Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:06 You're listening to writing Home American Voices from the Caribbean with Kaiama Glover and Tami Navarro.
Speaker 2 00:00:26 What brutal hours, What brutal days? Do not say. Do not say, Oh, find the good in it. Do not say there was virtue. There was no virtue. Not even in me. Let us begin from there. Restraining metals covered my heart. Ridiculous of some unknown substance. Transfused my veins at night. It, especially at night, it is always at night. A wall of concrete enclosed me. It was impossible to open my eyes. I lived like this, as I said, without care. Tanks rolled into my life. Grenades took root in my uterus. I was sickly each morning so dearly, what to say. Life went on around me. I laughed. I had drinks, I gathered with friends. We gRED our aluminum teeth. We exhaled our venomous breaths. We tried to be calm in the invisible architecture. We incubated live cluster bombs, whole lives waiting.
Speaker 3 00:01:36 Hi Tami.
Speaker 4 00:01:37 Hi, Kaiama. Wow. <laugh>.
Speaker 3 00:01:39 Yeah. Good to see you. Uh, so good to be back doing our thing. Um, could you go ahead and just set all of this up for us, starting with what we were just listening to, who we were just listening to A little stroll down memory lane.
Speaker 4 00:01:51 Absolutely. Um, that was the illustrious Dionne Brand reading from her 2010 poetry collection. Aries, uh, Dionne Brand is a renowned poet, novelist and essayist. Her fiction includes the novel in another place, not here at the full and change of the moon. What we all long for and theory, her nonfiction includes bread out of stone and a map to the door of no return, which is a meditation on blackness in the diaspora that evening where Dionne spoke, the words you just heard, we were hosting a critical Caribbean feminism's conversation where Dionne spoke with Claudia Rankin about social justice activism and the possibilities of writing, um, which we framed as the poetics of justice.
Speaker 3 00:02:36 Yes, that's right. And we're so thrilled to have a chance today to maybe revisit some of the threads we started pulling back then, and of course to wander into some new territory. So with that, let me say welcome Dionne.
Speaker 2 00:02:49 Hi. Good morning.
Speaker 3 00:02:50 Good
Speaker 4 00:02:51 Morning. It's, it's so great to talk with you again
Speaker 3 00:02:53 And to see you sort of in this weird virtual space. Um, and we are so happy to have you with us and grateful really, because it has been a very, uh, very busy year for you. The fact of the z averse has meant you've been pretty much nonstop and, um, as someone who has been stalking you. And by that I mean attending most, if not all, I think of your tops. It's, frankly, it's been very difficult to keep up. So I imagine you must be completely exhausted at this point. No.
Speaker 5 00:03:20 Um, I've tried to keep them minimal <laugh> like, but apparently I have not succeeded at that <laugh>. Wow. And, um, yeah, it's a different space, isn't it? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. You want to, to speak well into that space and that, I don't know, not fall prey to, its, to the technology itself in some ways. Okay. Like not, uh, how to be in that virtual space without taking up, Its trying to say something meaningful into that space. Yeah. Because it is so, it is so multitudinous, which is a wonderful thing because one of the great things I've learned so much from so many people through that space that perhaps I wouldn't have been able to attend all those things that I've attended. But, but I thought it's really important also to say, you know, something vaguely meaningful into this space.
Speaker 3 00:04:15 It'll be so interesting in the, in the wake of all this, I feel like we've been breathless and just sort of doing, and, you know, the memes on the internet, like yeah. You sign up for all these talks and you go to them and you race through them. Sometimes you're watching two at a time or one right after the another. And I wonder, you know, after all of this is done, will we look back and feel enriched or exhausted or, Yeah. Yeah. I
Speaker 5 00:04:36 Just wonder. I hope so. Cuz I think I feel enriched by a lot of the black thinking that I've been privy to mm-hmm. <affirmative>, especially in this moment, Right. In this really kind of, um, critical anxiety ridden moment. But I think that what black thinkers have produced in this space is like marvelous. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, I've, I've heard some fabulous conversations and fabulous thinking because in some sense we we're sort of called to think critically of, of the most important things in our lives right now. Yeah. And so I think I've heard a lot of that. Yes. Um, yeah. So I'm happy to have been in the space, but the space is exhausting.
Speaker 4 00:05:19 <laugh> also happy to hopefully be exiting this space
Speaker 3 00:05:23 <laugh> at some point soon. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I just realized, you know, even just the ability to cross the borders between Canada and the US and kind of think about blackness in that way, like physically, or not really physically, but virtually be in conversations that wouldn't necessarily have been possible because of travel and funds and resources. Exactly. Yeah. It's, it's opened things up in an interesting way. But yeah. So, uh, we started, but I get to start with, I have a question.
