’s wife, Jean, beforehand. There were microphones and lecterns at the ready, the church was lit, and there was water to hand. We were promised refreshments in the Canterbury Room afterwards.
A little bit about the poem: De Man: a performance poem is my second book of poetry, and is really a verse play. A two-hander written entirely in Jamaican Creole, it is the story of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as reported by two imagined characters, Naomi, a maid in the court of Pilate’s wife, and Samuel, a disabled carpenter of Nazareth to whom Joseph taught the trade. It has been performed many times in Canada and in Jamaica.
But it is always a challenge, especially in Canada, where we, the performers, are aware that we are reading in a language that is not familiar to many in the audience. We make adjustments for this, but even then, one is never sure. It helps when, as has been the case on both occasions, there are Caribbean people in the audience. Naomi and Samuel have their own story, which unfolds as they watch Jesus on his way to Calvary. Naomi is a bit of a busybody, and a forthright speaker of her opinions, and, never mind that this is a terrible tale, there are light moments, as there must have been when the true history happened.
After the performance, we gathered in the Canterbury Room for refreshments, graciously provided by parishioners and well-wishers. Everyone I spoke to said that that it had been deeply moving, and that those who hadn’t come had missed something. English speakers found that they could understand once they became accustomed to the rhythms of the Creole. People generously purchased books, a portion of the sales having been promised to support the church’s ministry.
The reading was memorable for another reason. We discovered later that, unbeknown to us, Howard’s grandmother in Toronto had died while we were performing the poem.
Someone in the audience asked me, as we spoke afterwards, if I had seen the movie, The Passion of the Christ. I told him that I hadn’t and wondered why he had asked. He recalled Samuel’s description, as he observed the clothes being torn off of Jesus:
Dem tearing off him clothes
And scab and blood and skin
And flesh hold onto dem.
Him is a open wound.
A walking sore.
He had never seen or heard those details before – not until he’d seen the movie. I explained that I’d imagined what would have happened if a man had been whipped till he was bleeding, then had clothes put on him, then had them torn off when the blood had dried. When I returned to Toronto, my husband pointed out that the poem had been published in 1995, while the movie had been released in 2004.
I was very surprised and pleased at the invitation to have us back to repeat the performance on Good Friday! We are both – indeed all – extremely grateful to the clergy, staff and parishioners at St Stephen’s for hosting us, and in particular, to Dr Jean Springer for trusting, sight unseen, in the story of De Man. It was a great experience for both Howard and myself, I know. The plan is that we will come back for Easter next year, since it was not have possible to accept the invitation to return this Easter.
I think we all look forward to that time.
The story of the reading was a Jamaican pumpkin vine story, running off in different directions as it put out its blossoms and then bore fruit. Dr Cecille DePass, a Professor at U of C, and a good friend and supporter, had, when she heard I was coming back this year to visit the University once more, offered to put me up once I’d fulfilled my obligations to the University. In addition, since the visit would again be in Lent, she had proposed that I do a reading of De Man, as I had done in 2007. Professor DePass is that rara avis, that endangered species, an enabler. So she undertook to find a church that would host the reading. Enter Dr Jean Springer, Rector’s Warden at St Stephen’s and a good friend of Cecille’s – and, unknown to me, an old friend of my husband’s family. In fact, his father was married in her parents’ house, the Barretts and the Mordecais having known one another from Columbus came over. Jean agreed to approach Rev. Brian Pearson, the rector at St Stephen’s, and we were delighted when we heard that he had agreed. Jean and I spoke on the phone, I discovered the family connection – I knew Jean’s sister, concert pianist, Nerine Barrett – and when I came to Calgary, Jean took to me to lunch and we got to know each other a bit better.
Which was how, on the evening of Friday March 6th, Rev. Pearson came to be welcoming Howard and me and introducing us to a small but welcoming audience at St Stephen’s. We could not have been more received more thoughtfully. We had met the associate priest, Rev. Cathy Fulton, and also Brian’s wife, Jean, beforehand. There were microphones and lecterns at the ready, the church was lit, and there was water to hand. We were promised refreshments in the Canterbury Room afterwards.
