Six Questions interview #79 : Cyril Dabydeen

Cyril Dabydeen’s recent books are My Undiscovered Country (Mosaic Press), God’s Spider (Peepal Tree Press), and My Multi-Ethnic Friends (Guernica). Previous titles include: Jogging in Havana, Black Jesus/Stories, Berbice Crossing, My Brahmin Days, North of the Equator, Play a Song Somebody, Imaginary Origins: Selected Poems, and Drums of My Flesh (IMPAC/Dublin Prize nominee, and Guyana Prize winner for best novel). Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, he twice won the Okanagan Fiction Prize. Cyril’s work appeared in the Oxford, Penguin, and Heinemann Books of Caribbean Verse and Fiction, and in over 60 literary magazines and anthologies such as Poetry (Chicago), The Critical Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, The Fiddlehead, Prism International, and Canadian Literature. A former Poet Laureate of Ottawa, he taught Writing at the UofOttawa for many years. He has read across Canada, USA, Europe, Caribbean, and in India.

How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here? 

I’ve been living in Ottawa for over 40 years. I came from Kingston, Ontario—Queen’s University really—and before that I’d lived in the Lakehead—my real beginning in Canada, if you like.  When I left Kingston the impulse was to move to Toronto—the big city with lots of diversity where perhaps I would’ve felt more at home, I thought; and weather was also a factor  as I presumed Toronto was warmer than Ottawa.  But I’d lived in the Lakehead—northwestern  Ontario—which was very cold in winter.  But,  I wasn’t really a big-city person, and Ottawa was the nation’s capital.  

Ottawa began to have a special appeal, as I started to develop my own loyalty to the “place”. There were practical considerations, like making a living; I figured I couldn’t by being a creative writer: an existential problem for most literary writers, no doubt. And yes, I could possibly work in the government after I’d done graduate work in Public Administration at Queen’s, and got to know some influential people. But I was essentially a teacher (my earlier work background)—not a bureaucrat. So here I am all these years, yeah!

How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here? 

Long story: I was born in British Guiana—now Guyana, part of the Caribbean region where I became a gold-medalist poet before I was 20. See, I was writing before coming to Canada. The English-speaking Caribbean has a rich tradition of stellar writers, I may say—two Nobel Prize winners (V.S. Napiual and Derek Walcott); I was immersed in their work as a young writer, and other writers’ works, like Wilson Harris, Kamau Braithwaite, Martin Carter, George Lamming, Edgar Mittelholzer, many of whom I would subsequently meet over the years. These writers you don’t hear much about in Ottawa unless you’re studying Commonwealth Literature (now post-colonial literature). Living  in Canada then was Barbadian-born Austin Clarke (Toronto), and later came Trinidadian-born novelist, Sam Selvon (Calgary)—both of whom I later became friends with.  

After a few years in Ottawa I edited A Shapely Fire: Changing the Literary Landscape (Mosaic Press) to reflect changes in our literature—Canadian literature—with more diverse peoples coming here (immigration). I recall publisher Jack McClelland calling me on the phone to give permission to use one of Clarke’s stories in the edited volume. I subsequently edited two other volumes of minority writers because of what educators kept telling me and were not seeing in the prescribed canon, for classroom use.  

I formally studied Creative Writing at Lakehead University—early 70’s; but didn’t learn much, save for realizing that my metaphors might have been too intense bearing in mind the post-colonial angst I carried in me. I did readings in the Lakehead and published in the university’s literary magazine. I also formally studied Canadian Literature at that time: E.J. Pratt, A.M. Klein, Isabella Valancy Crawford, Lampman, Scott, and others—Confederation and post-Confederation writers. When I worked around Lake Superior I felt I was Susanna Moodie all over again, a pioneer. I also knew about novelist Morley Callaghan before I came to Canada.  And I met poet bp nichol—a guest writer—and saw sound poetry as a new form of prosody. Later at Queen’s I met writers like Margaret Laurence (a guest writer) and mixed with some Kingston poets like Tom Marshall (later he was poetry editor of The Canadian Forum). I was also keen about Quarry magazine coming out of Kingston. Then and now, literary magazines are my favorite reading material—which I didn’t have access to in Guyana, save for what I saw in the British Council library and reading about T.S. Eliot, Edith Sitwell, etc.