Speaker 5 00:05:50 Okay, good.
Speaker 3 00:05:51 And it's gonna take us back to that event, and don't worry, this isn't a memory test. Um, I'll, I'll good. <laugh>, we got you on the show. You have to recall. No, I'm gonna remind you that, um, and I hope you'll take my word for it. You talked a lot about in that moment the inextricability obviously of poetic and political, um, acting into the world. And so this was back in 2017, you were speaking to us from what you know at the time felt like a space of a kind of almost brittle despair, like from a rock and a hard place. You were situated somewhere in the middle as you were speaking. And here we are now four years later. And it, you know, a lot, a lot has changed and a lot has not changed at all. Um, and so I just am I'm wondering if you can talk to us about where you are now, and you can take that however you you want to take it. But, but I'd say I, I'm, I'm wondering about how you feel about the political possibilities of poetry today. What about the landscape that you are writing into looks same. Same. And what, if anything, looks different in a meaningful way?
Speaker 5 00:06:52 Well, I mean, I've taken this work that I do, um, in terms of poetry making as a kind of duration project anyway, <laugh>, Right. Um, and a project that, um, is mine and also belongs to others. So the poets that preceded me and the poets that come after me in this work of, you know, speaking, uh, liberation into the world or trying to, at any rate, trying to think about it, I've always taken it as a kind of durational thing. Well, perhaps that's not quite true. I did think at some point, you know, when I began working that you speak it and it becomes <laugh> like you speak liberation, and it arrives that somehow, like
Speaker 3 00:07:55 Conjuring,
Speaker 5 00:07:56 Oh, maybe not conjuring <laugh>. I don't wanna get that mystical, but somehow if you could speak, uh, the language of liberation into the world, it becomes real in Mm. You know, it becomes what, what you think, what you live, what you produce. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>
Speaker 3 00:08:14 Actualized.
Speaker 5 00:08:15 So yeah. So I, I thought, I thought in the beginning of writing that, um, that that is what would happen. And then I understood it as a duration project, <laugh> <laugh>, given that the forces are raided against that liberation were, um, so accomplished. <laugh> <laugh>, you know? Yeah. She, so many resources at there. Uh, you know, the
Speaker 3 00:08:39 Words were good.
Speaker 5 00:08:40 So, so, um, so that you, you, you had to survive them in, in a way Yeah. And that you had to keep that I had to, as a poet, keep producing and keep, keep thinking and keep generating, uh, the kind of language that would overcome that. Right. Um, I have no idea if I've gone totally off of what you've asked, but, um, you've
Speaker 3 00:09:06 Gone the
Speaker 5 00:09:07 Right place. Yeah. But, but basically I just saw writing poetry as a kind of act of a continuing act of, of, um, liberation. A continuing act of thinking mm-hmm. <affirmative> and, um, and making what you thought real of producing, uh, languages that could be spoken against those forces, array against that liberation. So, yeah. So, so yes, things, uh, remain the same. And that, and they also don't,
Speaker 3 00:09:42 I mean, I did want, the one place I wanted to push you is, I, I don't know why I wanna know this. Yeah. But I want, it's, it's like the feeling of it, because I just remember so starkly, you know, that was 2017. We were reeling, reeling in grief from when it happened in November of that year, you know, And, and this actually oddly, kind of marks the end of that particular acute, uh, trauma, I guess. Right. And, and there's a little window that is opened for hope
Speaker 4 00:10:14 I, which is maybe, which is maybe experienced differently in your daily life, Dion, cuz we're talking, we're both based in the US and you're in Canada. So I wonder, you know, how that clearly this dystopia was, was global <laugh> Yeah. With the, with the presidency we've just, um, come out of, but yeah. How
Speaker 5 00:10:33 Is that? Yeah, I mean, you know, empire is empire, right? <laugh> and not local at all. <laugh>, but, but global and has all its iterations everywhere, including in spaces where, uh, you know, black people are in power too. Not, not, not just north of that border, but also like, spread around the world, how it, how it spreads. Its, um, its, it's energies and it's work, it's work both kind of educative and power producing and so on, Right? So, so yes, that was that moment and it was a dreadful moment. And, and we seemed to be moved. We moved from dreadful, more dreadful to more dreadful. Right. And it had felt a, a quite gloomy moment. It was deeply gloomy. But I, I don't know. I suppose in my experience, I've been, I've experienced, you know, the cyclical nature of it, right? With each cycle it produces something, you know, more horrible perhaps, and, um, recognizable too, right?