A little bit about the poem: De Man: a performance poem is my second book of poetry, and is really a verse play. A two-hander written entirely in Jamaican Creole, it is the story of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as reported by two imagined characters, Naomi, a maid in the court of Pilate’s wife, and Samuel, a disabled carpenter of Nazareth to whom Joseph taught the trade. It has been performed many times in Canada and in Jamaica.
But it is always a challenge, especially in Canada, where we, the performers, are aware that we are reading in a language that is not familiar to many in the audience. We make adjustments for this, but even then, one is never sure. It helps when, as has been the case on both occasions, there are Caribbean people in the audience. Naomi and Samuel have their own story, which unfolds as they watch Jesus on his way to Calvary. Naomi is a bit of a busybody, and a forthright speaker of her opinions, and, never mind that this is a terrible tale, there are light moments, as there must have been when the true history happened.
After the performance, we gathered in the Canterbury Room for refreshments, graciously provided by parishioners and well-wishers. Everyone I spoke to said that that it had been deeply moving, and that those who hadn’t come had missed something. English speakers found that they could understand once they became accustomed to the rhythms of the Creole. People generously purchased books, a portion of the sales having been promised to support the church’s ministry.
The reading was memorable for another reason. We discovered later that, unbeknown to us, Howard’s grandmother in Toronto had died while we were performing the poem.
Someone in the audience asked me, as we spoke afterwards, if I had seen the movie, The Passion of the Christ. I told him that I hadn’t and wondered why he had asked. He recalled Samuel’s description, as he observed the clothes being torn off of Jesus:
Dem tearing off him clothes
And scab and blood and skin
And flesh hold onto dem.
Him is a open wound.
A walking sore.
He had never seen or heard those details before – not until he’d seen the movie. I explained that I’d imagined what would have happened if a man had been whipped till he was bleeding, then had clothes put on him, then had them torn off when the blood had dried. When I returned to Toronto, my husband pointed out that the poem had been published in 1995, while the movie had been released in 2004.
I was very surprised and pleased at the invitation to have us back to repeat the performance on Good Friday! We are both – indeed all – extremely grateful to the clergy, staff and parishioners at St Stephen’s for hosting us, and in particular, to Dr Jean Springer for trusting, sight unseen, in the story of De Man. It was a great experience for both Howard and myself, I know. The plan is that we will come back for Easter next year, since it was not have possible to accept the invitation to return this Easter.
I think we all look forward to that time.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Visit to Calgary Part Two
A note on my last post. It was written before I saw Nik Korpon’s review of Pink Icing, which is why I was pleased that Nik said what he did about my narrative disappearing act.
It’s my second day in Calgary. Tuesday, March 3rd.
From Aruna Srivastiva’s office, to which Robert Majzels has so kindly brought me through ice and snow and melt, I can glimpse a strange, bare landscape. It’s not just the emptiness of winter. It maybe looks as if someone has skinned the earth, as they would skin an animal, and what I’m looking at is what’s underneath. The mountains ringing the city on the low horizon are like folds of skin, pulled back from the exposed torso and piled up at the sides of the excoriated body of the beast.
I’d heard about Aruna before I met her – we had friends in common. We talked a bit before going off to her class and she told me some more about the course being done by the students with whom I’d be visiting. She’d already said via e-mail that English 492 is a course on postcolonial and globalization studies in which students look at literature in the context of cultural and political issues. They worked in groups, and so did not often meet as one large group, and they were mostly well motivated, and got on with what they had to do. I was interested, especially in the fact that they were assessed in non-traditional ways (one being that they blogged) rather than by means of tests and papers. I told Aruna that it seemed like it would be a lot of work to mark, more harassing than correcting papers, and she admitted it was.
But it would obviously be challenging for the students and would offer insights into their progress, a grasp of how well they were acquiring skills and knowledge and navigating concepts. Also, she would quickly have a handle on any problems they might encounter.
