Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues, an Electronic Edition
author: George Elliott Clarke
edition published: April 2002

Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues

George Elliott Clarke
Pottersfield Press, 1983
Support for this publication was provided by the Multiculturalism Program, Government of Canada.

"How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"

Psalms 137:4

For William and Geraldine Clarke, Portia White and Conrad Kent Rivers.

Canadian Cataloguing Publication Data

Clark, George Elliott, 1960 - Saltwater spirituals and deeper blues

Poems. ISBN 0-919001-12-2 (bound) )-919001-13-0 (pkb.) I. Title PS8555.L37S34 C811'.54 C83-098593 PR9199.3.C55S34

Copyright 1983 George Elliott Clarke

Acknowledgments: The Pottersfield Portfolio, Caribe, Ebony (Black) Express News, Scrivener, Skylight, The Antigonish Review, Germination, Poetry Toronto, Origins, Poet's Haus, dandelion and Quarry.

Photography Sources: Black United Front, The Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Dalhousie University Archives, David Middleton.

Cover design: Rudnicki Art Production

Pottersfield Press
RR 2, Porters Lake
N.S. B0J 2S0

Contents

- INTRODUCTION by Sylvia Hamilton . . . . . . . . 5

Soul Songs

- The Sermon on the Atlantic Africville Seaview African Baptist Church . . . . . . . . 13
- Guysborough Road Church . . . . . . . . 14
- Campbell Road Church . . . . . . . . 15
- Beech Hill African Baptist Church . . . . . . . . 16
- Horton Church . . . . . . . . 17
- Fall River Church . . . . . . . . 18
- Amherst African Methodist Episcopal Church . . . . . . . . 19
- Liverpool United Baptist Church . . . . . . . . 20
- Musquodoboit Road Church . . . . . . . . 21
- Sydney African Methodist Episcopal Church . . . . . . . . 22
- Cherrybrook African Baptist Church . . . . . . . . 23
- Hammonds Plains African Baptist Church . . . . . . . . 24
- Photographs . . . . . . . . 25

Blues Notes

- hymn for portia white . . . . . . . . 35
- passion and precision . . . . . . . . 35
- love poem/song regarding Weymouth Falls . . . . . . . . 36
- homage to the beloved country . . . . . . . . 37
- Crying the Beloved Country . . . . . . . . 38
- Watercolour for Negro Expatriates in France . . . . . . . . 39
- Cotton Club . . . . . . . . . . 42
- Can't Seem to Settle Down . . . . . . . . 43
- Dominion Atlantic Railway . . . . . . . . 44
- North Atlantic . . . . . . . . 45
- Lady Love . . . . . . . . 46
- The Emissaries . . . . . . . . 47
- Weymouth Falls . . . . . . . . 48
- East Coasting . . . . . . . . 49
- Relativity . . . . . . . . 50
- Primitivism . . . . . . . . 51
- For Robinson Jeffers . . . . . . . . 52
- Autobiography . . . . . . . . 53
- Photographs . . . . . . . . 54

The Book of Jubilee

- Invocation of the Prophet . . . . . . . . 65
- Genealogy . . . . . . . . 66
- Portents . . . . . . . . 67
- Childhood . . . . . . . . 68
- That Stars are Winged Creatures Over a Blue World . . . . . . . .69
- Virginia . . . . . . . . 70
- Signs . . . . . . . . 71
- Exodus . . . . . . . . 73
- Nova Scotia . . . . . . . . 74
- A Root and a Name . . . . . . . . 75
- Scripture . . . . . . . . 76
- Sermon . . . . . . . . 77
- Work . . . . . . . . 78
- Harvest . . . . . . . . 79
- Drought . . . . . . . . 80
- Shelley . . . . . . . . 81
- The Christmas Song of the African Fishers . . . . . . . . 82
- Year of Jubilee . . . . . . . . 83
- Granville Mountain . . . . . . . . 84
- Photographs . . . . . . . . 85
- Notes on the Author . . . . . . . .95

Introduction

George Elliott Clarke was born in Windsor Plains in 1960 which makes him twenty-three at the time of this publication. Though he left Windsor Plains when just a few months old, his mother, Geraldine, says his heart is still there. When home, he always manages a trip to Windsor Plains to visit aunts, uncles and cousins.

