New Releases by George Elliott Clarke

In Whiteout: How Canada Cancels Blackness, his new and essential collection of essays, George Elliott Clarke exposes the various ways in which the Canadian imagination demonizes, excludes, and oppresses Blackness. Clarke''s range is extraordinary: he canvasses African-Canadian writers who have tracked Black invisibility, highlights the racist bias of our true crime writing, reveals the whitewashing of African-Canadian perspectives in universities, and excoriates the political failure to reckon with the tragedy of Africville, the once-thriving, "Africadian" community whose last home was razed in 1970. For Clarke, Canada''s relentless celebration of itself as a site of "multicultural humanitarianism" has blinded White leaders and citizens to the country''s many crimes, at home and abroad, thus blacking out the historical record. These essays yield an alternate history of Canada, a corrective revision that Clarke describes as "inking words on snow, evanescent and ephemeral."

In a time of malevolent righteousness, often described as Cancel Culture, J''Accuse is an essay-in-poetry by Canada''s Parliamentarian Poet Laureate emeritus that responds to the impacts of being "cancelled." Shame is not a word that gets much play these days among the caustically righteous, but Clarke had been wronged, and the people who did the wronging should be ashamed of themselves. J''Accus is a poignant statement that calls upon individuals, scholars, artists, and journalists to never submit to impulses that intentionally, or even unintentionally, forbid debate and questioning. J''Accus ponders what is truly unspeakable: injustice. Clarke boldly confronts the reality that in our turbulent time there must be an interest in real voices and stories, otherwise any individual can fall victim to silencing - blacklisting - gag-orders - cancelling... And ultimately, this cri-de-coeur reveals the personal cost.

A vibrant, revealing memoir about the cultural and familial pressures that shaped George Elliott Clarke’s early life in the Black Canadian community that he calls Africadia, centred in Halifax, Nova Scotia. As a boy, George Elliott Clarke knew that a great deal was expected from him and his two brothers. The descendant of a highly accomplished lineage on his paternal side—great-grandson to William Andrew White, the first Black officer (non-commissioned) in the British army—George felt called to live up to the family name. In contrast, his mother''s relatives were warm, down-to-earth country folk. Such contradictions underlay much of his life and upbringing—Black and White, country and city, outstanding and ordinary, high and low. With vulnerability and humour, George shows us how these dualities shaped him as a poet and thinker. At the book’s heart is George’s turbulent relationship with his father, an autodidact who valued art, music and books but worked an unfulfilling railway job. Bill could be loving and patient, but he also acted out destructive frustrations, assaulting George’s mother and sometimes George and his brothers, too. Where Beauty Survived is the story of a complicated family, of the emotional stress that white racism exerts on Black households, of the unique cultural geography of Africadia, of a child who became a poet, and of long-kept secrets.

MMXIX assigned Essential poets series number 263; MMXX assigned Essential poets series 281.

George Elliott Clarke brings his lyrical brilliance to this personal story, an ode to his great-aunt, the internationally celebrated opera contralto Portia White. From her early years in Halifax to her performance before Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 1964, the trailblazing, music-filled life of White is celebrated in this stirring tribute, with illustrations from artist Lara Martina.

Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature is a pioneering study of African-Canadian literary creativity, laying the groundwork for future scholarly work in the field. Based on extensive excavations of archives and texts, this challenging passage through twelve essays presents a history of the literature and examines its debt to, and synthesis with, oral cultures. George Elliott Clarke identifies African-Canadian literature''s distinguishing characteristics, argues for its relevance to both African Diasporic Black and Canadian Studies, and critiques several of its key creators and texts. Scholarly and sophisticated, the survey cites and interprets the works of several major African-Canadian writers, including André Alexis, Dionne Brand, Austin Clarke, Claire Harris, and M. Nourbese Philip. In so doing, Clarke demonstrates that African-Canadian writers and critics explore the tensions that exist between notions of universalism and black nationalism, liberalism and conservatism. These tensions are revealed in the literature in what Clarke argues to be – paradoxically – uniquely Canadian and proudly apart from a mainstream national identity. Clarke has unearthed vital but previously unconsidered authors, and charted the relationship between African-Canadian literature and that of Africa, African America, and the Caribbean. In addition to the essays, Clarke has assembled a seminal and expansive bibliography of texts – literature and criticism – from both English and French Canada. This important resource will inevitably challenge and change future academic consideration of African-Canadian literature and its place in the international literary map of the African Diaspora.

