Usually it takes forever to get work out of Ottawa writer Clare Latremouille, who, despite herself, has managed to appear in a number of journals throughout the 1990s (usually through me submitting her writing to journals who had asked, or simply including her in whatever project I was editing at the time), including Hostbox, graffito: the poetry poster, The Carleton Arts Review, The Backwater Review, Missing Jacket, Paperplates and STANZAS, as well as numerous above/ground press poem broadsides and the chapbook, I will write a poem for you. Now: (above/ground press, 1995). More recently, her poetry appeared in the first issue of ottawater, the ongoing Peter F. Yacht Club, and the anthologies Written in the Skin (1998), Shadowy Technicians: New Ottawa Poets (2000) and Groundswell: best of above/ground press, 1993-2003 (2003), as well as the forthcoming anthology decalogue: ten Ottawa fiction writers (Chaudiere Books, 2007). The first season of the new Chaudiere Books catalogue in fall 2006 will also feature her first novel, Desmond Road Book of the Dead, that she has been working on for over a decade.
There’s a poem I wrote recently, about the bridge near McCrimmon’s Corners in Glengarry County, and a memory I have of a night out with Clare Latremouille and others of our group, back when we all still lived there and went to high school in Alexandria. I don’t even remember what we were doing, or how we ended up there, well after midnight, at the north end of the county, as Clare swung from the bottom of the bridge. All of us laughing, and Kahlil Capuccino or Doug McPherson or someone else saying, “I want what she’s on,” or something else along those lines. I remember comments about the full moon, and the reflection in the water, what Clare was trying to catch as she hung from the bridge.
a brief history of the moon
as unreal as anything could be
green grass, hills, water down streaming
moonlight becomes
a practiced bulb of feeling under
bridges, clare a troll & climbing
over rock face, water face &
“i want what shes having”
mere months into our marvel
& a transition line, a lie
Not a piece on any large event but a fragment, a sliver of Glengarry life and my life too. Since writing the poem, researching the area for my McLennan / MacLennan / McLellan genealogy, I’ve discovered that the bridge at McCrimmon’s Corners was even called the “moon bridge” for the same reasons we saw back in the late 1980s. But Clare probably knew that; she might even have said it at the time. The reflection of the moon in the water. Writing of a period between 1845 and 1878, when the Bullfrog Tavern was active at Lot 26, Concession 9, Lochiel township, McCrimmon’s Corners, the book Lochinvar to Skye, 1794-1987 writes:
The Lochinvar Bridge
Not far from the Bullfrog Tavern, a bridge crossed the River de Grasse and during the time when the Bullfrog Tavern was serving the community, it made a good stopping place for nearby residents. One evening a well inebriated citizen was making his way home from the Tavern. When he came to the bridge at Lochinvar over the river, he stopped to rest. It was a beautiful clear moonlight night so the traveller looked down over the bridge railing and contemplated the scene below. Suddenly a yell of “Help! Help! I’m standing on top of the moon,” was heard.
(LOCHINVAR TO SKYE, 1794-1987 by Madeleine McCrimmon and Donaldson R. MacLeod, published 1978)
It’s amazing how little can change in one hundred and fifty years. Going through a file I keep in my computer of poems by Clare, I find one with a Glengarry reference or two. I haven’t opened this file in years, since I worked on her section of the anthology Shadowy Technicians: New Ottawa Poets (2000). Clare, who appeared a year ahead of me in high school, suddenly in her last year with her five-year-old son Noah (dropping out three or four times previously), and one of two valedictorians in her final year. Clare, who I met as VanBerkom (what her son Noah is), returned to her family name Latremouille (which she writes under), and now, married as McDonnell. Her husband, Bryan, a descendant of one of the original St. Raphael’s settlers. Set on the same bridge, on the same river, her poem was written while we were still in high school, sometime before the end of 1988.
