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George Elliott Clarke Poster

Canada’s new poet laureate will read work never before heard in public at 2016 Cyril Byrne lecture

This Friday, March 11 at 7 pm, Canada’s new poet laureate will give this year’s Cyril Byrne lecture at Saint Mary’s McNally Theatre Auditorium.

But as Atlantic Canadians know, long before Clarke was a national poet laureate he brought a long-neglected perspective to poetry here. His was a powerful, resonant Africadian voice on history and contemporary issues.

Alexander MacLeod, a professor of Atlantic Canada Literature at Saint Mary’s and a well-known author himself, has been involved with the Cyril Byrne lecture for a decade. He is thrilled that George Elliott Clarke agreed to participate this year.

“Now that George has risen up to become the nation’s poet laureate,” MacLeod says, “his work gives a representation of African Nova Scotians and brings it to the whole country. He’s still a young man and he’s got 10 or 11 books that have fundamentally changed how we think about Atlantic Canadian literature. We need to pay close attention.”

“Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper BluesLecture” is perhaps too dry a term for the evening. MacLeod promises a welcoming party atmosphere, and the night will be book-ended with the music of ECMA-winning jazz and gospel singer Linda Carvery and her family choir. It’s a perfect fit, MacLeod says. “George’s Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues addressed a specific musical and cultural heritage essential to understanding African Nova Scotians.”

The organizers aim to make things especially interesting to the audience, with the writer reading from work never before shared in public, including early poems published under a pseudonym. The event will also serve as a local launch for Clarke’s new novel, The Motorcyclist.

After the reading, MacLeod will interview Clarke on stage, followed by an audience Q & A. It is a free event and all are welcome.

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maxine tynes

Tynes’ work illuminated the importance of a Black heritage that had been marginalized

I had the good fortune of working with Maxine Tynes as her publisher in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1988, after the release of her first book of poetry, Borrowed Beauty, she was rightfully designated the title as the People’s Poet of Canada, an award established only one year earlier in honour of Milton Acorn. Maxine was a shining beacon of poetry in Nova Scotia in particular, where she wrote about her own life, the vibrant culture of the Black community and of the feminist ideals that fueled her work.

I have vivid warm memories of the summer day in 1993 when I drove Maxine around Halifax looking for locations to shoot a photo of her for the cover of an upcoming book titled The Door of My Heart. We were looking for just the right door for background. It seemed that wherever we stopped for a photo – flower shop, church, Public Gardens, university – people would come up and talk to Maxine. As a poet and performer, Maxine had become a celebrity. I’d seen this on other occasions and it was a testament to how Maxine’s words and presence had become part of Nova Scotians’ everyday lives.

Signing books at Christmas at the Forum, there would be a lineup at the Pottersfield booth of admirers wanting her signature and also wanting to share their stories with Maxine. I’d never seen anything quite like it. Maxine Tynes – poet superstar of this Maritime province.

George Elliott Clarke got it right when he wrote of Maxine’s poetry in The Daily News, “A refreshing change from the flat, disembodied voices that so often dull and deaden Canadian verse.”

Maxine was born in Dartmouth in 1949 and grew up there. She contracted polio as a child and it was complications brought on by the disease that led to her death in 2011 at the age of 62. She attended Dalhousie University and went on to be a well-loved high school teacher for 31 years. She had a dramatic flair that kept her students on their toes. She used her acting ability to create dynamic public readings and performances and on the radio, as well as the studio where she recorded one of Atlantic Canada’s first spoken word albums (also titled Borrowed Beauty) in 1987.

She produced three other collections of poetry along with that first offering, including Woman Talking Woman (1990), The Door of My Heart borrowed beauty(1993) and a children’s book of verse, Save the World For Me (1991).

Although Maxine’s poetry is still taught today in high school and university classes, it was her ability to re-energize the poetic form and connect with people of all walks of life that stands out in my mind. She wrote poems about solitude, love, despair, truth and beauty. She also gave voice in poetry to the lives of the physically challenged.

When Maxine died in 2011, she had been out of the public spotlight for a number of years. Although she had achieved much, received an honorary doctorate from Mount Saint Vincent University and had a room named for her in the Alderney Gate Library, many of us in the writing community had lost touch with her. And I grieve for that.

In classic form, however, the words of Maxine Tynes live on in print and in memory. Each generation needs a true “people’s” poet, a label often applied to some of the greats: Robbie Burns, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes and Allen Ginsburg to name a few. Maxine was a key player in what proved to be a Black cultural renaissance in the early 1990s. She helped us recognize the value of the heritage of Black communities that had been so callously marginalized in Nova Scotia’s history.

The cover photo of The Door to My Heart (above) shows Maxine, dressed in purple, standing in front of the ornate iron gate of the Public Gardens in Halifax. She stands tall and appears proud and vibrant. Her very presence is a visual poem.

In “The Poet as Whole-Body Camera” she writes, “And if you seek my journey. And if our isms fit and mesh and meld us heart to heart to heart. Then, through this journey of poet and of those who read, those who follow, we shall go two by two by many, many fold.”