Aruna had been concerned about the student turnout and lured them with the promise of food after the class, which I subsequently told her was a lunatic thing to do, because I think every man-Jack was there! I enjoyed the session. Via an Internet hook-up, Tracy, an admin assistant, if I remember right, who would normally have been present except that she was ill, could participate. We all waved to her on camera and she waved back at us. The students were alert and interested and clearly very bright.
I was a bit angry with myself, though, for getting distracted. I found myself talking about getting published, what constituted a bestseller in Canadian and American terms, etc., etc. I wish that I’d just stayed with reading stories and poems.
Aruna treated us to dinner in the grad lounge, good food and vivid cocktails. There was lively chatter, somewhat constrained by the fact that we were at a long, thin table. Across the table from me was an Asian woman who diverted us with a tale of being thrown out of a bar by a bouncer. She never went to bars, she said, and this one time had all been a crazy mix-up. Beside me a white Canadian woman spoke of spending summers picking mushrooms that grew wild. She loved it. She told me which mushrooms – it might have been morels, which grow wild in British Columbia, but I can’t remember now.
It wasn’t a very mixed group, racially, and the evening ended with an interesting conversation – by that time everyone had left and there were only the five of us – between three white young men, one of Finnish heritage, one Danish and one of Bosnian background. They discussed racial purity, which I got the impression they all thought they had. Aruna is East Indian. I am a child of so many admixtures that they are lost in the mists of generations of miscegenation.
I would see Aruna again before the end of the week, to share a cup of tea and a slice of Jamaican plum pudding at the house of my friend and hostess, Cecille DePass, a Prof in Education and another innovative teacher. Cecille was why I was in Calgary to begin with. She had approached the Department of English in 2007 about having me do a reading at U. of C., to wind up my mini tour of Winnipeg, Vancouver and Edmonton, and that had led to the current invitation. Louise Saldhana came with Aruna. During tea, Louise and I hatched a project concerning children’s literature.
It was a privilege to be with these women, as it had been to meet Mutriba Din, Senior Financial Analyst at the University. Mutriba had us to dinner before my reading at Pages the day before. Cecille DePass, Aruna Srivastiva, Mutriba Din, Hiromi Goto, Louise Saldhana, Larissa Lai, Nadine Chambers, Noga Gayle, Yvonne Brown, Jean Springer, Julie Hendrickson – women, most of whom I met on these two trips to the west. Dionne Brand, on a visit to Vancouver in fall 2008, described a “world beneath the world,” meaning the world that would have existed if all the dire things that have snagged it, had not. In a recent blog post, Larissa Lai referred to Dionne’s affirmation of the existence of this under-world, and observed, “There are women… actively making that other world...”
These are some of those women.
It’s my second day in Calgary. Tuesday, March 3rd.
From Aruna Srivastiva’s office, to which Robert Majzels has so kindly brought me through ice and snow and melt, I can glimpse a strange, bare landscape. It’s not just the emptiness of winter. It maybe looks as if someone has skinned the earth, as they would skin an animal, and what I’m looking at is what’s underneath. The mountains ringing the city on the low horizon are like folds of skin, pulled back from the exposed torso and piled up at the sides of the excoriated body of the beast.
I’d heard about Aruna before I met her – we had friends in common. We talked a bit before going off to her class and she told me some more about the course being done by the students with whom I’d be visiting. She’d already said via e-mail that English 492 is a course on postcolonial and globalization studies in which students look at literature in the context of cultural and political issues. They worked in groups, and so did not often meet as one large group, and they were mostly well motivated, and got on with what they had to do. I was interested, especially in the fact that they were assessed in non-traditional ways (one being that they blogged) rather than by means of tests and papers. I told Aruna that it seemed like it would be a lot of work to mark, more harassing than correcting papers, and she admitted it was.
But it would obviously be challenging for the students and would offer insights into their progress, a grasp of how well they were acquiring skills and knowledge and navigating concepts. Also, she would quickly have a handle on any problems they might encounter.
Aruna had been concerned about the student turnout and lured them with the promise of food after the class, which I subsequently told her was a lunatic thing to do, because I think every man-Jack was there! I enjoyed the session. Via an Internet hook-up, Tracy, an admin assistant, if I remember right, who would normally have been present except that she was ill, could participate. We all waved to her on camera and she waved back at us. The students were alert and interested and clearly very bright.