I stand on this car with you for the last time
more than skin
your bottomless brown bottle eyes demand
one more sip
one more whispered protest
(a thousand delights)
on your hood the light of my glorious mystery veiled in thin
music and endless oxygen
my bare dirty feet scratching the warm metal
the moon finds beauty in this smelly brown puddle full of Wonder
bread bags, scum, and the spent passion of Glengarry pioneers
here with music bouncing off the dry mud and strange birds winking in
bushes, surrounded by naked frogs, obscene cupids panting like heatwaves, here
we eat mosquitoes and run like snakes
through the grass, falling
like sugarsick kingdoms out of the air and into grins as big as all damnation,
rolling in billowing waves of grass and beer foam,
tumbling like weeds,
there is no reaper in these fields tonight tonight tonight will creep secretly
like a poisonout dream through every touch every word every lover
that is not now that is not this
and in the morning distant sons Glengarry pioneers will mount sturdy
John Deeres and plough across the earth left beside the Glengarry River
after the Apocalypse
Is it worth telling her there is no “Glengarry River?” The Nation, the South Branch, the Raisin. In the end, does it really matter? A poem over the River de Grasse. When we were still all in high school, it was Clare who exuded experience and living, who wrote poems on the side and helped the rest of us do that too, with some who went on to continue, and others, who moved in other directions: Terry MacDonald, who became a journalist; Patrick Leroux, a franco-ontarien playwrite, who started his own theatre company and has produced dozens of his own plays; Chris Page, formerly of the band The Stand, who now produces material under the name Glen Nervous, named after the hamlet he was from, the mis-heard Glen Nevis; Doug McPherson, also in The Stand, along with drummer Glen Wallace and the original bass player, Todd Gibbon, who afterward founded the band Crash 13, and now fronts the alt-country band, The Fiftymen. Through Paul Newmann, a year ahead of me, as Clare was, we all published poems and stories under false names in our high school ‘zine, originally called The U-Name-it ‘Zine (when we thought we would have a contest to name the thing), eventually shortening it to simply The Zine. I still have copies in a box somewhere. I like having them, even if I don’t want to have to look at them. Apparently Gary Geddes’ youngest daughter, Bronwen, even published pieces in The Zine, a few years after we left.
And Clare, who considers publishing but never gets around to it; who can lose herself for eight hours or more on her computer, tweaking one of her two novels or that short story she read from, "The Adventures of Jesus Drysdale" that she read from at the Peter F. Yacht Club reading / regatta at the Carleton Tavern in October. After she read at the ottawa international writers festival to help launch Groundswell in the fall of 2003, she gained a whole new group of admirers, who all said the same thing. "I can't believe she doesn't have a book of fiction out." It's good to finally say that soon she will.
related entry: Stephen Brockwell's Glengarry poems
(taken from a longer essay in progress, “writing and reading Glengarry county”)
Monday, November 14, 2005
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Present Things: On Marianne Bluger
Passionate, generous, opinionated, fiercely intelligent, Marianne Bluger raged quietly against her cancer for more than a decade before it ended her life on October 29, 2005. Her undiminished output of poetry in her last years (one book published the day she died, another due next spring) is a tribute to many small battles against death waged in Marianne’s Ottawa home.
Her most recent volumes include zen-inspired tanka and haiku, a tribute to her holocaust-survivor father and, forthcoming, Nude with Scar, which promises poems that turn Marianne Bluger’s unblinking, unsentimental lyricism to the subject of her own illness and death.
The title of one of her poems, "Present Things," encapsulates Marianne Bluger’s poetic philosophy. Her elegantly spare poetry honours, by naming, each thing in existence, and in doing so often releases the emotional power those things and their images command. The following poem for her husband Larry, from her Archibald Lampman Award-winning book Summer Grass (Brick, 1992), shows how each physical detail contributes to a powerful emotional statement.
When You Were Gone to the Gulf
Because our bedroom window was open
spring wind
smelling of grass and humus and flowering trees
came stirring your shirt
where it hung on the doorknob
it was late morning sunny
the radio played in the kitchen
a rock-and-roll song I remember we danced to
in our socks one winter night
all by ourselves in the living room
just because we felt like it
on the dresser lie your shoehorn and bankbook
and on the shelf beside my wrinkle cream
the jar of Chinese linament
I rub your back with when it hurts
and in the cupboard there sit
several pair of your big old shoes
which I sometimes go and look at
because they are so beautiful
Despite her long illness, Marianne Bluger was an inspiring presence for many Ottawa writers, and for devotees of haiku and tanka around the world. She will be missed. But the clear, intense voice of her poetry remains to help us draw back from the frenetic pace of everyday life and contemplate more enduring truths. Her poems are still there for us to look at, whenever we need them.
Her most recent volumes include zen-inspired tanka and haiku, a tribute to her holocaust-survivor father and, forthcoming, Nude with Scar, which promises poems that turn Marianne Bluger’s unblinking, unsentimental lyricism to the subject of her own illness and death.
The title of one of her poems, "Present Things," encapsulates Marianne Bluger’s poetic philosophy. Her elegantly spare poetry honours, by naming, each thing in existence, and in doing so often releases the emotional power those things and their images command. The following poem for her husband Larry, from her Archibald Lampman Award-winning book Summer Grass (Brick, 1992), shows how each physical detail contributes to a powerful emotional statement.
