Moving towards biotext and an introduction to the reading of Fred Wah's "Diamond Grill"

9 Março 2020, 14:00 • Cecília Maria Beecher Martins

Presentation of the history of Chinese immigration to Canada and placing the history of the Wah family within this context.Introduction to the concept of biotext in the context of immigrant writing and the tradition of the Canadian long poem.

While the " Canadian long poem"  is often associated with the "Confederacy Poets" from 1860s to 1900s and the later poetry of Anglo-Saxon origin (in particular Pratt and Birney); this form of long poetry actually had its origins in the declamatory long poems of the First Nation tradition (p 35 your manual).

We watched videos of contemporary First Nations poets delivering declamatory long poems. These included Lee Maracle:  "Aboriginal Apology Residential Schools” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv3HVOSr90c and Helen Knott: "Calling out Justine Trudeau" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wPOv5Q0Bm8

And also watched excerpts from the contemporary First Nations’ documentary film Stories Are in Our Bones (dir Janine Windolph 2019) that follows the documentary tradition of First Nations’ story telling  https://www.nfb.ca/film/stories-are-in-our-bones/?docs-hp_en=feature_2&feature_type=w_free-film&banner_id=79343

Students then read Chief Dan George's "A Lament for Confederation" (1967) 

Declamatory poetry served 4 main functions:

1) the presentation of concerns/grievances

2) the understanding of belonging to a long tradition - where the "I" as a person is rarely referred to, rather the voice of the first person is the collective "We of the tribe"

3) the awareness that this "We" exists as part of a natural environment - is a product and protector of that environment and tradition

4) When grievance is expressed, solutions can be found - these poems normally ended with recognition and hope. 

 

Biotext shares many of these characteristics, born as it was from the long poems of •Michael Ondaajte (Ceylon & Britain), Daphne Marlatt (Australia & Malaysia), Roy Kiyooka (Japan) and Fred Wah (China & Sweden & Sctos/Irish)

 

It too asks the 4 questions above, even if it does this in a slightly different fashion. For instance (3) above becomes "I" not we and is asked in relationship with a questioning of how this hybrid being, who is the author, fits into his/her many cultural backgrounds and Canada as well.

(5) They also use different formats, moving between prose, poetry and even historic/newspaper entries

(6) The "I" can be variable

 

please  answer the questions below for next class and send these  answers to my email cbeecher@campus.ul.pt before or during class time 2.00-4.00 p.m. when I will reply) 

1. What did you like/dislike about the Diamond Grill text?

2. Do you see traces of points 1 to 6 in it?