Speaker 5 00:11:38 I mean, like, these cycles are recognizable as slavery is recognizable to us in the present. And as these upheavals or upticks of horror <laugh> happen. So, so I guess I've seen it or something. That's, that's a terrible thing to, to say or even to be in, in some ways. And I've seen our recoveries right, Okay. From it too. Right? Every time I think about that moment, I think it's only a deeper moment, as I said back then in 2017 to the, to the time I experienced in Grenada, during the revolution mm-hmm. <affirmative> when I went to live there only for, for less than a year, Right. And observed the, the in the invasion and the, the demise of that revolution. And out of that space, I, you know, at the end of that I thought, well, how will I recover? Like, how does one recover from, you know, the ending of, of a possibility, right?
Speaker 5 00:12:37 The end of possibility. Like how do you, how do you come over that? And unfortunately, the body keeps existing and <laugh>, it's a, it's a body that I have to keep protecting <laugh> and working to make live in a, in a, in a good place, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And it's also a kind of confirmation about the meaningfulness of that struggle, um, and, and an acknowledgement of all the people that you are in that struggle with. And you know, the thing you have to do to keep existing, right? The thing you have to become to keep existing. And, and so the work I took on as a poet was to whether one gets sort of beaten up by that system, <laugh>, uh, uh, recovery is, is, is, uh, is the next thing you have to do mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? It's the next thing you have to do.
Speaker 5 00:13:36 And the language of that recovery has to be the next thing that you do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Surviving though the language of survival, but not just survival, but, but change. What is, what is the next thing? There's a kind of a gyra of terror, if you will, that we are in, but each time that Jira hits us, we move too. Yeah. You know, it is not inevitable. And it is, and we, um, we spring off of that Jira, and we produce language and we produce knowledge also. So the only knowledge making machine is not the knowledge making machine of oppression, but the knowledge making machine of liberation. So you kind of, you know, you hit that, uh, that spot and you also produce work thought theory. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:14:33 I have to ask, this is not my next question, but I just, what you've said makes me wonder about your approach, like seeing these moments of oppression and these horrible unfoldings of history, a cyclical, not to say inevitable. I wonder if it's empowering that recognition that it is not a sort of unique spike in time. Maybe that's the wrong word. Certainly it's unique, but it's not a sort of sort of siloed moment of time, but rather it's part of a continuum, part of a process. I wonder if those, if that recognition of the processual nature of it is in some sense empowering to resistance mm-hmm. <affirmative> Yeah. That there have been tools, right? There have been tools that have been taken up before, there have been strategies we're in a different place.
Speaker 5 00:15:14 Yeah. Perhaps if, if that is the meaning of that word. Certainly. Um, you one is involved in one's own liberation, right? Yeah. And as long as you haven't been completely devastated, then you have a, a path <laugh> Yeah. You have a way to, to think about it, right? You absorb the knowledges that you acquire during that particular upheaval. Yeah. And you take that and build your, your next move, it seems to me. Right? I have no idea why I am sounding so hopeful about the entire project. It's amazing, <laugh>.
Speaker 4 00:15:51 I set that up as a question, hope, some hope embedded in it somewhere.
Speaker 5 00:15:55 I'm not, I'm not, I hate, I hate the word hope, you know, or the, or the invention of it, right? Yeah. But, um, because it, uh, it, it is so fractured. It means so many things to different people, right? Um, for some people it means that we should take more <laugh>, Right? And I don't, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 00:16:13 Cause one has the right to be exhausted to
Speaker 5 00:16:15 Right, Exactly.
Speaker 3 00:16:16 One has the right to be very exhausted Exactly. When you see it coming
Speaker 5 00:16:20 Again. Absolutely. Right. And, and the ways in which it, it, it, it keeps coming in the same, same iterations in some kind of a way. Like all the deaths, you know, all the deaths we experience, um, uh, you know, the, the, the, the shootings, the, the, uh, those killings, the other kinds of killings, which are killings of want, you know, the, the Mediterranean love violence, that kind of death, the entire array of violence that we experience, you know? But I think we are beings that observe and think through and move against, you know, and, uh, and resist. So yeah, I count on
Speaker 4 00:17:02 That. Thank you for that. Uh, so now I'm gonna ask you my actual question, <laugh>, Um, Okay. Which ties back, um, into the, what we were talking about before about, about poetry. And I wanted to ask you something particularly about poetry, because in our earlier conversation you said something wonderful, which is, you said, narrative asks you what it is, and poetry asks you who you are. Um, and there you were pointing to the liberatory possibilities of poetry for black people specifically. So since then, you've written lots more on the constraints of the narrative form. Um, yet you've also offered us theory, that book. Um, so I wonder what led you to write this work, um, and how it was informed by your insights and your thoughts around poetry and narrative.