When You Were Gone to the Gulf
Because our bedroom window was open
spring wind
smelling of grass and humus and flowering trees
came stirring your shirt
where it hung on the doorknob
it was late morning sunny
the radio played in the kitchen
a rock-and-roll song I remember we danced to
in our socks one winter night
all by ourselves in the living room
just because we felt like it
on the dresser lie your shoehorn and bankbook
and on the shelf beside my wrinkle cream
the jar of Chinese linament
I rub your back with when it hurts
and in the cupboard there sit
several pair of your big old shoes
which I sometimes go and look at
because they are so beautiful
Despite her long illness, Marianne Bluger was an inspiring presence for many Ottawa writers, and for devotees of haiku and tanka around the world. She will be missed. But the clear, intense voice of her poetry remains to help us draw back from the frenetic pace of everyday life and contemplate more enduring truths. Her poems are still there for us to look at, whenever we need them.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
an interview with Amatoritsero Ede
This interview was conducted over email from October to November 2005
Amatoritsero Ede is an ex-Hindu Monk with the Hare Krishna Movement, born in Nigeria. He worked as a Book Editor with a major Nigerian publisher, Spectrum Books, before starting his studies in 1991. He has published in the past in Nigerian literary newspapers and more recently in Olongo (Ibadan Journal of the Arts, Nigeria); in international journals like Versal (Amsterdam), and in various anthologies, including Voices from the Fringe: An ANA Anthology of New Nigerian Poetry ed. Harry Garuba (Lagos: Malthouse Press, 1987), The Faith of Vultures: BBC Prize-Winning Poetry eds. Peter Porter et al (Oxford: Heinemann International, 1989), Und auf den Strassen eine Pest ed. Uche Nduka (Bad Honnef, Germany: Horelmann Verlag, 1996) and May Ayim Award Anthology eds. Peggy Piesche et al. (Berlin, Germany: Orlanda Verlag, 2004). In 1993 he won the runner-up prize of the Association of Nigerian Authors' (ANA) Poetry Competition with the manuscript of "A Writer's Pains." In 1998, he won the ANA All Africa Christopher Okigbo Prize for Literature (endowed by Wole Soyinka, Nigerian Nobel Laureate) with his first collection of poems, Collected Poems: A writer's Pains & Carribian Blues (Bremen, Germany: Yeti Press, 1998) and in 2004, he won second prize in the first May Ayim Award: International Black Germany Literary Prize. He is currently writer-in-residence at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada under the auspices of PEN Canada's Writer-in-Exile Network. He is currently working on a novel, two collections of poems, and a play. He has had readings all over Europe, including the Frankfurt Book Fair, the German PEN Centre in Berlin and the Tropical Museum in Amsterdam. In 2002, Amatoritsero Ede received a combined Honours Masters degree in German Language & Linguistics and Literature in English & Cultural Studies from the University of Hannover in Germany, for which he had a scholarship grant from the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation. He is a trained book editor and has a certificate in Print Production from the Graphic Media Development Centre, The Hague. He currently edits the online poetry journal Sentinel Poetry at sentinelpoetry.org.uk
rob mclennan: Tell me a little bit about your background.
Amatoritsero Ede: Well, my background. I am Nigerian from the Niger-Delta area of Nigeria, that rich and accursed patch of earth where Shell and other multi-national oil corporations spoil and despoil, polluting air and water. I grew up to the hot orange glow of gas flaring on the horizon. I grew up in a small coastal town called Sapele. I spent most of my adult years in Ibadan, where I also started studies in 1991, ten years after high school, after a job in book publishing with a major trade publisher and, after a romance with the muse. I began writing in high school and had my first book publication in 1988. Before that of course there were countless readings and literary journal appearances. In the Nigerian case we had literary newspapers, like the Nigerian Guardian. Soyinka, Achebe and Pepper-Clark -- three of Nigeria's biggest writers, all studied at the Ibadan University. I started studying there in 1991. Since I was in the department of Modern European Languages, I had to go to Germany (I studied German) for an immersion in the culture and the language. I ended up staying there for eight bitter-sweet years. There is still too much racism in Germany. I must always emphasize that there are very great humanists who are Germans … but the political structure allows some individuals and groups to propagate xenophobia and murder, murder in a literal sense. So I looked for a peaceful corner of the earth and hit upon Canada. The best country in the world! I was not sure returning to Nigeria was wise, even though the government seemed to have changed, my political anti-Nigerian government activities in Germany could still be in a cold-case file! So I came to Canada for the PhD, which I dropped because the department was too poisoned for any serious academic work.
rm: How would you describe your writing? Are you working strictly within Nigerian forms, or have other influences, whether German or Canadian, began to seep in? How difficult is it to write poetry on an international scale?
