Editorial

Experience, Inexperience and (Un)Canadian Poetics

Amatoritsero Ede

The world system has relied on immigrants for its self-regeneration ever since Homo erectus first moved away from the horn of Africa to Eurasia through the levantine corridor about 1.8 million years ago. Individuals or groups migrate in pursuit of an idea, a dream – or even nightmares. The fleet-footed “traverse” the earth, “exploring all her wide-flung parts with zest” like Dennis Brutus’es romantic troubadour and “probing in motion sweeter far than rest/her secret thickets with an amorous hand.”

Usually the kind of traveller in question arrives loaded down with expectation and energy, trailed by dust and spiced experiences from other places – for whatever they are worth; experiences that could flow into host economies and replenish or give them a boost. This is why it is bewildering that Canadian policy makers are slow to harness, assimilate or localise immigrant energy and creativity and insist that, on entering Canada, migrants should slough off their foreign experiences as a snake sheds its skin.

All in his Stride

Poet, Amatortisero Ede in conversation with Poet and dramatist, David O’Meara

Amatoritsero Ede: Welcome to MTLS’ interview series, David. Would you describe yourself as a critic apart from being a poet? I ask because your “Dangerous Words: Don Domanski and Metaphor” in the Northern Review of Poetry is an incisive analysis of a particular poet’s

language use.

David O’Meara: No, I don’t think I could say I’m a critic. That term should be used for someone who is regularly engaged in publicly describing and judging an art. There have been times when I wrote, and write, critical discussions of someone’s work, but it’s very irregular because I find the whole process time-consuming and agonizing. It’s floated around in the back of my mind for a while to write some kind of critical essay collection at some point, but I also feel processing and forming thoughts on poetry is a lifetime’s work, so I’m in no rush.

Neo Africanus: In Teju Cole’s World

Akin Adesokan

Of the many encounters in which Julius, the protagonist of Open City – Teju Cole’s elegantly disarming novel – finds himself, two strike me as constituting the pulse of the subtle cultural politics animating the novel. In the first, the young psychiatrist is about to post a letter when the post office clerk, Terry, struck by his choice of stamp, says, “Say, brother, where are you from? ’Cause, see, I could tell you were from the Motherland. And you brothers have something that is vital, you understand me. You have something that is vital for the health of those of us raised on this side of the ocean. Let me tell you something: I am raising my daughters as Africans.”

The man then goes on to importune the narrator to listen to the declamation of a Spoken-Word poem titled “The Unconquered.” Walking away from what must have been an ordeal for him, Julius says, “I made a mental note to avoid that particular post office in the future.”

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