Speaker 5 00:17:45 I understood, you know, really early on in my life as a writer, the, the power of, of, of, of words, the power of language to kind of form the world, uh, change the world, right? But I also understood the kind of, therefore I understood the treachery of language <laugh>, right? Um, and, and how it formed worlds, right? How it made worlds, uh, how it confirmed worlds. Uh, so I'm always in my practice, uh, thinking about that, right? Mm. And you know, I wrote a, a, a small text, which came from a, uh, a talk I did at the University of Calgary, uh, called, um, an Autobiography of the Autobiography of Reading. Mm. Right? So, and it was about all of the texts that I had read as a child and as a teenager and adult, and the ways in which those texts formed me, mostly 19th century British lit, right?
Speaker 5 00:19:05 Where, you know, black people, the Atlantic, the slave trade, et cetera, is, uh, positioned in particular ways, but where the text calls you to engage in and to confirm and to conform to 19th century, you know, British colonialism, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, and where it suggested you insert yourself, right? Even as, uh, black figures in those texts pass by, pass you by, but the figure and the subject that you, you are called to support inhabit is that white figure, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and, and that white figure's life and success, et cetera, in all of it's like, you know, deformities, <laugh>, right? But you are called to inhabit those texts in those kinds of ways mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and the ways in which those texts, what the effect those texts have on you, the kind of inadvertent, the, you know, completely commonplace ways in which you inhabit those texts, and you identify with those figures, you know, the main subject.
Speaker 5 00:20:14 So I'm always thinking about the undoing of these, these, these things, the materializing nature of certain kinds of texts, and not, not only in sort of course ways, but in quite intimate ways, the ways in which these texts work in you. So it is as if in like language itself or narrative itself, or narrativizing life itself, I take it as my, my little factory <laugh>, you know what I mean? You know, the work that I have to do to remake these materials or to take the material and, and work that material, work that material, rework some of that material, and then work those materials into, into being into the kind of being that describes truly what I, and people like me actually live, right? And their relation to this other engine at work, making language, therefore making experience and making life the re in the reproduction of life, right? How language works in the reproduction of life. So that might be a partial kind of answer to the question.
Speaker 4 00:21:30 No, there isn't a part of the question you missed. I guess I was thinking specifically it's, it was really my thought around form, because you had, um, it seemed to me invested so much possibility in the form of poetry. And so I was thinking about theory, the text theory that came out, um, as a more sort of narrative style. And I was wondering if there had been, not to the exclusion of narrative, but I'm wondering if there had been a shift in your thinking that led to your desire to produce theory?
Speaker 5 00:21:58 No, <laugh> No, no, no. There's no shift in my thinking. It's just that I, I, I feel that there are all these modes, there are all these modes, uh, uh, of, of possible, um, making that I, that are completely available to me, even if I resist or object to those modes, <laugh>.
Speaker 4 00:22:19 So in the factory, in the factory, there are a number of tools,
Speaker 5 00:22:23 Exactly. Uhhuh.
Speaker 5 00:22:25 And what I, I think what I do with, so I express my contradiction, you know, or the contradictions of these modes, but I keep trying to, uh, see what my interest in, in fiction that I say, or, or even in narrative, even non non-fiction kind of narrative or, or fictional narrative, is to see how poetry that is the kind of complexity of poetry can lend what, what poetry can lend to those forms, right? So therefore, how do I work the double, uh, and triple meanings of po meaning possibilities in poetry to fiction, for example, right? So in the case of theory, which is a woman who is trying to write a theoretical work is caught up in the sort of mundane realities of living, but is also also thinking about those mundane realities as theory themselves. Hmm. Right? So there are about three things, three or four things going on in theory. And this is where at least <laugh>, at least <laugh>.
Speaker 5 00:23:51 So this is where the business of poetry enters the kind of multiple meaning going on in the text, including in the form of the text. So theory is what seems to be a, well, one, can't even call it linear, but what seems to be the life of one person, you know, the failure of a student of something, but not really, because what is also going on is the, the contemplation of the narrator on life itself, on the elementary in life, but also making that into her theory, her observation, herself observation, as well as her observation of the lovers that she encounters, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and her observations of the effects of her lovers that she encounters on it. And she's trying to be completely honest in writing that out about her own, uh, failures in that, her own failures, to see what it is that is in front of her, as well as her encounters with that.