AE: In Nigeria, education- especially at the university level- exposes one to the western canon. Even in high school Shakespeare is a regular diet. At the university if you study English (as I did alongside German), you have to read the English classics. The difference these days, since oral literature has given way more and more to the written literature of Africa, is that we also have Modern African writers as part of the curriculum. So, in a sense, you have the best of English Literature- especially British and American and then postcolonial literatures. Again the British educational system- a colonial inheritance- ensures that there are inter-departmental elective courses; so one could take electives in classics or philosophy or any other area of the humanities. At the Modern Languages Department of the University of Ibadan, where I did my undergraduate work, they make sure we were steeped in the classical 'Greek' tradition as a map of the literary pedigree of the poetics of modern European Languages. And in the English department there is something similar in literary criticism, where you always start out with Aristotle's Poetics. So we were well schooled in the literatures of other places, and consequently were influenced by these. I had read T.S. Eliot before I ever left Nigeria -- and Neruda, Derek Walcott, Pound, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Longfellow and so on. So actually coming from the periphery, with the weight of an inherited colonial educational curriculum made our reading list truly Global. And one was of course influenced by what one read, willy-nilly. I started out reading Gerald Manley Hopkins, Alexander Pope and John Dryden- just for fun! I would go into a bookshop and just pick these off the shelves. And we did have very good bookshops and library systems. I don't know their state right now, though, in the wake of bad governance and treasury looting by brigand governments. I am sure the reading culture is still strong due to the activities of the association of Nigerian Authors in cooperation with the British Council, which is still very much active and strong in Nigeria. There are literary outreaches in high schools and literary activity is still very rich, with each province having a very active chapter of the Writers' Association. The Ford Foundation funds literary activities there too just like the British Council. The 'book' is very much celebrated. I grew up in that kind of ferment. And most books published elsewhere in the world are readily available in Nigeria due to the presence of local subsidiaries of multi-national publishers like Heinemann and Longman, for example. So I have been influenced by international English Literature even before leaving Nigeria and, by the educational curriculum, which steeped us in the 'Great Tradition' of Britain. I was amused that my recent poetry is influenced by a book I read here in Canada, The Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Though I don't note myself being influenced by him directly, there is also one young Canadian poet, who I think might get the Nobel Prize one day- Adam Dickinson, Edmonton poet, originally from New Brunswick. His first collection Cartography and Walking is a joy to read. If he continues on that part, I have great expectations from him. So as you can begin to understand, my influences are not only local but global as well due to a cultural globalism where cultural borders are more and more fluid. And of course I have been a traveler, gathering the dust of other places on my shoes. I have lived in Africa (Nigeria), Europe and I am in North America. What we have is a situation where the world's literature is more and more hybrid, with influences from the most unexpected places criss-crossing its surface. Now to take a related example -- think of Picasso and Modern art; his cubism was essentially a result of an encounter with African sculpture. And it revolutionized the way art was perceived in the West. There is inter-textuality for you, to use a rather literary term, which can be applied to art as well. There is one other influence, which is almost unconscious but natural due to the first language I spoke or the first culture I lived and grew up in- the Yoruba language and culture. It is a very poetic language and very tonal. This can well account for my lyrical predilection. The strongly oral and lyrical background of Yoruba orature also informs that lyrical sway; the pull and tug of the Yoruba voice is discernable in my own deployment of English rhythm. I think I have managed to marry both such that I take a middle ground. But I am still hybrid. Hybridity is the only constant in world literature today. Just take any postcolonial text and read- even Walcott. Language- the English language begins to take on colours unto itself and parades a rainbow tongue. Though I make use Standard English, but to paraphrase Achebe, eminent Nigerian writer, I make English 'carry the weight of my experiences.' I was not really influenced by German literature as such. I concentrated in my studies more on linguistics. I did write some poems in German though, which I refuse to publish because of German racist political structure even in the 21st century. Just a little protest on my side! I am a bit conversant with the German poet Holderlin and more with Maria Rilke. But I won't say I have been influenced by German poetics. I would more likely be influenced- if at all- by Brechtian theatre. These forms are not as alien to each other as we might think when one comes to think of it. Well, I am still discovering Canadian literature. The reason I did not know more about it in school and at university in Nigeria can be attributed to the fact that it is a relatively young literature. So I would describe my writing- especially poetry- as cosmopolitan, hybrid and open to influences from all directions. I still have to explore aboriginal Canadian literature. That should be interesting. So I do not think, given my experience, that it is difficult to write poetry that can compete on an international scale.
rm: How did you come to be writer-in-residence at Carleton University in Ottawa?