I was a bit angry with myself, though, for getting distracted. I found myself talking about getting published, what constituted a bestseller in Canadian and American terms, etc., etc. I wish that I’d just stayed with reading stories and poems.
Aruna treated us to dinner in the grad lounge, good food and vivid cocktails. There was lively chatter, somewhat constrained by the fact that we were at a long, thin table. Across the table from me was an Asian woman who diverted us with a tale of being thrown out of a bar by a bouncer. She never went to bars, she said, and this one time had all been a crazy mix-up. Beside me a white Canadian woman spoke of spending summers picking mushrooms that grew wild. She loved it. She told me which mushrooms – it might have been morels, which grow wild in British Columbia, but I can’t remember now.
It wasn’t a very mixed group, racially, and the evening ended with an interesting conversation – by that time everyone had left and there were only the five of us – between three white young men, one of Finnish heritage, one Danish and one of Bosnian background. They discussed racial purity, which I got the impression they all thought they had. Aruna is East Indian. I am a child of so many admixtures that they are lost in the mists of generations of miscegenation.
I would see Aruna again before the end of the week, to share a cup of tea and a slice of Jamaican plum pudding at the house of my friend and hostess, Cecille DePass, a Prof in Education and another innovative teacher. Cecille was why I was in Calgary to begin with. She had approached the Department of English in 2007 about having me do a reading at U. of C., to wind up my mini tour of Winnipeg, Vancouver and Edmonton, and that had led to the current invitation. Louise Saldhana came with Aruna. During tea, Louise and I hatched a project concerning children’s literature.
It was a privilege to be with these women, as it had been to meet Mutriba Din, Senior Financial Analyst at the University. Mutriba had us to dinner before my reading at Pages the day before. Cecille DePass, Aruna Srivastiva, Mutriba Din, Hiromi Goto, Louise Saldhana, Larissa Lai, Nadine Chambers, Noga Gayle, Yvonne Brown, Jean Springer, Julie Hendrickson – women, most of whom I met on these two trips to the west. Dionne Brand, on a visit to Vancouver in fall 2008, described a “world beneath the world,” meaning the world that would have existed if all the dire things that have snagged it, had not. In a recent blog post, Larissa Lai referred to Dionne’s affirmation of the existence of this under-world, and observed, “There are women… actively making that other world...”
These are some of those women.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Calgary Visit - Part One
I flew to Calgary on 2 March 2009 at the invitation of the Department of English at the University of Calgary. It was a return visit. I had visited before in 2007 as part of a mini-tour of Western Canada to promote my first collection of short fiction, Pink Icing. That visit took place at just about the same time in early March, and involved a lunch time reading which went well, never mind the small audience. Christian Bok had said then that the Department would ask me back.
So I begin by saying thanks to him for making good his promise.
A bit of serendipity, though, before I go any further. Roaming the web last night I came across a review of Pink Icing posted at Outsider Writers’ Collective:
http://www.outsiderwriters.org/archives/2084#more-2084
It’s a nice review that includes these comments:
"One of Pamela Mordecai’s biggest strengths as a writer is her ability to disappear. So, you’re thinking, ‘Wow, that’s the most backhanded compliment I’ve read.’ But it’s true…Her words dissolve and leave you immersed in the world of story, occupying the same patch of grass or gravel road as the characters... Her restrained prose is economical and turns many a phrase without drawing attention to the writing itself, eschewing any chance of pulling you out of the story."
You’ll see in a bit why I was glad to read that, and be reassured that I put my money where my mouth is. Thanks, Nik Korpon!
So here I was, at the end of February, being optimistic. Courtesy of a chinook, it had been relatively warm in Calgary, and Robert Majzels, poet, playwright, novelist, prize-winning translator and associate professor of the Creative Writing group in the Department of English, had sounded as though, maybe, just maybe, the weather might be persuaded to hold. But Calgary weather is mercurial, a word I have on occasion used to describe myself, so by the time I touched down, it had exercised its right to do a volte face and welcome the visiting writer with an example of her very own changeable nature. "If not, why not?" as my Granny used to say...