Speaker 5 00:24:56 Uh, what my friend Ronaldo Walcutt calls the forensic scene of the crime, <laugh> of <laugh>, That that is the university itself, <laugh>, you know, the, the, um, the, the, the, um, the intellectual scene of the crime, if you will. Um, so she is making a critique of that also, but, and not just the relations in that university now, but also the ideas produced in that university. And so the whole text becomes the theory itself, right? Right. And then there are all kinds of other things, like all the footnotes I use in that are footnotes from other people's <laugh> theories. <laugh>, right? So there's, there are many layers going on in it. So I guess that is the way in which I thought the poetic poetics worked in it, Right? Or thinking through what poetry does might work in that. So no, I haven't given up on the notion that narrative, whether it's fictional narrative or nonfiction narrative is a tricky space, you know, is a colonially tricky space simply because of all the received understandings that are lodged in there, and how they make us operate to, to justify our existence in a way, in ways that poetry doesn't.
Speaker 5 00:26:24 So I think what I say is that the na the, the, the reader interrogates narrative, but poetry interrogates the reader, right? And so I was hoping for in theory, that it would be a certain kind of interrogation of the reader. Mm. It may not have turned out that way, but <laugh>, we'll see.
Speaker 4 00:26:50 Yeah. No, I think it did. And that's very useful. I mean, that's what I was trying to get at in, in the question that's really useful to think about what was embedded in the form, um, as you wrote theory.
Speaker 5 00:27:00 Yeah. Because, you know, there's a way in which the market produces a certain narrative and asks every writer mm-hmm. <affirmative> to produce it in the same way, because the market needs to sell the product of writing, right? Like one sells shoes, for example. Oh, I like that stripe. Oh, I like that color. Oh, the <laugh>. You know what I mean? That that transparency on the heel is really nice. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? And so every producer produces the transparency in the heel of the sneaker. And, and so every writer is supposed to produce a certain shape of narrative, and then, and then that's saleable, but yes. And if one doesn't produce that shape, then the, the work sinks in in some way. Right? It's a,
Speaker 4 00:27:50 That's so devastating that the primary relationship of this work to its audience is cons that of consumer and producer. Yeah.
Speaker 5 00:27:58 Yeah. I mean, read the New York Times <laugh>, right? Post <laugh>.
Speaker 3 00:28:05 Yeah. But the book is also, you know, it's a refusal and a contestation of that. And I don't know if this is just because of, you know, practicing refusal in that space that I got the pleasure of occupying with you a little bit over the, over the years, But it did read to me as an extended questioning on multiple fronts, right? It is, it is about theory, but it's also a series of love stories or a love story in a way, right? Yeah. It's equal parts self mocking and incredibly earnest as well. <laugh>. Yeah. And so, yeah, so in that way, that novel in particular, but more broadly, um, just thinking about refusing within the confines of the, the space you inhabit. I did wanna ask a question of you that I hope, you know, at the risk of being somewhat crude, but you know, you, you have won a number of prizes at this point.
Speaker 3 00:28:55 You are established in the academy. You have been a journal editor, You worked as an editor for a major publishing house. And so I just wonder what it means to you or how it feels to you, how you live with having a certain, and I don't like how do you live with, but I'm asking like how you live with <laugh> having power, right? In some of the very spaces that you can test in and, and through your work, how you, you navigate what in, in, in the space of francophone literature that I work in, that that maize that living within the system, while also fleeing from it and resisting it, but having to rely on it and negotiate with it. So if you have any thoughts on that, I'd be curious to hear.
Speaker 5 00:29:34 I don't, don't have any thoughts on it.
Speaker 3 00:29:36 Right. Well then there we next question.
Speaker 5 00:29:40 We finished here. Um, you want the music <laugh>? I don't want power <laugh>. I don't, you know what I mean? I, I, I, I, within it, I don't want at least, at least I don't want power in terms of the definition of power that prevails. Okay? Right? Mm. You know, in, in my book, The Blue Clerk, I have a piece that talks about reading borje, um, essay on his father's library. And then realizing that I had no library and being content with it said something about my usual happiness of being without, but then realizing that my library was my grandfather mm-hmm. <affirmative> Yeah. And his texts and his way in the world and what he studied, like, you know, how clouds move and what rain is necessary, and, uh, when the sun, uh, the degrees of the sun so that he could open the, the roof to dry the Cora, et cetera.