Geraldine says George has an old Bible, one that is ragged and torn, with paper markers throughout. It's more worn, she says than a minister's Bible; it is coverless and very much out of shape. Spirituality is an important part of George's poetry but he is never dogmatic. Geraldine likes his poems about Africville Seaview and Guysborough Baptist Churches. As I talked to her, it struck me that George would have been barely six years old when the bulldozers began razing Africville. [vg1][^1]

[^1: Africville was a small settlement in the North end of what is now Halifax, Nova Scotia. Africville was settled by former Black American slaves after the War of 1812, but the community's history can be traced back to the 1700s. It was officially founded in the 1840s. Neglect and disregard of the community by the City of Halifax led to its increasingly impoverished state; it was bulldozed by the City of Halifax in the 1960s in an effort to "clean up" the city.]

Before George went to the University of Waterloo, he was deeply involved in organizing the Black Youth Organization (BYO) in Nova Scotia. Along with his friends and colleagues he organized a conference which brought together youth from across the province. He would often stop by to talk about the BYO. I'd make a pot of tea and we would end up talking for hours not only about his current preoccupation with issues facing Black Youth, but about literature, politics, people, music, writing, and the Bible.

One can't help but admire and be drawn to George. A friend calls him "effervescent". He is also sincere and disarmingly honest. These qualities shine through his writing which is both passionate and reasoned. Yet George is also good humoured and inventive. In February, 1981, he became captivated with computers while working in an underground office of the Metropolitan Toronto Roads and Traffic Commission's Control Centre. Within a very short time, George had mastered the machine and began composing poetry on the computer. Part of George's job at the Centre was to draft a computer handbook for use by people with little or no computer experience.

George wears his heritage like an emblem with warm pride and gentle enthusiasm. He has read and intently studied the history and literature of Blacks in Nova Scotia, Canada and elsewhere. The history, especially, is important to him and is mirrored in his creative work.

When Black Refugees arrived in Nova Scotia following the War of 1812, it is unlikely that they were aware history was being made. Given the harsh conditions they had just escaped, they were no doubt relieved to simply feel safe, away from the guns, hard labour and enslavement. Who in such circumstances could think of history?

With the publication of this volume of poetry, another chapter of history unfolds. Unlike our ancestral Refugee relatives, we are acutely aware of its importance as an historical event. I can't help but believe the Refugee forebears of George Elliott Clarke sit with me now as I write these words. They are proud as I am proud. They raise their arms in silent salute to this talented grandson.

The beginnings of the African Baptist Church in Nova Scotia date back to 1782 when forty year old David George came to Nova Scotia. A former Virginia slave, George had been converted to Christianity by a Black man named Cyrus. He taught himself to read using the Bible, and eventually he became the first minister of the Baptist Church in Silver Bluff, South Carolina. Rev. George, his wife Phyllis and their three children, escaped to Nova Scotia with the first group of Loyalists who arrived in the winter of 1782. They spent twenty-two gruelling days on board a vessel which eventually landed them in Halifax. Later, in the spring of 1783, thousands of Black and White Loyalists made their way to Nova Scotia at the close of the American Revolution.

David George and his family settled in Shelburne where he preached to and converted Black and White settlers alike to the Baptist faith. His evangelical work extended to other areas as well; travelling by foot and by boat, George spread the gospel to eager souls in Halifax, St. John, Liverpool and Lockeport. Even as he preached, however, there were many who didn't like his mixing of the races. On one occasion, the family of a White woman tried to prevent Rev. George from baptizing her. Other confrontations were more harrowing. A group of disbanded White soldiers tore apart George's meeting house in Shelburne and beat him severely until he fled into the woods to escape. Rev. George, however, continued to preach, not only in Nova Scotia, but also in Sierra Leone, West Africa, where he is credited with establishing the Baptist faith in Africa.

Not all Black Loyalist settlers were Baptist. Boston King, a boat builder, and Moses Wilkinson, who was both blind and lame, ministered to the African Methodist Episcopal congregations. John Marrant, a musician, was sent as an ordained missionary to Nova Scotia by a British religious group called the Countess of Huntingdon Connexion. He preached in Birchtown and Liverpool and gained Black and Indian converts. Women, too, were spiritual and evangelical leaders. Boston King's wife, Violet, was converted by Moses Wilkinson and became an active and valuable leader in his church. Mary Perth and Catherine Abernathy, the latter a teacher, are also recorded as contributing to the spiritual lives of Blacks in Birchtown.