AE: I came to be PEN Canada's Writer-in-Residence at Carleton University under the Writers-in-Exile-Network Program of PEN International, of which the Canadian chapter is a very vibrant branch. What the exile network does is to rehabilitate and integrate writers exiled due to persecution or political and extra-political reasons, in order to protect and promote freedom of expression, which is necessary as a form of checks and balances on the political terrain. It would allow the writer to continue functioning as the conscience of his society and of the world at large. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) insisted that poets are the "unacknowledged legislators of the world." Indeed writers should be the unacknowledged legislators of the world. How do you tackle imaginative practice and political engagement without upsetting the status quo? Impossible. Therefore writers need a 'human rights arm of authors' bodies. This is the function of PEN International. And if the writer is displaced, as is too often common, then wherever he finds himself he has a home in PEN, which is represented in at least 130 countries right now. Salman Rushdie believes that "writers are citizens of many countries: the finite and frontiered country of observable reality and everyday life, the boundless kingdom of the imagination, the half-lost land of memory, the federations of the heart which are both hot and cold, the united states of the mind (calm and turbulent, broad and narrow, ordered and deranged), the celestial and infernal nations of desire, and- perhaps the most important of all our habitations- the unfettered republic of the tongue…" The writers-in-Exile Network started out under the auspices of The International Parliament of Writers, set up at the instance of the assassination of Algerian writer Tahar Djaout. An appeal was launched in July, 1993 from Strasbourg, at the initiative of Carrefour des literatures. "The organization declared that it was necessary to create a structure that could provide tangible support for writers victimized by persecution. Within a few days, a petition was signed by 300 writers throughout the entire world. This marked the birth of the International Parliament of Writers (IPW). Its goals included creating a network of Cities of Asylum and protecting the freedom of intellectual creation wherever it is threatened, by carrying out investigations on cases of censure and researching new forms of the phenomenon. On February 14, 1994, the fifth anniversary of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the organization established an executive branch made up of seven members: Adonis, Breyten Breytenbach, Jacques Derrida, Edouard Glissant, Salman Rushdie, Christian Salmon and Pierre Bourdieu. Elected first president of the IPW, Salman Rushdie drafted a Declaration of Independence, which served as the Parliament's charter." The Cities of Asylum, is what has blossomed into the 'Writer-in-Exile Network,' vibrant in North America and Europa and the Americas. It is made up of Universities and cities, who are willing to take up or take in a displaced writer for a year or two in helping to facilitate the production of literature in freedom and safety. In short as Percy Shelley would have it there is a government of writers; it is a symbolic government, with its International Parliament of writers consisting of Nobel Laureates and important writers as its head of government, and with PEN international and its branches all over the world as its organs, and the committee within PEN International (writers-in-exile, writers-in-prison, readers-and-writers and so on) as its enabling tributaries. As a member of PEN Nigeria I am automatically a member of PEN Canada or USA or UK by association. And so are you rob, if you ever find yourself in Nigeria, you approach PEN at once or they approach you. Again, according to Rushdie, "our Parliament of Writers exists to fight for oppressed writers and against all those who persecute them and their work, and to renew continually the declaration of independence without which writing is impossible; and not only writing, but dreaming; and not only dreaming, but thought; and not only thought, but liberty itself."
In 1944 as World War II raged and explosions went off close-by, a great symposium was organized where notable thinkers gathered in London to discuss "The place of Spiritual and Economic Values in the Future of Mankind." English PEN sought to pay tribute to the idea that "the human mind, if it is to develop to the full measure of its potentialities, must be free: free to grow, free to express itself, free to blunder, to make mistakes, and try again. That freedom of expression is needed more urgently in today's world with the threat of human destruction of the world by nuclear annihilation always thick in the air. Look at the Middle East, Europe (with its rabid racism and increasing right wing activity), Africa (with its endless wars and greedy dictators) and the USA's erosion of the whole idea of freedom- Guantanamo Bay is a good example.
rm: What sorts of activities have you been involved in since arriving at Carleton University? I understand, for example, that you've been involved with much more than simply the English department.
AE: As Writer-in-Residence in any university one is primarily expected to cater to mentoring creative writing students in the English department. But this is just only part of the duties. I am a general resource person for the department. I give guest lectures in the English department and in other departments. Since the inception of this residency on September the 1st I have appeared as a guest at a creative writing class led by Armand Ruffo, I have lead the creative writing workshop of the English literary society, gave a guest lecture in the English department on the question of language in African literature, gave a talk on Writing and Human Rights at the Law department and I have given a two-hour reading from my poetry at the English department. It is only just the tip of the iceberg. There will be more activities. For example, I have a public lecture at the History department in January, 2006. But I also have to make sure I am writing, which is the main part of the residency. At the end, in about a year, I should have finished manuscripts on projects I have set for myself. The Canada Council also expects this; so does PEN and so do I!
rm: What plans do you have for when you leave Carleton?