Early in Ottawa I became friends with poet/novelist Joy Kogawa; we lived in the same apartment building on Cooper Street. Fred Cogswell once came to visit. I interacted with many others like George Johnston, John Metcalf, and first met Carol Shields here, too. I was also aware of what Carleton U and Ottawa U Creative Writing people were doing—like Chris Levenson and Seymour Mayne and their organized reading series. Seymour was editor of my first book of poetry, Goatsong (Valley Editions/Mosaic Press). My Fiddlehead book, Distances, really a chapbook—was published around this time in the mid-70’s. And readings I attended organized by people like Jane Jordan, Juan O’Neill, Marty Floman, Blaine Marchland, TREE, and others. Artscourt events came later. I was also teaching at Algonquin College (I did for about six years), and interacted with students wanting to write. The same occurred when I later taught writing—mostly fiction—at UofOttawa. The idea of starting my own literary magazine at Algonquin College came to me; but there was little support. I was also a book critic for the Ottawa Journal with my own byline—and I was able to see first hand what was coming out with publishers across Canada (and elsewhere). Then in Ottawa, Oberon Press was key, but particular about who they were publishing. Dr. Frank Tierney with his Borealis Press I got to know fairly well; Frank published one of my early poetry books and invited me to read at UOttawa when I became Poet Laureate (1984-87). He also published key poets like Italian-Canadian Pier Giorgio Di Cicco with whom I did readings, I recall.   

Joy Kogawa got me interested in Asian-Canadian identity and we organized readings for writers across Canada, mainly via the Canada Council. I also joined the League of Canadian Poets (LCP) in 1977, and met some of the best writers in the country like F.R. Scott, Dorothy Livesay, Mariam Waddington, Michael Ondaatje, Al Purdy, Milton Acorn, P.K Page, and so on.  The LCP then was exclusivist then (I served on the Membership and International Affairs committees). I navigated another career throughout the 80’s and 90’s and travelled widely across Canada meeting municipal politicians as part of my work, and this somehow enhanced my Ottawa “home” base--as I kept looking for parallels and reflecting on the writing community in other cities, if in Toronto mainly.

How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?  

“A community of writers” suggests homogeneity or what’s monolithic, unless you mean about people with similar interests meeting at coffee shops, restaurants, etc.  To say what’s obvious, writers are individually different, most working alone.  But this could also be a stereotype. The community I know are those I see at readings, and so on. I did a fair bit of readings in Ottawa and across Canada over the years with diverse communities in attendance, including about a dozen times at the National Library/Archives building, including my own book launchings. But really, I found myself interested in the national community with my being an outsider-insider, and with shifting spaces almost like a work-in-progress. As I’ve said, before, I came here with my own writerly identity, i.e. my background and literary influences from the Caribbean, Asia and Africa over the years (I would read internationally—in the US, UK  and Europe, Asia, and so on). 

The “local community” tends to change and new writers appear, relatively younger ones with a sense of their own forte. Late former Ottawa mayor Marion Dewar once told me that every three years new people tend to come here, especially to the downtown area, and yes, newer voices want to be heard—why not? A re-imagining of Ottawa keeps occurring, with a new aesthetic too no doubt, if only depending on what’s trendy. Some writers, poets especially, like to “test” their work out with audiences, and this can be meaningful. A writer like myself working in poetry and prose, I think, brings a new awareness to the Ottawa scene as I have been told many times.   

And it was good that I met Derek Walcott and Wole Soyinka— Nobel prize winners—here in Ottawa; I also met Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky here: I was invited to meet him by the mayor. My point is that there’s nothing parochial here, and with groups like the Ottawa International Writers festival active, audiences get to appreciate difference, and sometimes, with new orthodoxies at play.

Regarding a “shift” in my writing style and/or manner, I am neurologically inclined to writing that reflects a social consciousness (like say, Dorothy Livesay and Milton Acorn); and writing about people, and less about self-reflexive angst that’s so common. But the poem as “a moment’s monument” (Sylvia Path) remains with me. But as Oscar Wilde said, “Art is only about itself.” I recently saw some good work by an Ottawa poet in Prairie Fire. But often work that appears  good on the printed page sometimes doesn’t have the emotional energy I expect—I read the poem  and then it disappears from my mind. I say this from what I experience as a teacher—and what students actually tell me. There’s a lot of experimental stuff going on; as Ezra Pound long ago said, make it “new”; and what the language poets, so-called, are doing, I am keenly aware of.