The migration of Black Loyalists from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone in 1792 greatly depleted the province's Black population. Yet the memory and hard work of these men and women of faith remained as the foundation for others who followed. Richard Preston, the father and founder of the African United Baptist Association came to Nova Scotia with a second group of Black immigrants, known as the Refugees, after the War of 1812. Preston picked up the threads of the cloth which David George had so carefully and diligently begun to weave. In 1832, Rev. Preston established the first African Baptist Church which was called Cornwallis Street Baptist; it was known as the "mother church" and had branches at Dartmouth, Preston, Beech Hill and Hammond's Plains. At Granville Mountain in 1854, the cloth took its final shape and was complete: Richard Preston, along with elders and representatives from twelve African Baptist Churches established the African United Baptist Association. Septimus Clarke, the clerk of the Association, preached the introductory sermon and recorded the historic events in the minute books of the newly-formed organization. The African United Baptist Association is now in its 129th year and it continues to serve as one of the major focal points for Black communities in Nova Scotia.

From this rich history and background, George Elliott Clarke draws inspiration and motivation for his writing which itself is an affirmation of the tenacity of Blacks in Nova Scotia. George calls his poetry "a fusion of rural folk songs and urban blues." He feels that he has also drawn from such strongly spiritual poets as Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Hayden, Dylan Thomas and Henry Dumas. In fact, George describes himself as being a "preacher/prophet/pilgrim/poet''.

George is not an occasional writer. At the University of Waterloo, he helped establish the Creative Writing Collective. He was the group's first chairman and in that role he conceived and organized the production of The Disclaimer , a quire of student verse. George's poetry has appeared in a number of literary magazines across Canada and he has written articles and essays of literary criticism for newspapers.

Fiercely proud of being a Nova Scotian, George is spiritually rooted in his people . . . past and present. This almost mystical connection is evident in his selection of subjects and images. His writing is literate but often daring. He is not afraid to experiment. He takes us to the edge of Africville, a community doomed physically, but one whose true spiritual sense is every strong in the heart of those who had called it home. With gentle ease, he moves to the streets of Paris where he recreates the atmosphere of the 1920's, a time when many Black American artists found themselves caught up in the cultural whirl of Parisian life. And then he moves home again to the East Coast and the sound of "bagpipe jazz hymns" and "roaring rocks".

George Elliott Clarke is a pathbreaker. His writing displays freshness and skill. His forward vision is welcome at a time when it has become increasingly difficult to maintain optimism about our future on this planet. The publication of this book of poetry is a harbinger of a cultural awakening within the Black community in Nova Scotia. All forms of creative expression are a vital part of any culture and are essential for its survival and development. Young Black writers and artists can therefore celebrate and find encouragement in this book.

It is important for the reader to be open to these poems, to allow them to speak for themselves; to be ready to feel some of the energy and effort which went into their creation. These are poems to mull over, to read aloud, and to share with friends. This book is a very special gift to Black people in Nova Scotia.

Sylvia D. Hamilton [fy1] [Black Nova Scotian writer, born in Beechville in 1950] April, 1983

SOUL SONGS

The Sermon on the Atlantic: Africville Seaview African Baptist Church

fishers float above
blue earth and death,
and lower lines insect-angels
ascend and descend, bringing
peace to priest amphibians,
slithering in a hungry world,
fishers let down these lines
to rescue those unwilling to be saved,
but who will greedily
seize the angled offer, and be yanked,
bleeding crimson froth at mad
shocked-open mouths, now protesting
feverishly, upwards into heaven's
cold, blinding air.

Guysborough Road Church

we are the black loyalists:
we think of the bleak fundamentalism
of a ragged scarf of light
twined and twisted and torn
in a briar patch of pines.
and then, of steel-wool water,
scouring the dull rocks of bonny
bonny nova scotia —
the chaste, hard granite
coastline inviolate; the dark,
dreary mountains where sad Glooscap [mc1][^2] broods
over waters void . . .
we are the world-poor.
we are the fatherless.
we are the coloured Christians
of the african united baptist association.

[^2: An important spiritual character from Mi'kmaq First Nation legend. Borne out of sand by Gisoolg the creator, he was the first great leader, and helped to unify the seven families of the Mi'kmaq that would come after him.]