AE: Plans for the future will depend of the outcome of the residency itself. To quote Walter Savage Landor, “the Present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come; same thing with the future, since time is linear. I will play that part of the orchestra when the Conductor, Time, confuses his baton in my direction.
Amatoritsero Ede is an ex-Hindu Monk with the Hare Krishna Movement, born in Nigeria. He worked as a Book Editor with a major Nigerian publisher, Spectrum Books, before starting his studies in 1991. He has published in the past in Nigerian literary newspapers and more recently in Olongo (Ibadan Journal of the Arts, Nigeria); in international journals like Versal (Amsterdam), and in various anthologies, including Voices from the Fringe: An ANA Anthology of New Nigerian Poetry ed. Harry Garuba (Lagos: Malthouse Press, 1987), The Faith of Vultures: BBC Prize-Winning Poetry eds. Peter Porter et al (Oxford: Heinemann International, 1989), Und auf den Strassen eine Pest ed. Uche Nduka (Bad Honnef, Germany: Horelmann Verlag, 1996) and May Ayim Award Anthology eds. Peggy Piesche et al. (Berlin, Germany: Orlanda Verlag, 2004). In 1993 he won the runner-up prize of the Association of Nigerian Authors' (ANA) Poetry Competition with the manuscript of "A Writer's Pains." In 1998, he won the ANA All Africa Christopher Okigbo Prize for Literature (endowed by Wole Soyinka, Nigerian Nobel Laureate) with his first collection of poems, Collected Poems: A writer's Pains & Carribian Blues (Bremen, Germany: Yeti Press, 1998) and in 2004, he won second prize in the first May Ayim Award: International Black Germany Literary Prize. He is currently writer-in-residence at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada under the auspices of PEN Canada's Writer-in-Exile Network. He is currently working on a novel, two collections of poems, and a play. He has had readings all over Europe, including the Frankfurt Book Fair, the German PEN Centre in Berlin and the Tropical Museum in Amsterdam. In 2002, Amatoritsero Ede received a combined Honours Masters degree in German Language & Linguistics and Literature in English & Cultural Studies from the University of Hannover in Germany, for which he had a scholarship grant from the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation. He is a trained book editor and has a certificate in Print Production from the Graphic Media Development Centre, The Hague. He currently edits the online poetry journal Sentinel Poetry at sentinelpoetry.org.uk
rob mclennan: Tell me a little bit about your background.
Amatoritsero Ede: Well, my background. I am Nigerian from the Niger-Delta area of Nigeria, that rich and accursed patch of earth where Shell and other multi-national oil corporations spoil and despoil, polluting air and water. I grew up to the hot orange glow of gas flaring on the horizon. I grew up in a small coastal town called Sapele. I spent most of my adult years in Ibadan, where I also started studies in 1991, ten years after high school, after a job in book publishing with a major trade publisher and, after a romance with the muse. I began writing in high school and had my first book publication in 1988. Before that of course there were countless readings and literary journal appearances. In the Nigerian case we had literary newspapers, like the Nigerian Guardian. Soyinka, Achebe and Pepper-Clark -- three of Nigeria's biggest writers, all studied at the Ibadan University. I started studying there in 1991. Since I was in the department of Modern European Languages, I had to go to Germany (I studied German) for an immersion in the culture and the language. I ended up staying there for eight bitter-sweet years. There is still too much racism in Germany. I must always emphasize that there are very great humanists who are Germans … but the political structure allows some individuals and groups to propagate xenophobia and murder, murder in a literal sense. So I looked for a peaceful corner of the earth and hit upon Canada. The best country in the world! I was not sure returning to Nigeria was wise, even though the government seemed to have changed, my political anti-Nigerian government activities in Germany could still be in a cold-case file! So I came to Canada for the PhD, which I dropped because the department was too poisoned for any serious academic work.
rm: How would you describe your writing? Are you working strictly within Nigerian forms, or have other influences, whether German or Canadian, began to seep in? How difficult is it to write poetry on an international scale?