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Read By the Sea 2014
From left: Alexander MacLeod, Steven Galloway, Russell Wangersky, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Sharon Butala, Frank Macdonald and Sylvia Hamilton at Read by the Sea 2014

On the planning side, the events of a literary festival are but one piece of a long process. Author and Read by the Sea committee member Linda Little give us the scoop

In 2015, Read by the Sea, the great little literary festival that could, will be rounding up a slate of terrific artists for book-lovers on Nova Scotia’s north shore. While the day is a highlight of the summer holidays for many, the work that goes into producing the event is prodigious. Long before the venues are booked and posters go up, long before the airplane tickets are purchased and the accommodations reserved, the business of producing a literary festival begins.

GristThe festivities happen on two days. This year’s WordPlay for kids kicks off at the Tatamagouche Creamery Square on Saturday, June 20th. Andy Jones, Linda Little, and Starr Dobson (and a goat!) will lead the adventures. The Wild City Roses will provide song and dance and general hijinks.

The adult Read by the Sea event unfolds at the River John Legion Gardens on Saturday, July 11th. This year’s theme is Blood and Soul. The day opens with the mystery writers’ Blood stage with Maureen Jennings and Giles Blunt. After music and mingle and a picnic, the Soul stage features Linden MacIntyre and memoirist Isabel Huggan. There will be interviews, Q&As, live music, book sales and lots of opportunity to hang out with writers and fellow book-lovers.

Funding and author selection are the two big pieces of the puzzle that must be set in place about a year before the show goes on. Here’s how it all happens:

Read by the Sea has two main events: WordPlay for children and Read by the Sea for adults. In each case the committee considers the roster they would like to offer their audience. They look for variety, impact, entertainment value and potential to spark thought and discussion when choosing authors. Who would the audience like to see and who will bring new insights?

For both stages the committees look for a mixture of lively and profound, authors who speak to our lives here on the north shore and authors who open doors to experiences beyond our own. Names are tossed about: who has read what, and what’s excellent? How would one author mix with another? What themes arise by juxtaposing writers X and Y? Once the preferred roster, the “dream team,” is agreed upon committee members begin to contact the authors.

PunishmentOne thing Read by the Sea has learned over the years is not to discount writers because they might say no. Sure they might, and some do, but most writers are happy to receive the invitation. Festivals offer a terrific opportunity for writers to connect with their audiences and to gain new fans. While large festivals may have 50 or 60 writers and thousands of people in attendance over several days, a small festival with a single stage consolidates the audience and can actually offer more listeners in one session than the larger events. Furthermore, authors who accept a Read by the Sea invitation often prefer the intimate, down-home atmosphere of the rural festival to the larger, more commercialized urban events.

Once the organizers have settled on the roster and contacted the potential authors they put together their first grant applications. Fund-raising is a central task for any festival committee. Read by the Sea has held many fund-raisers in its 16-year history but the core of its funding comes from granting bodies such as the Canada Council for the Arts, Arts Nova Scotia, and the County Councils. A successful grant application sets out the vision for the organization and paints a detailed picture of the event. Then there is the post-festival reports to be sent to all granting agencies.

There’s a year’s worth of work behind the summer festival. But no need to dwell on that—let’s just enjoy Read by the Sea for all it’s worth!

Looking for more info?

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Wearing a costume lent to her by the Plymouth Plantation (Massachusetts), Beth Powning signs copies of A Measure of Light, which focuses on the remarkable life of Mary Dyer, a Puritan who fled persecution in 17th century England, only to be persecuted again in New England after joining the Quaker movement.
Wearing a costume lent to her by the Plymouth Plantation (Massachusetts), Beth Powning signs copies of A Measure of Light, which focuses on the remarkable life of Mary Dyer, a Puritan who fled persecution in 17th century England, only to be persecuted again in New England after joining the Quaker movement.

Beth Powning’s A Measure of Light inspires recreation of 17th Century Puritan New England in Sussex, N.B.

For six months members of SLICE (Sussex Literary Initiative and Cultural Events) were dedicated to exceeding the fantastic event they organized to launch Beth Powning’s 2010 best-selling novel, The Sea Captain’s Wife. And on Friday they did just that by converting the Royal Canadian Legion into the mid-17th Century Massachusetts Bay Colony, the setting for Powning’s newest novel, A Measure of Light (Knopf Canada).

Powning describes herself as a ‘secular Quaker’ who left Connecticut in the 1970’s with her husband Peter to settle in rural New Brunswick, but admits she was remarkably ignorant of the historic struggle of Mary Dyer, a Puritan who fled persecution in 17th century England, only to be persecuted again in New England after joining the Quaker movement.