Campbell Road Church

at negro point, some forget sleep
to catch the fire-and-brimstone sun
rise all gold-glory
over a turquoise harbour
of half-sunken, rusted ships
when it was easy to worship
benin bronze dawns,
to call "hosanna" to archangel gulls . . .
but none do now.
rather, an ancient, CN [mc2] [The acronym for Canadian National, a recently privatized company which runs the largest railroad network in Canada.] porter lusts for africville,
shabby shacktown of
shattered glass and promises,
rats rustling like a girl's loose dress.
he rages to recall
the gutting death of his genealogy,
to protest his home's slaughter
by butcher bulldozers
and city planners molesting statistics.

at negro point, some forgot sleep,
sang "oh freedom over me" [mc3] [A black American spiritual that has been called the quintessential tune of the black rebel.],
heard mournful trains cry like blizzards
along blue bedford basin . . .

none do now.

Beech Hill African Baptist Church

these corpsed years promise
not an olive branch, but a fasces;
not the messiah, but sure doom.
yet, we maintain our faith,
strengthened by memories of black-clothed
Father Preston [qc1] [Rev. Richard Preston (c.1791-1861). See Introduction.] erecting a church of pines
and wan sunlight sifting through web-branches
years ago,
without assurance that walls and belief would
sprout,
one from the other.
for we have survived this hard gravelend,
once of shackle and sagging shack,
now of ragged folk and rat poison poverty.
for firmfaith flourishes not in the gilded
temples of moneychangers,
but in the wresting of a potato crop
from the boulder-barren, stone-strewn soil
of Beechville, Nova Scotia.

Horton Church

the classical wind blows at cross-purposes,
tactile in the backwoods forest,
intangible on sun-fired tors,
becomes invisible bagpipe
to a ragged tartan of blue sky and green tree
tops.
how well we know the roots
of that portia white [qc2][^3] song
sprouted from the desire to know
the rough feel of a truth
hewn from a black, baptist bible
under the wooden rafters of a plain white church
confronting the atlantic.
we will float away on waves of song
to a Province of Freedom
(grieved to leave our native land,
grieved to leave our comrades all) [rt6] [Two lines borrowed from the popular Nova Scotian folksong "Nova Scotia Farewell".]
or graves of silence.

[^3: Portia White (1911-1968) of Truro, Nova Scotia, was a contralto and music teacher. Famed for her "bel canto" technique, she sang in four languages, and was known for both spirituals and classical songs.]

Fall River Church

a steamer-tractor parts
a shifting sea, churning the thick,
dry earth near weary horses
that flounder in dust,
gasp for grass,
drown.
soon, some saint will find them,
floating in the sargasso drought,
jettisoned from care like sick or
dead slaves,
and he will cast out a net,
like one who founds a church,
to rescue those flailing,
to bury deeper those sunken.

Amherst African Methodist Episcopal Church

brown-blown fall fields yield
to spring-sprung green garb
with blackthread train tracks
all along the tantramar marshes.
we are at home inside this jacket of earth
that time and the first sin have woven about us.
we are at home under the tombstones
and foundations
of the Amherst African Methodist Episcopal Church
where worms work out a final solution
to the problems of race.

Liverpool United Baptist Church

national sea products limited [rt1] [National Sea Products is a large Canadian fish-processing company, and a major employer in the region.]
locks the ocean to our beds each night,
chains bitter-keen winds to our hearts,
batters us with wrecking storms and debt
until our wives complain
we are cold to touch.
to forget the ocean and wind,
we read our futures in rum.
to abandon the debits and our wives
we land like fish, their carragheen nipples
quivering,
we go to a charmless chapel
of birch benches and hard sermons
and take our burdens to the Lord.
yet, no bread and wine set our tables,
only rations of flour and hog.
ah, national sea products limited
shackles the deeps to our eyes,
clamps the storm-winds to our ears,
fetters us to death by water
or by exposure to banks and trusts.

Musquodoboit Road Church

micmac [rt2] [An aboriginal people of the region] windpoems sing
Spring's resurrection,
foretold by the sharp, fused fragrance
of jubilee roses,
and the appearance of shiny, new
blue cars of waves,
cruising the beaches.
knowing this sensual verse,
we ensure fertility.
we prepare a path through the wilderness.
we prepare the Easter Sunrise Service:
blue-grass banjo jamborees,
sepia saints in ivory robes, and the flash
of fish, flapping and flopping,
at the hooked close of a gossamer line
of predatory poetry.

we prepare the way of the Lord.

