George Elliott Clarke

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George Elliott Clarke (born February 12, 1960) is a Canadian poet, playwright, and literary critic who served as the Poet Laureate of Toronto from 2012 to 2017 and as the 2016-2017 Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate.

His art is best known for its use of a large variety of literary and artistic styles (both "high" and "low"), its lush physicality, and its bold political substance.

Clarke, one of Canada's most influential writers, is also known for chronicling the lives and histories of the Black Canadian communities of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, establishing a cultural geography that he has described as "Africadia."

Life

Clarke was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, near the Black Loyalist community of Three Mile Plains, and grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1978, he graduated from Queen Elizabeth High School.

He received a Bachelor's degree in English from the University of Waterloo (1984), an MA degree in English from Dalhousie University (1989) and a PhD degree in English from Queen's University (1993). He has received honorary degrees from Dalhousie University (LL.D.). University of New Brunswick (Litt.D. (Litt.D.) The University of Alberta (Litt.D.). b.C. (Litt.D.) The University of Waterloo (Litt.D.) (Litt.D) and Saint Mary's University, as the most recent (Litt.D) university. He taught English and Canadian Studies at Duke University from 1994 to 1999, and was appointed the Seagrams Visiting Chair in Canadian Studies at McGill University for the academic year 1998-199. He became a professor of English at the University of Toronto, where he was appointed inaugural E J Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature in 2003. Clarke has also served as a Noted Scholar at Mount Allison University (2005) and as the William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor in Canadian Studies at Harvard University (1982–89), a parliament researcher (1985–91), and a newspaper columnist for the Halifax Daily News (1988–89).

Clarke is a sought-after conference speaker and is active in poetry circles around Canada, the United States, the Caribbean, and Europe. He is also a founding member of the Afro-Métis Nation, which released its first album, Constitution, in May 2019. The group derives its name from the artists' mixed African and Mi'kmaq descent. Clarke has referred to the group's sound as "a mash-up of southern-fried blues and saltwater spirituals," with Nashville guitars, Mi'kmaw-and-"African" drums, Highland bagpipes, and Acadien fiddles.

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Writing career

Clarke is recognized both for his own oeuvre, which includes seventeen collections of poetry, two novels, and four works of drama and opera, and for collecting and promoting stories of African-Canadian writers and poets in anthologies and studies such as Border Lines (1995), Eyeing the North Star (1997), Odysseys Home (2002), Fire on the Water (2002), Directions Home (2012) and Locating Home (2017). His artistic influences stretch from Shakespeare to Miles Davis, from Ezra Pound to Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Malcolm X, and it is from the fertile contradictions and tensions between thinkers of all periods of history that Clarke's later work draws much of its power. His style, with its embrace of the vernacular, the rambunctious, the unresolved and the spontaneous, lends itself well to the bold, passionate performances for which he is well known. His poetic and academic careers intersect in their particular emphasis on the perspectives of the African descendants in Canada and Nova Scotia, especially the African-American slaves’ descendants who settled on the East coast of Nova Scotia, whom he calls "Africadian." He writes that it is a word that he "minted from 'Africa' and 'Acadia' (the old name for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick), to denote the Black populations of the Maritimes and especially of Nova Scotia".

Some of his poetry has also been set to music by the a cappella gospel quartet Four the Moment.

He views "Africadian" literature as "literal and liberal—I canonize songs and sonnets, histories and homilies." Clarke has stated that he found further writing inspiration in the 1970s and his "individualist poetic scored with implicit social commentary" came from the "Gang of Seven" intellectuals, "poet-politicos: jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, troubadour-bard Bob Dylan, libertine lyricist Irving Layton, guerrilla leader and poet Mao Zedong, reactionary modernist Ezra Pound, Black Power orator Malcolm X and the Right Honourable Pierre Elliott Trudeau." Clarke found "as a whole, the group’s blunt talk, suave styles, acerbic independence, raunchy macho, feisty lyricism, singing heroic and a scarf-and-beret chivalry quite, well, liberating." His poetry and scholarship, which address and challenge historic encounters with racism, segregated areas, discrimination, hatred, forced relocation and a loss of a sense of identity and a sense of belonging experienced by the Black populations of Canada, have earned him worldwide acclaim.

