Eluned Jones

            On Tuesday throughout the morning I kept on checking the tracking number of the package that I’d mailed to my daughter on Monday evening. I saw that it had arrived at the post office in Montreal at 8:30 but it wasn’t until the early afternoon that I finally saw the “delivered” box lit up in green on Canada Post’s tracking website. Astrid messaged me about an hour later to let me know that she received it. I had packed the cooked food directly from the freezer to a thermal bag with a gel pack and then the shipping box, so I was curious how cold it had stayed during its journey. I was relieved and gratified when she confirmed that there were parts of the roti that were still frozen when she opened the parcel.

            Every Tuesday except for one since school resumed in January the streets have been wet for riding either because of rain or snow. This time it had been raining all afternoon and it had started to turn the freezing rain just as I was heading for class. On Maple Grove the rain was freezing in the treetops but then knocking its own little flowers of ice down around me. As I made my way down College, the road was not slippery, when I stopped at a light and tried to rest my foot on the edges of the sidewalks, it slid a bit each time.

            When I was locking my bike to the wrought iron railing in front of University College, I dug the rubber cover for my lock out of my backpack to prevent the keyhole from getting plugged by ice over the next few hours.

            It was a precarious walk to the side entrance because the sidewalk didn’t seem to have been salted. The handrail for the steps was coated in ice.

            I had brought my laptop to work on my essay but I just decided to make notes as I compared a poem about Paul Robeson by El Jones to one about Sidney Poitier by Wayde Compton.

            George arrived a little over five minutes late all wintered up in a long, light brown, woolen winter coat, a long scarf and a little darker brown woolen skullcap that looked like a shrunken toque. He came in to drop off his bag and then he left again, coming back with two boxes of the latest issue of Geist Magazine. George gave up the Geist but there was a whole box and then some left over.

            He announced that later on we would have a guest reading by Adebe DeRango-Adem.

            He said we would be talking about the expressivity of El Jones and he was going to do something that he rarely did: He would start with a lecture on the speaking voice. El Jones’s first promulgation as a poet was dropping and reciting in performance mode. She doesn’t care about getting published in journals that are written by boring people. She doesn’t want an echo chamber of elites cartooning her position. There is a quiet cold war going on between print and performance. Dramatic art is for recitation and not for a private reader’s wasteland. T. S. Eliot’s Wasteland should be read with crack. We can talk about how good Jones’s poetry is but without a doubt she engages social issues. Her readings are emancipatory and help the audience to come to terms with her issues. She wants to be memorable, therapeutic and transformative.

            El Jones is Afro-Metis and though she is based in Nova Scotia right now she is from Winnipeg where she received the highest average ever in the history of the University of Manitoba. The simplicity of her writing is deliberate so she can reach out to audiences that are marginalized, that do not read, that are in prison. She performs for people in prison who have offended the queen. As Canadians we often forget that we are living in a monarchy but when you are charged it is the crown that argues against you. It’s the queen who wants you to go to prison.

            George’s lecture on voice was divided into five parts: V for vernacular; O for orature; I for imagery; C for cadence and E for Emphasis.

            On Vernacular: Whatever spoken word may be it is violence; vox populi – the voice of the nation. Jean Chretien talks with the articulation of the people. In Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, the bad nigguh Caliban says, “Ya taught me language and my profit is how to curse!” He was only taught the rudiments. Language is always violent when the oppressor imposes an oppressive tongue because the violence of that language becomes the opposition to the oppressor.

            In Soweto in 1976 the South African government tried to impose the Afrikaans language on the Black population, but they chose English and that was one of the hallmarks for the end of Apartheid.

            There is always an oral accent in literature. Jeffery Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was meant to be read aloud. It was written in English at a time when the official language of the realm was Latin.

            Dante used folk lingo for his satirical theology of the Inferno.

            Bobby Burns wrote canonical poems in every day language. His Romanticism was nationalistic, close to the people and down to earth.

            Yeats gave his English an Irish cast.

            The Finnish Kalevala, a late 19^th Century poetic collection of Finnish folk tales of was meant to be read aloud.

            The five hundred page Dictionary of Newfoundland English displays the rich vocabulary of a spoken language. Newfoundland’s school system was run by four churches, including the Salvation Army until 1995. Imagine the Salvation Army controlling your learning. Education has actually deteriorated in Newfoundland since the system changed.

            Linguist, Ian Pringle says that the Ottawa Valley alone has many dialects.

            George mentioned “Black Skin, White Masks” by Frantz Fanon, about the Negro and language.

            Vernacular is the key to authenticity.

            On Orature: It is separate from print because there is a split. Dub poets like Lillian Allen and Clifton Joseph struggled for years to have their oral work considered legitimate enough for them to be admitted into the League of Canadian Poets.