Speaker 5 00:30:52 And that all these things were my library in some ways. So, but you asked me a question that I think I need to answer. I just, I kept working at my work, right? And I kept working at my work for, for the people that I worked for <laugh>, namely us. I also tried to keep a kind of balance that I wasn't working for the system. I, you know, I was working for those that I was writing about and those who I was writing to, Right? And that if it failed on the normative front, it, it couldn't fail. If it failed on this, on some kind of normative front, that is, if it failed within the regimes of power that were kind of white supremacy and and so on, then that would be fine. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that, that's, that's actually a success in terms of, you know, who I was writing to.
Speaker 5 00:31:55 I think my work was buoyed by a lot of black people, really, you know, listening for it, you know, wanting to hear it, it having some meaning for, Right. I mean, my early texts were published by black publishers, um, Coan artists, the publisher, Harold Head, who was the, um, husband of Bessie Head, who was a journalist in South Africa, and who fled because he was banned in South Africa and in the late sixties, early seventies, fled South Africa, ended up in Canada, started a press called Cosan Artist, and published my first very bad book of poetry, right? From which there are maybe two poems that I ever want to hear again, <laugh>. In fact, I'm trying to buy up those copies of that binder, Right? So, and, and it is he who, you know, propelled the said, Okay, it's good, It's, it's okay, <laugh>. Right? And published that book, and subsequently published by Williams Wallace Press, Black woman ran that press.
Speaker 5 00:33:09 Her name was Anne Wallace, and she published my next two or three books of poetry, including the one that I wrote after coming back from Grenada. So my work has been supported by black communities and black community presses, which then gave them a certain appearance, <laugh>, and then taken up by more those establishment presses and so on. So that's been my route, <laugh>, in a way, uh, and, and continue to be sustained by, you know, black audiences as well as left audiences. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So that's been the, the route of that work, uh, and how that work has come into, into a, a wider, if you will, readership. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:33:58 That helps me understand. Also then the, the editorial work and obviously the pedagogy that comes with your position in the academy, I wonder the, those forms of work. So the, the, the, there's the work of writing and creating and, and then you always so beautifully say language making and the face of verness, and, you know, these are your incredible formulations. And then there's the labor that is attached to the more explicitly, you said you write for others, but like working for others, grading papers, teaching classes, reviewing manuscripts, deciding, you know, are those two Dion's? Are they, are they, are they, are they in, in conversation with one another? Is like, All right, let me go to my day job at this, at the university. Like, right. <laugh>, like, just kinda trying to imagine the totality of, of where you are and who you are as a writer right now, and a contributor.
Speaker 5 00:34:49 Well, the other thing that that happened to me around that same time of, you know, meeting Harold Head and Ann Wallace, et cetera, was also, um, I was a community worker. Mm. Right. Back in the day, <laugh>. And there was an organization here called the Black Education Project, um, led by one of the women who led that project was a woman called Marlene Green, who has passed, uh, since whom I actually went to Grenada with and working in left politics and working in, in, you know, on the black left in Canada. And so my training is in community work, <laugh> also. It simply, at a certain point I thought, what I can do, what I think I can do is write and that can do another kind of work Okay. If you will. Right. So every time I think about writing, I don't think about it as a singular, a kind of solo act, but that part of my training steps in.
Speaker 5 00:35:51 And I think, Well, what else can I, what, what else can I do to kind of spread this, this work around? So the work of writing is a kind of communal work also, albeit work that sometimes I have to take into this room <laugh> by myself to do, but it's also that kind of work, right? And so that's been part of the, part of the practice also to think with other people to kind of extend oneself. So I'm not the, I'm not that, you know, white male lone writer who is just speaking, you know, wisdoms into the planet, you know, into the atmosphere of some kind of way. But I'm a, I'm a thinker thinking with other people and doing, doing what I do as others, do what they do. Like, so as, as, as other poli as political activists and community workers make their work, I make work within the, within that broader framework that it's attached to other work. You know? That
Speaker 4 00:36:52 Is, that is almost seamless. Thank you. Because you've brought us to a place of community and, and the ways in which you think alongside not just other people, but sort of the other movements. And I, I wanted to ask you a question that could either be framed as related to Canon or who you see as your, maybe more on point, the improvisational partners, um, that you have in your work, because I'm so interested in the way that you engage with citation, cuz you don't only just cite broadly, but you do so across genres. So we hear from Fon, er, we hear from John Coltrane in partnership. I remember you talked about the drummer, Rushy Del mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, when we were together. Um, so I just wonder if you could tell us a bit about how you choose the material that you're gonna engage with in your various projects.