When I was appointed Poet Laureate, I was in more of a writing “community,” sort of.  But I like diverse audiences, not just groupies. I recall a few years back UNESCO/Canada Council-organized readings at the National Library I took part in, and one organized by PSAC, and another to raise funds for literacy when I’d read with Rohinton Mistry, and these have remained with me. When I was teaching creative writing at UofOttawa, I liked the community of “student” writers (government folks, librarians, doctors, lawyers, etc.), which enables me to see first hand what writers were thinking. And groups like the Canadian Authors’ Association (Ottawa) and Ottawa Independent Writers I have interacted with. But the community is in a state of flux. I preface my own readings with the credo that writing is “the combination of the alphabet with volatile elements of the soul.” Voice is all in “a multilingual matrix” (George Steiner).

What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow? 

It’s good that there are ongoing readings, and a group like Verse Ottawa is taking some leadership role. Of course, readings are taking place all across Canada, maybe on the West Coast more than anywhere else and sometimes integrated with First Peoples’ rights and the call for more diversity in the arts. I recall the “Writing Thru Race” Conference organized by the Writers Union of Canada some years back that I’d been invited to in BC. But Ottawa’s originally a lumber town and home of the federal bureaucracy, and also viewed as a key tourist attraction (Parliament Buildings, etc); it may not be too far behind Toronto in the arts with the NAC, and the National Gallery, etc. Demographics also point to change and this affects how we imagine ourselves as we evolve with our living in Algonquian territory. Yes, I worked with the City in the mid-80’s and got a close-up view of everything going on and became more aware of what’s mirrored here; my point is that the arts matter in our lives and linked to our sense of belonging.

You could say that Ottawa is a pivotal place becoming more accepting and now more vibrantly alive. We have our Chinatown and our Italian quarter here, but it’s not like Toronto’s Dundas and Gerrard streets. Yet new or different rhythms keep being expressed with the real sense of “beingness and “place.” Literature is always best when it’s local and particular and reflects new angles of vision with inflection and cadence. The demotic appeals to me with a secondary orality. “Our lives teach us who we are,” to quote Salman Rushdie. Ottawa becomes the place of possibilities and how we’re able to see ourselves, if only in ironic ways. Let there be more reading spaces. Wider spaces!

Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements here? How have the city and its community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work?

Everything I write is about my living in Ottawa as a backdrop more or less, what the imagination compels me to reflect upon. I never work with any specific concept in mind; but place underlies what I write about, and people, tied with memory and the emotions taking over…what informs my art. I learnt recently that a Quebec member of Parliament had read one of my poems in Parliament (Hansard, April 24, 2001) in the bill to establish the Parliamentary Poet Laureate; she referred to me as “noted Canadian poet” and that my poem, “Appraisal”— is “a great poem.” In context, she also said that “Poetry has a long tradition in Canada. Jacques Cartier was a poet and some of our prime ministers were known to have composed verse.”

How I approach my work: my metonymic and metaphorical stance keeps changing, how the imagination works with one’s many selves.  I am never really circumscribed by one place. With poetry, especially, every image I come up with suggests something else, or something new consciously or unconsciously, as I splice north and south. Note the title of one my short-fiction books—North of the Equator (Beach Holme). Connections and correspondences are with me, and inner landscapes, as some critical readers have seen in my work, and liminal spaces. In my last book of poetry, God’s Spider (Peepal Tree Press, UK), it is largely about inner landscapes that continue to  influence me; and in my recent fiction book, My Undiscovered Country (Mosaic Press), I mesh fantasy with reality.

 A few years back when I read in New York City, someone told me I sounded too Canadian. About the same time I read in Winnipeg, and a man said to me:  “You make the hair on my skin grow as you read”; and, after a reading at the National Library in Ottawa,  a woman said I reminded her of Maritime writers. I aim for the organic in trying to find meaning and relevance. The Fiddlehead magazine observed years ago that I am “going back through consciousness or history to an original condition of wholeness.”

The most recent poem I wrote is called “Lord’s Cricket Ground,”  to be published in a UK journal. But how many people know that cricket was once the national sport of Canada? Ottawa was the centre of this sport, and the great English player W.G. Grace had come here to play  decades ago. And a poem I’ve read in Ottawa and elsewhere—“Sir James Douglas: Father of British Columbia”—and that James Douglas was born in British Guiana. It’s a poem I first read at UBC.

What are you working on now? 

The ubiquitous unconscious…at play: I am working on “Invisible: New and Selected Poems,” and revising/reworking fiction I may call “Forgotten Exiles”. These poems and stories have appeared in literary magazines like Prairie Schooner and Poetry in the US. A close-up view, if you like, of Ottawa and Canada and being myself is key in these new projects. At readings I sometimes echo iconic Cuban, Jose Marti, who said that: “Literature is the most beautiful of countries.”