Whether you''ve encountered his celebrated verse-dramas (such as Whylah Falls or Québécité) or the lush, animated language of his poetry, it is not difficult to recognize George Elliott Clarke''s affinity for the genius of William Shakespeare. In this new work, Clarke borrows brazenly from and rewrites (The Bard''s very own working method) one of Shakespeare''s most contentious comedies, The Merchant of Venice, reinvigorating a play that on many points seems "retrograde politically and retarding dramatically". The result is a spectacle of swinging lyricism that casts Jewish Shylock not as the villain, but as the victim of the ingrained bigotry of the Venetian State.

Just start your engine. Go. Carl Black is an intellectual and artist, a traveller, a reader and an unapologetic womanizer. A motorcyclist. He burns for the bohemian life, but is trapped in a railway porter’s prosaic—at times humiliating—existence. Taking place over one dramatic year in Halifax, Nova Scotia, The Motorcyclist vividly recounts Carl’s travels and romantic exploits as he tours the backroads of the east coast and the bedrooms of a series of beautiful women. Inspired by the life of George Elliott Clarke’s father, the novel tells the story of a black working-class man caught between the expectations of his times and gleaming possibilities of the open road. In vibrant, energetic, sensual prose, George Elliott Clarke brilliantly illuminates the life of a young black man striving for pleasure, success and, most of all, respect.

"Canticles I: mmxvii is part of an epic poem treating the history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and attendant repercussions. It is also an examination of the place of the Black or "Negro" in Western civilization."--

The poems in Gold glitter. From the lush, unrestrained and unabashed tumble and thrust of his sensual lyrics (vivid expressions of love and lust which brook no admonishment) to the measured and stately resonance of his eulogies for community organizers, tributes to leaders and laureates, and contemplations on the principles for good governance, George Elliott Clarke strives to enact Robinson Jeffers''s assertion that "Beauty. . . Is the sole business of poetry." Whether it be in the whiskey-hue of skin or the metal of the love in one''s heart, the poems in Gold riff on the colour''s cultural and poetic properties, joining Blue, Black, and Red as the fourth volume in Clarke''s series of ''colouring'' books.

Offers a collection of poems on nature, imprisonment, and the joys and sorrows of growing up.

"Traverse documents my annual trek across the country from South Jordan, Utah to my home town of Gatineau, Quebec, in East-Central Canada, a chance to revisit with family and friends. Along the seven day journey of driving, I keep busy by photographing whatever chatches my eye through the windows of our car. I capture the climate, the topography and the state welcome signs to seize the moment of my passing through time. The text that accompanies these moments are a play on the state slogans or nicknames. Hedi Kyle''s pivoting panel structure gives the reader my point of view while sitting in the passenger seat looking out the window. Surrounding the panel an image demonstrates the mesmerising effect of the landscape flying by from Utah to Gatineau."--Artist''s statement.

''Illicit Sonnets'' - a bawdy modern reboot of Elizabeth Barrett Browning''s ''Sonnets from the Portuguese'' - tells of the love between Salim and Laila, an ''elderessa''. Their highly-sexed romance, bridging cultures, generations and seas, is unfolded in poetry as sparkling and as shameless as champagne.

Directions Home explores the trajectories and tendencies of African-Canadian literature within the Canadian canon and the socio-cultural traditions of the African Diaspora.

Blues singer, preacher, cultural critic, exile, Africadian, high modernist, spoken word artist, Canadian poet—these are but some of the voices of George Elliott Clarke. In a selection of Clarke’s best work from his early poetry to his most recent, Blues and Bliss: The Poetry of George Elliott Clarke offers readers an impressive cross-section of those voices. Jon Paul Fiorentino’s introduction focuses on this polyphony, his influences—Derek Walcott, Amiri Baraka, and the canon of literary English from Shakespeare to Yeats—and his “voice throwing,” and shows how the intersections here produce a “troubling” of language. He sketches Clarke’s primary interest in the negotiation of cultural space through adherence to and revision of tradition and on the finding of a vernacular that begins in exile, especially exile in relation to African-Canadian communities. In the afterword, Clarke, in an interesting re-spin of Fiorentino’s introduction, writes with patented gusto about how his experiences have contributed to multiple sounds and forms in his work. Decrying any grandiose notions of theory, he presents himself as primarily a songwriter.

Red joins George Elliott Clarke’s previous ‘colouring’ books–Blue and Black–in which he displays an expansive range of poetic forms and rhetorical poses. Its poems mix the candid sexuality of pre-Christian Rome with the pop sentimentally of Italian screen scores of the 1960s and 70s, drenching us in the brute violence of Titus Andronicus, the reflections of Malcolm X and the music of Charles Mingus (whose "bass sounds like a typewriter/Punctuating Ulysses"). Whether he situates his reader in his father’s Halifax cab, on a beach in Rhodes, or in front of Alma Duncan’s painting Young Black Girl, Clarke is ever sensitive to "the hard work of words,/The even harder work of love." Red rings with Clarke’s lush voice, full-throated and unparalleled.