However as she explained during a Q & A following her reading from the novel, “I read one sentence about Mary Dyer and felt this prickle, like my hair was standing up on my scalp and I thought I can’t believe I never knew about this woman and that put me on a course of reading about Mary. It was not an easy book to write as it was a very tough subject and I thought about turning away from it. But every time I got called back, sometimes by incredible coincidences and also by a strong feeling Mary wanted me to write this book. I had a sense of righting an injustice. Mary has come down through history as a benighted character and that’s just wrong. I had to straighten the record.”

Just as A Measure of Light is grounded in meticulous research, so was SLICE’s literary event. In response to publicist Patricia Stout’s invitation, over 500 guests (including a busload chartered by Moncton’s Frye Festival) arrived wearing black clothing as requested, and were given Puritan white collars or caps to don before entering the candle-lit hall where they were surrounded by the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of a 17th-century working village.

Artisans plied their trades, creating products or demonstrating skills essential to the survival of the colony. They ranged from candle makers to spinners and quilters, and from basket weavers to apple tree grafters and scribes. Music was supplied by recording artists La Tour Baroque Duo, with Tim Blackmore playing the recorder and Michel Cardin the theorbo, a type of lute invented around 1600. Following the reading, guests were invited to sample succotash, a pottage of sweet corn and beans which the settlers learned to make from the Eastern Woodlands First Nations people; coarse, dark grained ‘gnarly’ bread and a special brewed A Measure of Light Ale crafted by Picaroons. And at the back of the hall, in keeping with the authenticity of Mary Dyer’s brave determination to give women a voice, there was a collection box for donations to the local women’s shelter.

Scroll down for images from the launch.

Calligrapher and scribe Fred Harrison (Elgin) uses an ostrich feather pen to copy letters from A Measure of Light.
Calligrapher and scribe Fred Harrison (Elgin) uses an ostrich feather pen to copy letters from A Measure of Light.
Dr. Sandra Bell of the University of New Brunswick, dressed as a courtier of Charles I, introduced author Beth Powning.
Dr. Sandra Bell of the University of New Brunswick, dressed as a courtier of Charles I, introduced author Beth Powning.
Emcee Kevin McCaig: “A book launch in Sussex is an event like no other.”
Emcee Kevin McCaig: “A book launch in Sussex is an event like no other.”
17th century music was provided by Tim Blackmore (Saint John) and Michel Cardin (Moncton) of La Tour Baroque Duo. Cardin is shown here with a theorbo, a type of lute invented in Italy around 1600.
17th century music was provided by Tim Blackmore (Saint John) and Michel Cardin (Moncton) of La Tour Baroque Duo. Cardin is shown here with a theorbo, a type of lute invented in Italy around 1600.
Patricia Stout and SLICE committee members sewed Puritan-style white collars, cuffs, aprons and bonnets for the 500 guests.
Patricia Stout and SLICE committee members sewed Puritan-style white collars, cuffs, aprons and bonnets for the 500 guests.
Basket weaver Sandra Racine is an Elder of nearby Elsipogtog First Nation, representing the Narragansett of Massachusetts.
Basket weaver Sandra Racine is an Elder of nearby Elsipogtog First Nation, representing the Narragansett of Massachusetts.
SLICE Soap maker Ann Ophaug
Ann Ophaug of Sussex, NB, demonstrates soap making.
SLICE committee members Deborah Freeze, Cathy Hardy, Jane Achen and Stephanie Coburn served authentic 17th century food – succotash and gnarly bread -- while Picaroons brewery developed ‘A Measure of Light Ale’.
SLICE committee members Deborah Freeze, Cathy Healy*, Jane Achen and Stephanie Coburn served authentic 17th century food – succotash and gnarly bread — while Picaroons brewery developed ‘A Measure of Light Ale’.

Margaret Patricia Eaton is a visual arts columnist for the Moncton Times & Transcript and an award-winning poet. Her most recent collection is Vision & Voice with artist Angelica De Benedetti.

Correction: The last photo caption originally identified the people in the picture as Deborah Freeze, Cathy Hardy*, Jane Achen and Stephanie Coburn. Our apologies to Cathy Healy.

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Lesley Choyce, David Mossman and Steven Laffoley at The Company Store on Nov 20.
Lesley Choyce, David Mossman and Steven Laffoley at The Company House on Halifax, NS, on Nov 20.

Thursday evening Pottersfield Press celebrated the launch of three new books at The Company House in Halifax, NS.

Steven Laffoley read from his latest novel, The Blue Tattoo, set during the time of the Halifax Explosion; David Mossman read from his new history book Going Over, a biography of Titus Mossman, a veteran of the “great War” who served with 85th Canadian Infantry Battalion, the Nova Scotia Highlanders on the Western Front; and Pottersfield Press publisher Leslie Choyce read from his books Into the Wasteland (Red Deer Press), a teen novel, and All Alone at the End of the World (Ekstasis Editions), a poetry collection that transports the reader from Nova Scotia to Greece, England, Ireland, Italy and New Jersey.

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Steven Laffoley reads from The Blue Tattoo
Lesley Choyce reading at The Company House in Halifax.
Lesley Choyce reading at The Company House in Halifax.