Speaker 5 00:37:39 You know, I think I'm, I'm a collector, right? Um, and I, I collect to, um, thicken my knowledge, right? I mean, I, I have to keep thinking and I have to keep thinking with everyone that I could possibly think with mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, so like, I'm continuously collecting work. So if I think of the coal train, or if I think of, you know, the mighty spoiler <laugh>, or if I think of Peter Tosh <laugh> mm-hmm. <affirmative>, or if I think of the eye trees, right? <laugh>, like, I, I, um, I think of how they embody a certain kind of progressive move, a certain revolutionary move, you know, through our experiences in the diaspora through, uh, post trans Atlantic slavery experiences, how they are produced, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, as I think I am produced out of that experience, I think of their connection to me and their connection to meaning making Mm.
Speaker 5 00:38:52 Out of that, Right. I'm grateful to have found Fanau at 17, right? Like reading the rat of the oath at 17, not understanding it, but understanding it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, you know, listening to Peter Tasha at whatever, <laugh>, it seems to me the same kind of meaning making mm-hmm. <affirmative> out of this experience in the diaspora out of the middle passage mm-hmm. <affirmative> and anyone who could facilitate that liberatory impetus I collected. Yeah. And, and think with and, and go through and, and that is cross, cross genre. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, um, I've been recently thinking about this, um, painter, uh, this, sorry, this visual artist, Ibrahim Mahama, who I walked into the Venice Bial a couple of years ago, and the smell of salt cod hit hit me in, in Ibrahim Maha's, um, installation. And it was this netting kind of wire netting of an installation with salt cod, the smell of salt cod in it. And this is Ibrahim Mahama, a Ghanaian, um, visual artist and the smell of salt cod immediately, that's such a Caribbean smell. <laugh>, you know what I mean? Or that's such a Kensington market, Toronto smell <laugh> what? I mean, like Yeah. And that is such an old smell. That is a smell that's like 500 years old or something like that, as old as a slave trade, right? Yeah. And making those kind of connections. Right. So I wanna write something about that. Yeah. Prompt me. So so I don't go off No,
Speaker 4 00:40:42 No, no, you're not going off course, you're on. I mean, it was really just a question about how I think your framing of yourself as a collector is a really useful way to, to think about it, because it, it does seem that you choose, um, from these what could be presented as sort of discrete spaces of production, but you bring them together in, in the service of a particular project.
Speaker 5 00:41:03 Yeah. And, you know, um, a few years ago too, again, at the, at the Venice Bina, I walk into this installation that's, and I write about it in the Blue Clerk. That's just a sound installation. And I wandered into it, right? Christina and I kind of wandered into this space that were just these mics, and you could sit at the mic and listen, you could put this on. And, and then we realized it's the sound of all the lost languages or the languages that no longer exist. And there's this woman who is the elder of the Sal Nam, and this is the last speaker of Sal Nam, who are the people from southern, uh, Peru, right? Who were hunted by the colonizers, by Spanish colonizers actually were hunted, um, with bounty on their, on their, on the killing of each of of them, killing them off.
Speaker 5 00:41:59 But I suddenly heard the sound of her saying, you know, something like, I had come from the mountains and, and I just wept because I was hearing the last sound of a whole people who inhabited that entire, you know, southern region of South America. And it was like the ending of them, the ending of the sound of them, you know, one can't help but be connected in those ways with that precisely because of the history that, that, that we come from. One, you cannot help, but that cannot help, but like, you know, inhabit you and, and move you. Yeah. Um, so it's that kind of collection, that kind of thing that I, that I hope I do. Oh, I think I can't be parochial about what I collect or what I see and it's connections, but I, I, so I I I give myself the, the, the room and the freedom to collect broadly that which connects to that particular history and to have it have an effect on the work and to have it enter the work and to recall it for somebody <laugh>. Yeah. You know?
Speaker 4 00:43:12 Yeah. It's beautiful.
Speaker 3 00:43:13 You've just, um, you've just, uh, done us the service because we're running a little shorter on time. Now. You've answered a question that I had for you. Um, it was literally going to be who were the voices in your head? And, and I was thinking of that in terms of who of your, who are your kind of literary ancestors or who are you reading now who you're writing with? But you've answered that question, um, in such an incredible way because you've opened it up obviously to say that you're not just writing with writers, obviously you are writing with community, and you are writing with unexpected voices in your head. And,
Speaker 5 00:43:48 Um, Absolutely.
Speaker 3 00:43:50 Yeah. I'll just say, I'm not gonna ask you that question. Um,
Speaker 5 00:43:54 You know, there are the, there are the, um, Yes, you're right. <laugh>,
Speaker 3 00:43:59 I, it's funny you may have saved me from myself because I asked a similar question to, um, ve Donika, and she's like, Hiam, you can't have me up here name checking some people and forgetting other people. And it's,
Speaker 4 00:44:13 But it's also, it's also beautiful when you think about it, the kind of sensory experience when you talk about the salted cod, right? The kind of evocative memories and the kind of long time, deep time that that can evoke for people. I think that, that, that is a, a really lovely way to think about one's influences.