            George took a moment to announce that on February 9^th he would be one of the speakers at an event called “Leonard Cohen: Ethics and the Artist” with a choir singing some of Cohen’s songs at University College at noon and then later on that night at “Jazz Valentines for Austin Clarke with jazz accompaniment at the Central Reference Library.

            The rise of the modernist movement, under the influence of fascists like Ezra Pound pushed poetry away from the oral tradition and back to print and threw out the baby with the bathwater.

            Canada had hero writing in the voice of the people like Walt Whitman, so it leaned towards a more academic literature. Robert Service with poems like “The Cremation of Sam McGee” and William Henry Drummond’s Habitant poems were not accepted in Canada as legitimate literature.

            George told us that it was hard to believe that he had been in the Yukon two weeks ago and in Barbados last week.

            The best poetry has an oral dimension, such as that of Alan Ginsberg, Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Lawrence Ferlingheti and the Black Power Poets.

            Canada is elitist.

            On Imagery: Imagery is about repetition, sound effects and alliteration.

            Derek Walcott writes in the canonical tradition but in the demotic Caribbean patois.

            Ezra Pound, despite putting an emphasis on print, was influenced by Robert Browning and read his own poems in the voice of a carnie barker. He grew up listening to tent show recitations and minstrel shows. Toronto and other towns in southern Ontario were some of the main stops in the blackface minstrel show circuit.

            There was the free speech movement of the 60s; George Bowering and the TISH movement. Milton Acorn got fined in 1962 for reading a poem at Allan Gardens.

            There was Confessionalism; the sound poets such as the Four Horsemen and Bill Bissett. Dionne Brand used to perform with the Gayap Drummer.

            On Cadence: Cadence is a reaction to insular imagery; professorial schools; the applauding of naturisms and scientific vocabulary. There is an ethnocentric taint to the reaction. Poets of colour and of other struggling communities are relegated to expressing themselves in the spoken word. Cadence is about musicality and flow and pulls notions from the popular song.

                On Emphasis: Emphasis shows a willingness to break up words like in songs. There is a willingness to read a poem as if singing a song, thereby busting it open. There is flow, patter and rhyme to enrapture the audience.

                James Brown was a primary example of emphasis. He sang like he just didn’t care about language. He would scream non-verbally to emphasize emotion. He mentioned again the duet between Luciano Pavaroti and James Brown. He said that Pavaroti wrote the lyrics to the part that he sang: “I'uomo rincorre il potere ma lui non sa che il grande limiti ad essere come si parrá nel palmo stringe un ‘idea che non vive che nella sua fantasia… volle se non si accorde che poi nulla ha piú senso te si vive solo per sé … Nulla ha piú senso te … Si vive solo per sé … se non si accorde che poi … Si vive solo per sé, solo per sé Solo per sé”. It seems to refer mostly to man pursuing power that is only imaginary and limiting.

            I asked George how he found out that Pavarotti had written his own lyrics for that performance. He answered, “Because I read ‘The One’ by R. I. Smith.” I couldn’t find any reference to it anywhere.            El Jones begins her book with a quote from Obama’s controversial preacher, Jeremiah Wright.             The anti slavery activists were spoken word performers.             Jones thinks it doesn’t matter if poems are perfectly crafted. Her book was constructed on the fly between spoken word engagements.

            At this point George introduced our guest poet, Adebe DeRango-Adem. He said that she writes poetry of the people from the roots. She said that she lives back and forth between Canada and the United States. She read from her book, “Terra Incognita”.

            She began with, “In the world through which we travel, we are endlessly creating ourselves.”

            From her second poem – “ … I needed to redeem myself from the future … I will teach you how to dance … Let’s dance together by the sea and underneath the dirty fingernail moon …”

            From “My Past Lives” – “I was a rich sailor in my first life … Cigar smoke through bullet holes … Maybe the gods laughing at the veneer of my face … Me, I’ve already died … Popping my fingers to silence …”

            She told us that George Elliot Clarke is one of her mentors and dedicated the poem “Blood Root” to him – “I too am America, have always been … For the first time in the history of these skins, some mulatto brother wins …”

            She said she also mentored with Baraka. The next poem was for him – “No spontaneous ignorance … Who will speak now of a beatific song … Your conjunction a little more blues than jazz … Now you join the rest without protest … The last quatrain on the last train out …”

            From “Maron Inconnu” – “Being broken down into a moment I become me … This is how the sea compensates for our chaos of forms … The history books escaped … Songs of Calypso … The romance of origins … The news of the end … The ancestors will be exiles on their own soil …”

            From Adebe’s last poem – “Every cry in the vortex, every repetition a firmer future … Sand castles that please … Understand freedom to reel back like a fish … Go forth dear traveler. If what fills you kills you then pray for gills. Improvise this thing called alive. The strange hallelujah of an imperfect self.”

            George invited questions for Adebe, so Zack asked her if she was studying. She answered that she’s doing graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, despite the fact that it’s Donald Trump’s alma mater. She said she’s working on a doctorate on how the phantom presence of mixed race figures in literature.