AE: In Nigeria, education- especially at the university level- exposes one to the western canon. Even in high school Shakespeare is a regular diet. At the university if you study English (as I did alongside German), you have to read the English classics. The difference these days, since oral literature has given way more and more to the written literature of Africa, is that we also have Modern African writers as part of the curriculum. So, in a sense, you have the best of English Literature- especially British and American and then postcolonial literatures. Again the British educational system- a colonial inheritance- ensures that there are inter-departmental elective courses; so one could take electives in classics or philosophy or any other area of the humanities. At the Modern Languages Department of the University of Ibadan, where I did my undergraduate work, they make sure we were steeped in the classical 'Greek' tradition as a map of the literary pedigree of the poetics of modern European Languages. And in the English department there is something similar in literary criticism, where you always start out with Aristotle's Poetics. So we were well schooled in the literatures of other places, and consequently were influenced by these. I had read T.S. Eliot before I ever left Nigeria -- and Neruda, Derek Walcott, Pound, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Longfellow and so on. So actually coming from the periphery, with the weight of an inherited colonial educational curriculum made our reading list truly Global. And one was of course influenced by what one read, willy-nilly. I started out reading Gerald Manley Hopkins, Alexander Pope and John Dryden- just for fun! I would go into a bookshop and just pick these off the shelves. And we did have very good bookshops and library systems. I don't know their state right now, though, in the wake of bad governance and treasury looting by brigand governments. I am sure the reading culture is still strong due to the activities of the association of Nigerian Authors in cooperation with the British Council, which is still very much active and strong in Nigeria. There are literary outreaches in high schools and literary activity is still very rich, with each province having a very active chapter of the Writers' Association. The Ford Foundation funds literary activities there too just like the British Council. The 'book' is very much celebrated. I grew up in that kind of ferment. And most books published elsewhere in the world are readily available in Nigeria due to the presence of local subsidiaries of multi-national publishers like Heinemann and Longman, for example. So I have been influenced by international English Literature even before leaving Nigeria and, by the educational curriculum, which steeped us in the 'Great Tradition' of Britain. I was amused that my recent poetry is influenced by a book I read here in Canada, The Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Though I don't note myself being influenced by him directly, there is also one young Canadian poet, who I think might get the Nobel Prize one day- Adam Dickinson, Edmonton poet, originally from New Brunswick. His first collection Cartography and Walking is a joy to read. If he continues on that part, I have great expectations from him. So as you can begin to understand, my influences are not only local but global as well due to a cultural globalism where cultural borders are more and more fluid. And of course I have been a traveler, gathering the dust of other places on my shoes. I have lived in Africa (Nigeria), Europe and I am in North America. What we have is a situation where the world's literature is more and more hybrid, with influences from the most unexpected places criss-crossing its surface. Now to take a related example -- think of Picasso and Modern art; his cubism was essentially a result of an encounter with African sculpture. And it revolutionized the way art was perceived in the West. There is inter-textuality for you, to use a rather literary term, which can be applied to art as well. There is one other influence, which is almost unconscious but natural due to the first language I spoke or the first culture I lived and grew up in- the Yoruba language and culture. It is a very poetic language and very tonal. This can well account for my lyrical predilection. The strongly oral and lyrical background of Yoruba orature also informs that lyrical sway; the pull and tug of the Yoruba voice is discernable in my own deployment of English rhythm. I think I have managed to marry both such that I take a middle ground. But I am still hybrid. Hybridity is the only constant in world literature today. Just take any postcolonial text and read- even Walcott. Language- the English language begins to take on colours unto itself and parades a rainbow tongue. Though I make use Standard English, but to paraphrase Achebe, eminent Nigerian writer, I make English 'carry the weight of my experiences.' I was not really influenced by German literature as such. I concentrated in my studies more on linguistics. I did write some poems in German though, which I refuse to publish because of German racist political structure even in the 21st century. Just a little protest on my side! I am a bit conversant with the German poet Holderlin and more with Maria Rilke. But I won't say I have been influenced by German poetics. I would more likely be influenced- if at all- by Brechtian theatre. These forms are not as alien to each other as we might think when one comes to think of it. Well, I am still discovering Canadian literature. The reason I did not know more about it in school and at university in Nigeria can be attributed to the fact that it is a relatively young literature. So I would describe my writing- especially poetry- as cosmopolitan, hybrid and open to influences from all directions. I still have to explore aboriginal Canadian literature. That should be interesting. So I do not think, given my experience, that it is difficult to write poetry that can compete on an international scale.
rm: How did you come to be writer-in-residence at Carleton University in Ottawa?
