George Elliot Clarke

George Elliott Clarke is a prolific and celebrated poet, novelist and playwright, whose focus is exploring—through scholarly inquiry and creative arts-- the history, art, and culture of African-Canadians, especially those hailing from the 'Black Atlantic' Canadian provinces.

Clarke was born on February 12, 1960 near Three Mile Plains, a Black Loyalist community, and grew up in Halifax. He is a seventh-generation Canadian of African American and Mi'kmaq Amerindian descent.

“The day I became incontrovertibly, irremediably a poet was February 12, 1977, my 17th birthday, when my mother and I drove to Three Mile Plains on a sunny, frigid, snowy morning. That day, as I trudged up and down hilly, white-dusted Green Street, I drafted in my head a poem, my first attempt to sing a black and Nova Scotian—an Africadian—consciousness. With my breath hanging clear in front of me, I claimed my Afro-Mi'kmaq heritage. I was standing on land that has always made us feel whole.”

Ballad of a Hanged Man

I ain't dressed this story up. I am enough

disgraced. I swear to the truths I know.

I wanted to uphold my wife and child.

Hang me and I'll not hold them again.

He earned a BA at the University of Waterloo, an MA at Dalhousie and a PhD at Queen's University. Clarke taught at Duke University and McGill before joining the Department of English at the University of Toronto in 1999, where he was later appointed the first E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature.

“My time at Dalhousie University when I was getting my Master’s degree, I had a feeling of inferiority because I’m a Black kid from the North end of Halifax. I think of myself as this working-class kid and I’m in this Masters/PhD literature class. I was very, very, very shy to voice my opinions.” Clarke speaks to R.H. Thomson in an interview for Canada’s Theatre Museum.

Exile

Blazing, it vomits smudge-smoke. Your mind chars

Black because you yaw—moth-like—too near flames.

You douse your dream-scorched brain with slave-sweat rum—

The only gold you can own, corroding

Your liver.

Clarke's poetry, prose, drama and criticism document the history and culture of Black people in Canada, especially Nova Scotia, by interfacing the archival with the personal.

His book Whylah Falls combines multiple voices and generic forms that constitute a community portrait. The book's poet protagonist, Xavier Zachary, struggles to find an authentic speech that reconciles his white education with his Black heritage.

He was both the Poet Laureate of Toronto and the Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate.

Later, Thomson asks, “How does teaching fit into your idea of what it means to be a poet?” Clarke says, “Teaching gives me access to what newer generations think is important; I hope we all teach (or learn from) each other.”

“I try to imbue my students with a critical mindset. I encourage them to be critical as much as possible of everything and not accept any of the potted versions of history.”

George Elliott Clarke's many honours include a number of honorary doctorates, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award and the $225,000 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellowship Prize. In 2006, he was appointed to the Order of Nova Scotia and, in 2008, to the Order of Canada. In 2012, he received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

“How do you think you’ve changed as a writer over the course of your career?

“I've become more and more willing to write what I want to write and to say what I want to say. Those who don't like it, may very well lump it.” Writer’s Festival interview with Meagan Black.

He is also recognized as an important scholar and advocate for the study of Black Canadian literature. He edited an anthology of Black Nova Scotian, or "Africadian," writing, Fire on the Water which samples a wide variety of work from 1785 to the present and Eyeing the North Star: Directions in African-Canadian Literature.

King Bee Blues

I’m an ol’ king bee, honey,

Buzzin’ from flower to flower.

I’m an ol’ king bee, sweets,

Hummin’ from flower to flower.

Women got good pollen;

I get some every hour.

“I come to poetry as a dreaming singer. I have spirituals in my blood, blues in my heart. I keep striving to get trumpets, pianos, guitars, and drums into my poetry. I can only think of it as song. My poetics is revelation.” encyclopedia.com, Fraser Sutherland.

Discussing his new memoir covering the first two decades of his life, Where Beauty Survived he says, “It’s hard because you’re trying to balance how much of yourself are you willing to expose? What is the potential lesson being gathered from displaying those stitches, cuts and bruises – not just of one’s own doing, but rather those that impact the family, one’s parents, one’s siblings, friends, lovers, girlfriends, boyfriends. How much of anyone’s life can you really afford to talk about frankly?” Newmarket Today, Brock Weir, Local Journalism Initiative reporter.

Again, from the Canadian Theatre Museum interview, “I think it’s the duty of artists to be radicals. To put forward alternative modes of thinking and being. To critique everything especially if it is backward.”

The Ballad of Othello Clemence

There’s a shotgunned man moulderin’ in petals;

There’s a killer chucklin’ to himself;

There’s a mother keenin’ her posied son;

There’s a joker amblin’ over his bones.

Go down to the Sixhiboux River, hear it cry,

“Othello Clemence is dead and his murderer’s free!”

Here are some of the books Clarke has published: Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues, Lush Dreams, Blue Exile: Fugitive Poems, Execution Poems: The Black Acadian Tragedy of George and Rue, Illuminated Verses, Black Whylah Falls, Beatrice Chancy, Québécité and Trudeau: Long March, Shining Path.

The interviewer, R. H. Thomson asks, “How can we do that (have dynamic social change) without offending those in power?” Clarke answers by quoting Frederick Douglass, “Power concedes nothing without a struggle.

“We need to make people realize the necessity for change.” says Clarke.