I'd been reading the latest Robert Majzels (say May-zels) book. The Humbugs Diet, over the previous day or two, and indeed on the flight across. I am, I confess, severely under-read, a state I tell myself I share with most of the world, so not to worry. Given the opportunity of meeting a fellow-writer, however, I usually make it my business to read his or her work. It's as good a way as any to decide on what shall be the next book I choose as I struggle valiantly with the Sisyphean task of catching up.
The Humbugs Diet, billed as a detective story, is tasty. (I won't tell you anything about the story, except that it's about old people, is not really a whodunit, and is funny. To find out more, go buy the book.) As I've said before, I dislike writing that calls attention to itself: I don't like clever that makes sure that I notice it. I'm old-fashioned, believing firmly in the celebrated "seamless unity of form and content". Ergo, "The writing is so fine!" as a statement about any book makes my antennae quiver. However fine, it should be tucked away, like a respectable lady's petticoat, at the service of the story. In this novel, Majzels uses a manner of thought, and so of writing, to create a doppelganger, an own-way, own-mind second self for his ex-detective protagonist, Rotuf Mazal. Rotuf is on the one hand not much of anybody, diffident, indecisive, letting the days go by till he can't stand to do it any more. But quirky habits of phrase and deliberation conjure his second self for us, and much of the humour in the novel derives from the interplay between Rotuf's pedestrian first self and his sardonic second self.
I have a thing about numinous quality of names (Brutus starting a spirit, and all that) so, as I told Robert, I wasn't sure about his giving the protagonist a name so similar to his own. (I wasn't to know then that the Claire of the story is also named for his partner, Claire Huot.) And this isn't a flawless work. But it was experimenting - with language, with signifying on cultures and literatures, with pushing the boundaries of a genre in an amiable, unsnooty way. Above all, it diverted me, which is what good storytelling has always been about.
If his story was wry and endearing, never mind that it concerned a murder or two, Robert, in his role as host, was equally good natured. When I found I had to postpone the visit from October 2008 to March of this year, he said, No problem - these things happen. Once we confirmed dates, I had clear indications about things that I needed to do, and what my visit would involve. The refund of my plane fare and my honorarium arrived in advance of my departure for Calgary - very reassuring for a poor writer. And Robert was always accessible and helpful.
And now, here he was on the ground, meeting me with his trusty VW steed (veteran of two cross-Canada runs, I later learned), whisking me off to the Best Western near the University, helping me with my bags to the door of my room and promising a ride to U of C the next afternoon. The next day, he arrived exactly on time, delivered me safely to the English department, never mind the treacherous, iced-over terrain, and introduced me to Aruna Srivasteva whose class I was to visit that afternoon. More on Aruna’s class in my next dispatch.
His final kindness was to introduce me the next night at a reading at Pages, a great alternative bookstore in Kensington where the own-way traffic lights must have been made in Jamaica, for dem cyaan agree. There the chairs were all occupied, the audience receptive and the owner-manager, Simone Lee, her baby son, Theo, and Martin and the rest of the staff, both gracious as well as organized - smooth as Theo's bottom. Robert and Claire saw me off at the end of the reading with good wishes for the rest of the visit.
So I'm raising my glass of sorrel in a toast to Robert Majzels, and through him, the Department of English at the University of Calgary. Thanks, Robert. Good luck with finding the house! I look forward to seeing you next year, and between now and then, walk good.
So I begin by saying thanks to him for making good his promise.
A bit of serendipity, though, before I go any further. Roaming the web last night I came across a review of Pink Icing posted at Outsider Writers’ Collective:
http://www.outsiderwriters.org/archives/2084#more-2084
It’s a nice review that includes these comments:
"One of Pamela Mordecai’s biggest strengths as a writer is her ability to disappear. So, you’re thinking, ‘Wow, that’s the most backhanded compliment I’ve read.’ But it’s true…Her words dissolve and leave you immersed in the world of story, occupying the same patch of grass or gravel road as the characters... Her restrained prose is economical and turns many a phrase without drawing attention to the writing itself, eschewing any chance of pulling you out of the story."