Speaker 5 00:44:31 Yeah. And maybe the first, the first, my first, um, my ear text is probably my grandmother <laugh>, Right. And my grandfather. I mean, those are the, you know, that's the sound of them, you know, the sound of them on an evening telling a story. That's, that's the major text at, at work.
Speaker 3 00:44:49 So I, I, I wanted to think about time and space, I guess is what we're talking about. You, you migrated from Trinidad and Tobago to Canada, and then began publishing your work once you were in diaspora. And, and just to clarify is the wrong word, but I'm sort of in the realm of clarify. You are understood. Yes, of course. And I hope not to uncomfortably to be a Caribbean writer, but you are also necessarily a black Canadian writer. And I'm wondering, you know, to what extent, if at all those kind of labels matter to you, um, as a writer and a thinker and, and as an activist, let's say as well. Um,
Speaker 5 00:45:25 Oh, I'm not an activist <laugh>.
Speaker 3 00:45:27 Okay. All right.
Speaker 5 00:45:29 Um huh. But to what extent they matter, Uh, not any, I'm not sure what the claims mean. I'm not sure within the context of the politics that we live.
Speaker 3 00:45:42 Yeah.
Speaker 5 00:45:43 I'm not entirely sure what they all mean. Um, I'm not entirely sure what home means. I'd like to, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 00:45:53 Of course. This is the question. Yeah,
Speaker 5 00:45:55 Yeah. How one, what, what, what is one attaching oneself to, um, and seen as how some homes are so violent? I'm not sure. Uh, so I wanna undo all of them in some way. Constantly, constantly undo home suggests safety, uh, loyalty, ownership, betrayal, uh, many things, right? And I'm, I'm not sure that I think through the word home without its attachments and it's contradictions.
Speaker 3 00:46:30 And do you, and, and, and certainly then not. So with respect to nationality.
Speaker 5 00:46:36 Yeah, Yeah. I'm okay. I'm comp, I'm, I'm completely resistant to nationality without, uh, trying to form offense to make offense. Uhhuh <affirmative>. Um, I have some affinities, you know, I have a kind of affinity globally to black people. <laugh> a deep affinity.
Speaker 3 00:46:59 A borderless
Speaker 5 00:47:00 Affinity. A borderless affinity. That's a lovely way of saying it. Yeah. A borderless affinity and I, and yet I don't want to give up on some localities in a way. Right. Okay. Um, of course. I just think we have to make a new formulation. I owe final, I owe Cze, I owe the Mighty Sparrow and Calypso Rose <laugh>. Right. I owe the Eley Brothers <laugh>. I owe fella some, like, you know, I owe so much right to everyone, and without giving up any of that, I owe the carnival in Trinidad as well as the one in Brazil. <laugh>. I owe the, like, I, you know. Yes. Um, I'm not sure what, what we, what we gain from the contemporary notions of home and where they are Larged or where and where they large us. Yeah. So I'd like to keep that all kind of up in the air in that way until we settle <laugh>
Speaker 6 00:48:02 <laugh>.
Speaker 3 00:48:03 That is so marvelous. Tammy. We're gonna have to rethink our title. Clearly <laugh>. I know. Writing home, What the hell? What
Speaker 6 00:48:09 Are <laugh>?
Speaker 5 00:48:13 Beautiful. My mother used to write home from England and she would, you know, and we used to write her and the letters would begin, Dear Mama, hope you all well in enjoying the best of health. And she would write to my grandmother in that, in that register. And my grandmother would write to her, you know, in Croydon, England. You know, Dear Betty, hope you all well in enjoying the best of health. And I think the enjoying the best of health is all we can go for
Speaker 3 00:48:42 <laugh>,
Speaker 6 00:48:43 Not asking for too much. Here we are again,
Speaker 3 00:48:48 Dionne. We hope you stay well and continue to enjoy the best of health.
Speaker 5 00:48:52 Thank you.
Speaker 3 00:48:53 Thank you so sincerely for being so generous with us. And, and thank you. This beautiful, beautiful hour of conversation.
Speaker 1 00:49:07 Writing Home is produced by Kaiama Glover, Tami Navarro, Rachel James, and Miriam Neptune. Support for this podcast comes from the Digital Humanities Center, the Center for Research on Women, the media center, and the Library at Barnard College. Our music is by Iza from their album DLI Jos, and the track is to Bela.
