UPPAL: My poetry comes out of/ my father’s chest, tough and wholehearted,
ZOLF: questioning of the authority given to the particularly lyric
CLARKE: bitter grapes of Creole verse
ORTIZ: or other “colonial languages”.
REIBETANZ: “It’s character assassination time”
UPPAL: just as I know that being Canadian
REIBETANZ: develops by looking outwards rather than inwards.
UPPAL: I know little Punjabi
ORTIZ: even if I am speaking and writing fluently in the English language
REIBETANZ: Safe choice, that place / half underground
CLARKE: taunted and tainted by wine.
ORTIZ: A use of language in your own terms,
MARACLE: with conviction
REIBETANZ: deeper (through dramatic monologue)
UPPAL: far more Chicken a la King than curry.
ZOLF: The particular slipperiness of the polyvocal:
CLARKE: I gabble a garrote argot, guttural, by rote,
MARACLE: arias of painful transformation
UPPAL: and all-you-can-eat buffets;
REIBETANZ: the vast perspectives offered by this non-European otherness
MARACLE: that we can come to love:
ORTIZ: I insist on that.
George Elliott Clarke is the E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. First and foremost a poet, his latest books are Illuminated Verses (Canadian Scholars Press, 2005), which features 24 full-colour photos of Black nudes; Black (Polestar, 2006), a follow-up to Blue (Polestar, 2001); Execution Poems (Gaspereau Press, 2001), the winner of the 2001 Governor General’s Award for Poetry; and the much beloved Whylah Falls (Polestar, 1990), which has recently been translated into Chinese. Last not least, his current project is an opera libretto, “Trudeau: The Shining Path.”
Lee Maracle is a member of the Sto:loh - Coast Salish - First Nation and is currently the Distinguished Lecturer [ABS] Writer in Residence and Creative Writing Instructor in the English Department at the University of Toronto. Her works include Bobbi Lee, a novel; Ravenson, a novel; Sundogs: a novel; Will’s Gardens, a novel; Daughters are Forever, a novel; a short story collection, Sojourner’s Truth; a poetry book, Bent Box; and non-fiction, I Am Woman; co-edited works: Telling It: Women and Language Across Culture and My Home As I Remember. Works in Progress: Oratory and Aboriginal Writing, Celiasong, Paragraphs and Poetry for Sons.
John Reibetanz teaches at Victoria College, where he received the first Victoria University Teaching Award. His sixth collection of poems, Near Relations, appeared in 2005 from McClelland & Stewart. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Awards, the National Poetry Competition, and the ReLit Awards, and has won First Prize in the international Petra Kenney Poetry Competition. When he is not writing or teaching poetry, he bicycles, kayaks, and listens to 1930s jazz, though not simultaneously.
Simon Ortiz, professor at UT in the Department of English and Aboriginal Studies, is the author of Beyond the Reach of Time and Change, Out There Somewhere, The Good Rainbow Road, Woven Stone, and other books. His interests focus on the literatures of Indigenous lands, cultures, and communities of the Americas and the literatures of colonization of the same Americas.
Priscila Uppal, born in Ottawa in 1974, currently lives in Toronto, Canada. She has published four collections of poetry, most recently Live Coverage (2003, Exile Editions); and the novel The Divine Economy of Salvation (2002) to international acclaim in Canada, the US, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Greece. She is a professor of Humanities and Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program at York University.
Rachel Zolf has fond memories of playing sax in the Hart House Jazz band. Her third book of poetry, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Coach House Books in 2007. Her second book, Masque (The Mercury Press, 2004), was shortlisted for the 2005 Trillium Book Award for Poetry. She lives in Toronto and is the poetry editor for The Walrus magazine.