Shortlisted, Acorn-Plantos Award for People''s Poetry and Dartmouth Book Award In the "Boogie Nights" era of the 1970s, Betty Browning and her lover, boxer Malcolm Miles, travel from the fog-anchored grime of Halifax, Nova Scotia, to sunburnt Corpus Christi, Texas, and back -- meeting tragedy and bloodshed along the way. I & I smoulders with love, lust, violence, and the excruciating repercussions of racism, sexism, and disgust. Rastafarian for "you and me," "I & I" expresses the oneness of God and man, the oneness of two people or the distinction between body and spirit. In George Elliott Clarke''s hands, this existential aesthetic crystallizes in a love story of Gothic grit. The narrative gives this verse novel shape; the poetry makes it sing, straddling folk ballad, soul, and pop music, all the while moaning the blues.

George Elliott Clarke''s newest dramatic poem, Trudeau, makes an irreverent, jubilant portrait of the life and politics of one of Canada''s most controversial political heroes, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Clarke''s poem provides a whimsical and informative look at the balance of world powers in the 1960s and 70s, infused with the spirit of the many revolutions taking place throughout the world during these years. The poem opens on a hillside in Nanjing, China, April 1949, in the midst of the country''s civil war. Our hero exchanges political stances with Mao and falls for a beautiful young flautist. From China the drama moves to Fredericton, NB, where Trudeau chats with Massachusetts Senator and future American president John F. Kennedy, who has just received an honorary doctorate from the university. The two men cavalierly discuss the perks of political power, each on the cusp of leading their countries. Then, in Havana, on the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Fidel Castro treats Trudeau to rum and cigars and offers his take on revolutions, Cuban and otherwise. When the focus moves to the Quiet Revolution and Trudeau''s response to this crisis in his leadership, Clarke presents a leader at once loved and loathed at home, who perseveres through both political and personal upheaval. Originally composed as the libretto for a new opera by D.D. Jackson to be presented at Toronto''s Harbourfront Festival in April 2007, Trudeau is a political caper, an extravagant portrait and a dramatic study of influence, power, revolution and liberation. Clarke injects the life of one of this country''s most intriguing personalities with the exuberance and grimy frankness his readers have come to love and expect. According to the author: "As a teenage poet in the 1970s, seven artist-intellectuals-or poet-politicos-helped me to conceive my voice. They were jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, troubadour-bard Bob Dylan, libertine lyricist Irving Layton, guerilla leader and poet Mao Zedong, reactionary modernist Ezra Pound, Black Power orator Malcolm X and the Right Honourable Pierre Elliott Trudeau. These ''idols'' inspired me to sculpt an individualist poetic scored with implicit social commentary. Yes, this ''Gang of Seven'' is flawed. But, taken as a whole, I find their blunt talk, suave styles, acerbic independence, raunchy macho, feisty lyricism, singing heroics and scarf-and-beret chivalry quite, well, liberating. "For me, no Canadian stood more for liberation than Trudeau, that aloof populist, rights-trampling democrat and tax-and-spend millionaire. An operatic figure in life (1919-2000), he now merits dramatic treatment. My dramatic poem imagines the politician as ''player'': Plato meets Chaplin."

"The facts are clear. It was, by all accounts, a slug-ugly crime- in 1949, George and Rufus Hamilton, two African Canadians, bludgeoned a taxi driver to death with a hammer in the dirt-poor settlement of Barker s Point, New Brunswick. Less than eight months later, the brothers were hanged for their crime. George and Rue s brutal act lives on in New Brunswick over half a century later, where the murder site is still known as Hammertown . George Elliott Clark draws from this disturbing chapter in Canadian history in his first novel, brilliantly reimagining the lives and deaths of the two brothers. Fiercely human and startlingly poignant, George & Rue shifts seamlessly through the killers pasts, examining just what kind of forces would reduce these men to lives of crime, violence, and ultimately, murder. "

Black is the companion volume to the author''s acclaimed collection Blue. But while the previous book meditated on the author''s history as a black man growing up in Nova Scotia, Black is a brutally honest look at the present and future. Inspired by George''s time as a professor in North Carolina in the late 1990s, the book uses vivid images and surprising juxtapositions to riff on the experiences of a black man living with political and personal outrage. This is not pretty poetry but lacerating, transgressive, and ultimately transforming.