            George asked her how she balances poetry and criticism. She responded that they are parallel universes and a range of set knowledges. She said she writes reviews for Quill and Quire and finds it difficult to criticize other poets.

            I thought that Adebe Adem had some good moments in her reading. Her work is thoughtful with sometimes good imagery and some nice turns of phrase.

            George called a break. I asked him if I could write my essay on a comparison of how El Jones and Wayde Compton engage with their subject matter. He told me to email the thesis to him but he said it sounds like it would be all right.

            After the break, Adebe sat in on the class. Zack moved to sit beside her, perhaps so she could share his copy of the El Jones book.

            George said that Canadian poets up until the turn of the century rejected the Walt Whitman model because they felt compelled to follow the British models, except for Bliss Carmen. It’s only recently that the League of Canadian Poets has offered a spoken word prize.

            We returned to “Live From The Afrikan Resistance”. El Jones’s full name is Eluned Jones. Her introduction for the book is defensive.

            We looked at the very first poem, about Thomas Peters. When George asked for feedback I said it “sucks” then tried to explain why. I said the writing is adolescent, the rhymes are awkward and it looks like she just took the information about the man from Wikipedia and put it in verse. Obviously George disagreed with me because he thinks Jones is amazing.

            The next poem was “Choose Your Own Adventure”. I commented that it has no rhythm or musicality and that it just sounds like she is saying stuff. George argued that the rhythm would be revealed in her performance but I think that a good performer can add rhythms where there aren’t any that have been deliberately composed. That’s why it sounds like a poem when George reads roll call. He gives it a rhythm instinctively.

            The next poem was “Shakespeare” which caused a bit of a stir when he recently placed it on the Parliamentary website as a poem of the month. A journalist contacted George to question the appropriateness of a poem that refers to Shakespeare as a “nigga” on the parliamentary website. I asked if she was really implying that Shakespeare was Black. George said with a smile, “C’mon Christian! It’s Black history month! Of course he was a brother!” I said there’s a YouTube video that claims that Beethoven and Mozart were Black. George said, “Well, Beethoven anyway!” Then he told the story of Beethoven’s relationship with George Bridgetower, their collaboration and their rivalry over a woman. Bridgetower helped Beethoven with the Kreutzer Sonata. They had a public fistfight because of their romantic rivalry and when an illustration of the battle was published, Beethoven was shown to be swarthy. I can’t find the image online.

            George mentioned that the queen is also part Black because her fifth grandmother, Charlotte Sophia was the wife of King George III and probably descended from the Black side of a Portuguese royal family. Her coronation portrait does suggest that she’s of mixed race.

            It was suggested that Shakespeare might have had a distinctly different accent than his colleagues in London. Perhaps he was seen as the hick from Avon.

            We looked at the poem “Mandela”, for which any line that does not end in the name “Mandela” ends in something that rhymes with it. This is called epistrophe. George said it’s a textbook example of how this kind of repetition can work.

            The poem talks about the re-imaging of Mandela after he was released from his 27 years in prison. The first speech he gave though after getting out was with a red flag with the hammer and sickle on it prominently displayed.

            I informed George that the ANC’s theme song is still “Bring me my machine gun”.

            The last verse of the poem “Prisons” has an ominous reference to Donald Trump – “It’s sickening how The Apprentice glorifies a corporate villain who made his shady billions off pyramid scams and swindles and building luxury hotels for other reptilians who suck the blood and dignity from working civilians. And when he fires his workers his ratings go into the millions and we reward the master and humiliate his victims …”

            Her poem, “Brands” uses the names of corporate brands as words in the poem.

            I read her poem “The Letter B”, which uses a lot of alliteration of words that start with “B”. George pointed out that Jones used “bear” to mean “bare”. He also critiqued her line, “Black babies should shine like the light of a billion bonfires” as being a tricky image.

            From her poem, “War On Black Women”, George thought her line “Femicide is the global warming of women” does not work smoothly.

            In “Kings and Queens” she says “We could do like Haiti and free each other” but George argued that freedom was not really the result of that rebellion.

            In another line she uses what George called a rhetorical overreach when she spoke of “dead presidents” and included Obama. It was a deliberate embrace of imprecision.

            In the poem “Be Loyal, Be Strong, Be Free” she has the line “Pound for pound some of the best Black people in existence”. George opined that it’s too close to Black slaves being weighed on the auction block.

            George concluded by declaring that a book is still the best form of non-electronic technology.

            As we were packing up, someone came up to ask George a question and the three of us ended up continuing the conversation about El Jones. I argued that Wayde Compton speaks on the same issues as Jones does but much more eloquently. George said that Compton has a different and more academic audience.
            It was raining harder when I walked to my bike. I didn’t slip much on the sidewalk and the roads weren’t slippery on the way home. The rain even stopped as I was riding.