You’ll see in a bit why I was glad to read that, and be reassured that I put my money where my mouth is. Thanks, Nik Korpon!
So here I was, at the end of February, being optimistic. Courtesy of a chinook, it had been relatively warm in Calgary, and Robert Majzels, poet, playwright, novelist, prize-winning translator and associate professor of the Creative Writing group in the Department of English, had sounded as though, maybe, just maybe, the weather might be persuaded to hold. But Calgary weather is mercurial, a word I have on occasion used to describe myself, so by the time I touched down, it had exercised its right to do a volte face and welcome the visiting writer with an example of her very own changeable nature. "If not, why not?" as my Granny used to say...
I'd been reading the latest Robert Majzels (say May-zels) book. The Humbugs Diet, over the previous day or two, and indeed on the flight across. I am, I confess, severely under-read, a state I tell myself I share with most of the world, so not to worry. Given the opportunity of meeting a fellow-writer, however, I usually make it my business to read his or her work. It's as good a way as any to decide on what shall be the next book I choose as I struggle valiantly with the Sisyphean task of catching up.
The Humbugs Diet, billed as a detective story, is tasty. (I won't tell you anything about the story, except that it's about old people, is not really a whodunit, and is funny. To find out more, go buy the book.) As I've said before, I dislike writing that calls attention to itself: I don't like clever that makes sure that I notice it. I'm old-fashioned, believing firmly in the celebrated "seamless unity of form and content". Ergo, "The writing is so fine!" as a statement about any book makes my antennae quiver. However fine, it should be tucked away, like a respectable lady's petticoat, at the service of the story. In this novel, Majzels uses a manner of thought, and so of writing, to create a doppelganger, an own-way, own-mind second self for his ex-detective protagonist, Rotuf Mazal. Rotuf is on the one hand not much of anybody, diffident, indecisive, letting the days go by till he can't stand to do it any more. But quirky habits of phrase and deliberation conjure his second self for us, and much of the humour in the novel derives from the interplay between Rotuf's pedestrian first self and his sardonic second self.
I have a thing about numinous quality of names (Brutus starting a spirit, and all that) so, as I told Robert, I wasn't sure about his giving the protagonist a name so similar to his own. (I wasn't to know then that the Claire of the story is also named for his partner, Claire Huot.) And this isn't a flawless work. But it was experimenting - with language, with signifying on cultures and literatures, with pushing the boundaries of a genre in an amiable, unsnooty way. Above all, it diverted me, which is what good storytelling has always been about.
If his story was wry and endearing, never mind that it concerned a murder or two, Robert, in his role as host, was equally good natured. When I found I had to postpone the visit from October 2008 to March of this year, he said, No problem - these things happen. Once we confirmed dates, I had clear indications about things that I needed to do, and what my visit would involve. The refund of my plane fare and my honorarium arrived in advance of my departure for Calgary - very reassuring for a poor writer. And Robert was always accessible and helpful.
And now, here he was on the ground, meeting me with his trusty VW steed (veteran of two cross-Canada runs, I later learned), whisking me off to the Best Western near the University, helping me with my bags to the door of my room and promising a ride to U of C the next afternoon. The next day, he arrived exactly on time, delivered me safely to the English department, never mind the treacherous, iced-over terrain, and introduced me to Aruna Srivasteva whose class I was to visit that afternoon. More on Aruna’s class in my next dispatch.
His final kindness was to introduce me the next night at a reading at Pages, a great alternative bookstore in Kensington where the own-way traffic lights must have been made in Jamaica, for dem cyaan agree. There the chairs were all occupied, the audience receptive and the owner-manager, Simone Lee, her baby son, Theo, and Martin and the rest of the staff, both gracious as well as organized - smooth as Theo's bottom. Robert and Claire saw me off at the end of the reading with good wishes for the rest of the visit.
So I'm raising my glass of sorrel in a toast to Robert Majzels, and through him, the Department of English at the University of Calgary. Thanks, Robert. Good luck with finding the house! I look forward to seeing you next year, and between now and then, walk good.
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