Sydney African Methodist Episcopal Church

we who work steel, who
are cold and hard as steel,
who stumble in storms of smoke and blown ash,
like penitent sinners,
to and from gloomy, holy taverns,
have eaten of Circe's [rt3] [In Greek mythology, Circe was a beautiful sorcerer whose spells could turn men into swine.] sweet lotus,
have broken the young buds of breasts.
we have seen warm, virginal water run bloody
from flesh firm as solid stone:
we know the honey in that rock.
we have eaten of the lily,
and felt the world kick in our loins,
Lethe surge in our veins.
we know greenhouses of women
bearing sugared yams of children
for the slavemarkets of this world.

Cherrybrook African Baptist Church

why berate the sable night?
why run about, fiery with love,
howling at the frigid moon?
it is futile.
why walk dark dartmouth
forest paths dreaming of a little
red riding girl to possess?
it is vanity.
why watch the heavens for a sign
of a coming messiah-paramour
who will love you fang for claw,
measure for measure?
no sign will be given.

do not lose faith; wait; endure
unto the end and you will be saved.

Hammonds Plains African Baptist Church

drunk with light,
i think of maritime country.
i sing of birchtown blues, the stark
sad beauty of that Kimmerian land.
i dream of a dauntless dory
battling the blue, cruel combers
of a feral, runaway ocean —
a trotskyite ocean in permanent revolution
turning fluid ideas over and over
in its leviathan mind,
turning driftwood, drums, and conundrums
over and over . . .
then, crazy with righteous anger,
i think of Lydia Jackson [mf1][^4],
slave madonna, pregnant with child,
whose Nova Scotian owner, distinguished Dr. Bulma
kicked her hard in the stomach,
struck her viciously with fire tongs,
and then went out upon the ocean
in his dory
to commune with God.

[^4: Lydia Jackson. A late 18th century indentured servant of a Dr. Bulman (whose name appears misspelled in the poem.) She became pregnant with Bulman's child. Upon discovering this, Bulman beat her severely. As a result of the attack, she suffered a miscarriage. In 1792, she, along with 1,200 other Black Loyalists, left Nova Scotia to resettle in West Africa]

[[Photo: church in background, road and young male in forground.]] The Baptist Church and churchgoers on the by-road to Lake Major.

[[Photo: exterior of church with inserted formal portrait of man]] The Sydney Church and an early minister.

[[Photo: informal portrait of man and woman]] A Black married couple - 1880 s.

[[Photo: formal picture of man]] Dr. William A. White (1871-1936) organized the Second Baptist Church in New Glasgow and served as pastor of the Truro Lion Church. He was the first Canadian Black to gain a doctorate (Doctorate of Divinity - Acadia University, 1936).

[[Photo: exterior of church]] African Baptist Church - Hammonds Plains.

[[Photo: group of men posed at forefront of building]] A Tupper Warren Pulp and Sawmill Crew, Weymouth, N.S. early 1900 s.

[[Photo: highway forground, bridge and power lines background]] Africville, Halifax - after it was levelled.

[[Photo: formal portrait of woman]]

BLUES NOTES

hymn for portia white [mf2] [Portia White (1911-1968) was a talented contralto born in Truro Nova Scotia. She won North American acclaim with performances in Toronto and New York in the 1940's. In addition, she became an established music teacher. Her breakthrough and acceptance into mainstream music, particularly her 1941 concert at New York's Town Hall, was significant to the careers of Black artists who followed her.]

the white, bathing moon
watches itself in the sea:
all black and handsome.

passion and precision

the soft exactness
of brown limbs in a white dress
is bliss, i confess.

love poem/song regarding Weymouth Falls

(for Shelley)

at the six-hiboux, where the Acadian [cf1] [Descendents of French-Speaking settlers in Acadia: Acadia was a French colony in the 17th and 18th centuries that included most of what is now Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and some surrounding areas.]
and the Micmac [cf2] [An aboriginal people who reside primarily within Nova Scotia. "Mi'Kmaq" is the more recent spelling as defined by the Mi'Kmaq people themselves, but "Micmac" is still in common use.] saw the six scholar-birds
whose insomnia is natural, probably
a million moons ago;
at the Sissiboo River, where it kisses
wetly St. Mary's Bay and fans on out
into brown Fundy tides shimmering
like a new world Nile;
this is where the world as we know it begins,
all blue and beguiling,
all because of her who homes with the pines,
so elegant, evergreen, egalitarian —
richly female . . .
at the homeless highway where it waits
and wails asphalt anthems of hit-and-run
before plunging wildly into the woods whispering
kejimkujik [cf3] [The name of a lake in the centre of southwestern Nova Scotia, and the name of a National Park and Historic Site that encompasses the lake; "Kejimkujik" is a Mi'Kmaq word that means "swollen parts."] songs of she I love in blossom notes
of the most crimson and pleasant apples
and the fattest calves of the land, there is built
Weymouth Falls and its African
Baptist Church and the lumberyards quaint
and the dwelling of her I take time
to make time
with.
delirious delight is mine! the careless
debauchery of stars bearing only good-luck/
glad-tidings; the sweet desolation of distance,
ebbing and flowing; drunken joy
of violent youth, violently in love,
as she moves to apex of my cosmos;
and the old, troubled world wheels around
her; song pours itself through my flesh;
drives me to her gravity-field of beauty,
even to the edge of the Sissiboo
hand-in-hand with her.