In his anthology Fire On The Water, Clarke uses a biblical timeline stretching from Genesis to Psalms and Proverbs to Revelation to present Black writings and authors born within a specific period. These names reflect the Africadians’ and other Black peoples’ forebears and the first singers' own preferences for singing "the Lord’s song in this strange land." In his most recent book, These Are the Words, a collaboration with Canadian Poet John B. Lee, Clarke translates one of the nine books of the Bible's apocrypha into a vigorous English vernacular. It is a prime example of his wide and open poetic sensibility, in which the spiritual and the sensual have equally their part.

His intellectual contributions involve both his ability to combine literary criticism and theatrical forte and his continuance of the themes of cultural inclusiveness and Canadian iconic symbolism. In his 2007 play Trudeau: Long March, Shining Path, Clarke features his Liberal hero Trudeau (1919–2000) describing him as "the Shakespearean character: ...He’s a figure about whom it is almost impossible to say anything definitive because he is encompassed by so many contradictions but that’s what makes him interesting." In presenting a multicultural Trudeau on the international stage, Clarke seeks to capture the human dimensions, the personality of Trudeau rather than his politics so as to emphasize the dialogues among key characters and "show the people as people not just exponents of ideas". In 2012 Clarke was given substantial critical recognition in a volume devoted to the body of his writing, Africadian Atlantic: Essays on George Elliott Clarke, edited by Joseph Pivato.

In his 2016 and 2017 collections of poems, the names of which, Canticles I (MXXVI) and Canticles I (MMXVII), are a reference to Ezra Pound's The Cantos and The Song of Solomon, Clarke puts famous thinkers, explorers and rulers of the 17th, 18th and 20th Centuries into a dialogue on slavery and heritage. Together, these collections make up the first part of a projected three-part epic. Canticles II: MMXIX was released in 2019.

In his time as Poet Laureate of Toronto, Clarke created the Poets' Corner at City Hall, and worked with the Toronto Public Library to create the Toronto Poetry Map, an electronic map of the city that marks all sites referenced in Canadian poetry, and presents the relevant lines to the viewer. He also founded the East End Poetry Festival. For these accomplishments and more he is credited with expanding the role and responsibilities of the Poet Laureate considerably. Clarke similarly expanded the role of Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate during his tenure, becoming the first to have his poems recited in the Houses and recorded in Hansard.

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Awards

• 1979: Honourable Mention, Atlantic Writing Competition (Adult Poetry), Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia
• 1981: First Prize, Atlantic Writing Competition (Adult Poetry), Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia
• 1983: Second Prize, Bliss Carman Poetry Award, Banff Centre
• 1991: Archibald Lampman Award for Poetry, Ottawa Independent Writers
• 1998: Portia White Prize, Nova Scotia Arts Council
• 1998: Bellagio Center Fellow, Rockefeller Foundation, New York City
• 1999: Alumni Achievement Award, University of Waterloo
• 2002: Governor General's Award for Poetry, for Execution Poems
• National Magazine Gold Award for Poetry
• 2004: Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award, Black Theatre Workshop
• 2006: Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellowship Prize, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
• 2006: Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction
• 2006: Frontieras Poesis Premuil [Prize], Poesis Magazine, International Poetry Festival, Satu Mare, Romania
• 2006: Order of Nova Scotia
• 2007: Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, for George and Rue
• 2008: Officer of the Order of Canada
• 2009: Shortlisted, Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction
• 2010: Shortlisted, Acorn-Plantos Award for People's Poetry
• 2012: Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Acadia University
• 2012: Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal
• 2012: Excellence in the Arts Award (Canadian Civil Liberties Association)
• 2012: Appointed by the Toronto City Council to the post of Poet Laureate of Toronto
• 2016: Appointed by The Parliament of Canada to the post of Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate
• 2017: Lifetime Achievement Award, Dalhousie University Alumni Association
• 2017: Trailblazers Award: National Black Canadians Summit, Federation of Black Canadians & Michaëlle Jean Foundation
• 2017: Elected, Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society