AE: I came to be PEN Canada's Writer-in-Residence at Carleton University under the Writers-in-Exile-Network Program of PEN International, of which the Canadian chapter is a very vibrant branch. What the exile network does is to rehabilitate and integrate writers exiled due to persecution or political and extra-political reasons, in order to protect and promote freedom of expression, which is necessary as a form of checks and balances on the political terrain. It would allow the writer to continue functioning as the conscience of his society and of the world at large. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) insisted that poets are the "unacknowledged legislators of the world." Indeed writers should be the unacknowledged legislators of the world. How do you tackle imaginative practice and political engagement without upsetting the status quo? Impossible. Therefore writers need a 'human rights arm of authors' bodies. This is the function of PEN International. And if the writer is displaced, as is too often common, then wherever he finds himself he has a home in PEN, which is represented in at least 130 countries right now. Salman Rushdie believes that "writers are citizens of many countries: the finite and frontiered country of observable reality and everyday life, the boundless kingdom of the imagination, the half-lost land of memory, the federations of the heart which are both hot and cold, the united states of the mind (calm and turbulent, broad and narrow, ordered and deranged), the celestial and infernal nations of desire, and- perhaps the most important of all our habitations- the unfettered republic of the tongue…" The writers-in-Exile Network started out under the auspices of The International Parliament of Writers, set up at the instance of the assassination of Algerian writer Tahar Djaout. An appeal was launched in July, 1993 from Strasbourg, at the initiative of Carrefour des literatures. "The organization declared that it was necessary to create a structure that could provide tangible support for writers victimized by persecution. Within a few days, a petition was signed by 300 writers throughout the entire world. This marked the birth of the International Parliament of Writers (IPW). Its goals included creating a network of Cities of Asylum and protecting the freedom of intellectual creation wherever it is threatened, by carrying out investigations on cases of censure and researching new forms of the phenomenon. On February 14, 1994, the fifth anniversary of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the organization established an executive branch made up of seven members: Adonis, Breyten Breytenbach, Jacques Derrida, Edouard Glissant, Salman Rushdie, Christian Salmon and Pierre Bourdieu. Elected first president of the IPW, Salman Rushdie drafted a Declaration of Independence, which served as the Parliament's charter." The Cities of Asylum, is what has blossomed into the 'Writer-in-Exile Network,' vibrant in North America and Europa and the Americas. It is made up of Universities and cities, who are willing to take up or take in a displaced writer for a year or two in helping to facilitate the production of literature in freedom and safety. In short as Percy Shelley would have it there is a government of writers; it is a symbolic government, with its International Parliament of writers consisting of Nobel Laureates and important writers as its head of government, and with PEN international and its branches all over the world as its organs, and the committee within PEN International (writers-in-exile, writers-in-prison, readers-and-writers and so on) as its enabling tributaries. As a member of PEN Nigeria I am automatically a member of PEN Canada or USA or UK by association. And so are you rob, if you ever find yourself in Nigeria, you approach PEN at once or they approach you. Again, according to Rushdie, "our Parliament of Writers exists to fight for oppressed writers and against all those who persecute them and their work, and to renew continually the declaration of independence without which writing is impossible; and not only writing, but dreaming; and not only dreaming, but thought; and not only thought, but liberty itself."
In 1944 as World War II raged and explosions went off close-by, a great symposium was organized where notable thinkers gathered in London to discuss "The place of Spiritual and Economic Values in the Future of Mankind." English PEN sought to pay tribute to the idea that "the human mind, if it is to develop to the full measure of its potentialities, must be free: free to grow, free to express itself, free to blunder, to make mistakes, and try again. That freedom of expression is needed more urgently in today's world with the threat of human destruction of the world by nuclear annihilation always thick in the air. Look at the Middle East, Europe (with its rabid racism and increasing right wing activity), Africa (with its endless wars and greedy dictators) and the USA's erosion of the whole idea of freedom- Guantanamo Bay is a good example.
rm: What sorts of activities have you been involved in since arriving at Carleton University? I understand, for example, that you've been involved with much more than simply the English department.
AE: As Writer-in-Residence in any university one is primarily expected to cater to mentoring creative writing students in the English department. But this is just only part of the duties. I am a general resource person for the department. I give guest lectures in the English department and in other departments. Since the inception of this residency on September the 1st I have appeared as a guest at a creative writing class led by Armand Ruffo, I have lead the creative writing workshop of the English literary society, gave a guest lecture in the English department on the question of language in African literature, gave a talk on Writing and Human Rights at the Law department and I have given a two-hour reading from my poetry at the English department. It is only just the tip of the iceberg. There will be more activities. For example, I have a public lecture at the History department in January, 2006. But I also have to make sure I am writing, which is the main part of the residency. At the end, in about a year, I should have finished manuscripts on projects I have set for myself. The Canada Council also expects this; so does PEN and so do I!
rm: What plans do you have for when you leave Carleton?
AE: Plans for the future will depend of the outcome of the residency itself. To quote Walter Savage Landor, “the Present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come; same thing with the future, since time is linear. I will play that part of the orchestra when the Conductor, Time, confuses his baton in my direction.
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