The facts are clear: it was, by all accounts, a ''slug-ugly'' crime. In 1949, brothers George and Rufus Hamilton drunkenly bludgeoned a taxi driver to death in the dirt poor settlement of Barker''s Point, New Brunswick. Less than eight months later, they were both hanged for their crime. George and Rue were George Elliott Clarke''s matrilineal first cousins, once removed. Despite the fact that the crime lives on in Fredericton, where the murder site is known as ''Hammertown'', Clarke knew nothing of this chapter in his family''s past until his mother told him about it in 1994. Both repelled and intrigued, he set out to discover what kind of forces would reduce a man to crime, violence and ultimately murder. George & Rue shifts seamlessly back through the killers'' pasts, recounting a bleakly comic tale of victims of violence who became violent themselves, an African community - Three Mile Plains, Nova Scotia - too poor and too shamed to help the men, and a white community bent on condemning all blacks as dangerous outsiders. A horrific and horrifically funny story, George & Rue is also infused with a sensual, rhythmical beauty.

With fire, verve, and intensity, George Elliott Clarke gives readers a new work in which to immerse themselves - to feel illuminated by the cascading words and sensual experience of poetry.

George Elliott Clarke''s Québécité is a three-act multicultural romance set in modern-day Quebec. It tells the story of two interracial couples whose blossoming relationships expose the perils and possibilities of loving across racial and cultural lines. Québécité is an expanded, poetic rendering of a libretto George Elliott Clarke wrote at the request of the Guelph Jazz Festival, with music composed by Juno award-winning pianist D.D. Jackson. The opera will debut in Guelph during this year''s festival (September 3 to 7) with a cast including Haydain Neale, Kiran Ahluwalia, Yoon Choi and Dean Bowman. As Clarke writes in his prelude: "This libretto is for connoisseurs. Its stanzas were sculpted of the aggravated gravitas of Miles Davis''s trumpet, the scalacious solace of James Brown''s howls, the fearless laissez-faire of Oscar Peterson''s piano, and the oceanic négritude of Portia White''s contralto. I confess: it is also a callaloo confection -- or gumbo concoction -- of Alfred Hitchcock''s I Confess (1953) and films by Marcel Camus, Jacques Demy and Mira Nair. Given these traditions, plus my own tendencies, eccentricities, affinities -- lugubrious, lubricious, lubricated -- this production accepts that History is a slaughterhouse, Poetry is an opera house, and that only Love allows us to distinguish Beauty from its exinguishing." "Opera has always been about grand-scale gestures, about excess, about staging the spectacular. Throw jazz into the mix and what you get is [...] a gumbo concoction: one where hope and imagination rainbow over orthodoxy, where improvisation and the capacity to dream reinvigorate our commitment to new understandings of identity, belonging, and collective social responsibility." -- Ajay Heble in the Canadian Theatre Review

Gaspereau Press'' best-selling title, Execution Poems, is George Elliott Clarke''s complex lament for his late cousins, George and Rue - two Black men who were hanged for the murder of a taxi driver. After the overwhelming interest generated by the original limited letterpress edition of Execution Poems, Gaspereau Press released this trade edition which went on to win Canada''s highest literary honour in 2001. The jurors of the Governor General''s Literary Award called this book "raging, gristly, public - and unflinchingly beautiful," and remarked on Clarke''s "explosive, original language." In 1949, George and Rufus Hamilton were hanged for the murder of a taxi driver in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Fifty years later, Clarke has written, in his abundant style, a series of poems that embody both damnation and redemption, offering convoluted triumphs alongside tragedy and blurring the line between perpetrator and victim. What Clarke presents in Execution Poems is uncomfortable. He reminds us of racism and poverty; of their brutal, tragic results. He reminds us of society''s vengefulness. He blurs the line between the perpetrator and the victim - a line we''d prefer remain simple and clear. At the heart of it, Clarke is frustrating the notion that society deals any better with these issues today than it did in the 1940s.

A brief tribute to the artistic legacy of African Nova Scotians, featuring Clarkes signature abundance and zany spirit.

Whylah Falls is a passionate play about poets and the lies they tell in the pursuit of love.

Beatrice Chancy is set in 1801 in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia. Beatrice is the daughter of a black slave who was raped by her white master. Raised in the master''s house, Beatrice is beautiful, clever, kind, and cultured-her father''s prize possession. Her declaration of love for a slave sparks tension that culminates in a monstrous act: the rape of Beatrice by her own father. From here, violence begets violence until her father is killed and Beatrice is hanged for his death. The passion and sorrow of Beatrice Chancy''s story are matched only by the brilliance of the language used to express it."For booksellers uncertain about shelving this with plays or poetry, neither is apt. Beatrice Chancy is a singular creative work that should be shelved under tour de force or must read." --Quill & Quire Starred Review