homage to the beloved country

the sorrow-stricken sun sinks
in the lattice-work of pines and spruce,
and as it crumbles into dusk,
its light falls crooked and bent on earth
as it is in water.
i watch its collapse, and know tragedy:
how a dream of freedom can be twisted into dust
by a narrow and naked land.
yet, there is the firey, ebon
beauty of aberdeen angus pastoral in pastures
of new grass and ewes along the stewiacke river,
the images of bluebirds meshing with green tree-tops
to form the geography of the cobequid basin,
the renaissance of a root and a name granted by
the New Light chapels of a cow and two sheep
in this world, and suddenly
i have a fervent lust for the meat of apples
and the drink of rain, a saviour not nailed-down
to a cruciform of certainty, and
to fly my love on wings of corn
over a sky of meadow —
to have the fat years follow these thin.

Crying the Beloved Country

why can i not leave you
like a refugee?
reluctantly, i abandon
your sea-bound beauty,
shale arms and red clay lips
sipping fundy streams.
why can i not depart from you
like any proud, prodigal son,
ignoring your eyes'
black baptist churches?
what keeps me from easy going?
Mother, is it your death
i fear
or my life?

Watercolour for Negro Expatriates in France

what are calendars to you?
and indeed, what are atlases?
time is cool jazz in bretagne,
you, hidden in beret or eccentric scarf,
somewhere over the rainbow —
where you are tin-men requiring hearts, lion-men
demanding courage, scarecrow-men needing
minds all your own
after DuBois [bg1][^5] made blackness respectable.
geography is brown girls in paris
in the spring by the restless seine,
flowing like blood in chic African colonies;
Josephine Baker [bg2][^6] on your bebop phonograph
in the lonely, brave, old rented room;
gallis wines shocking you out of yourself,
leaving you as abandoned
as an obsolete locomotive whimpering Leadbelly [bg3] [Huddie William Ledbetter — A noted African/American blues musician.] blues
in lonesome shantytown, u.s.a.

[^5: William Edward Burghardt DuBois — An influential African/American scholar and political activist. DuBois has been called a harbinger of Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism. DuBois died while in self-imposed exile in Africa.]

[^6: Originally Freda Josephine Carson, Josephine Baker was an African/American dancer and actress who found great fame when she moved from the U.S.A to France in the 1920's. After she became famous, Josephine Baker tried to return to the U.S.A. but her performances were rejected by the American public.]

what are borders/frontiers to you?
in actual seven-league sandals [bg4] [Magical footwear enabling the wearer to take strides of seven leagues (twenty-one miles).]
you ride monet's shimmering water lillies
in your street-artist imaginations
across the sky darkened,
here and there, by nazi shadows,
krupp [bg5] [Krupp Kruppkroop, family of German armament manufacturers. The Krupp family were largely responsible for the manufacture of munitions used by the German army in World Wars One and Two.] thunderclouds,
and in other places, by americans
who remind you
that you are niggers
even if you have read Victor Hugo.

night is winged Ethiopia in the distance,
rising on zeta beams of radio free
europe, bringing you in for touchdown
at orleans; or it is strange, strychnine
streetwalkers fleecing you for an
authentic negro poem or rhythm 'n' blues
salutation.
this is your life:
lounging with Richard Wright [bg6] [Richard Wright — An internationally famous African/American writer. Richard Wright lived a large portion of his life as an expatriate in France due to the racism he felt in the U.S.A.] in matisse-green
parks, facing nightmares of
contorted lynchers every night. every night.

scatalogical ragtime reggae haunts the caverns
of le metro. you pick up english language
newspapers and TIME magazines,
learn that this one was arrested,
this one assassinated, fear waking like gregor samsa [rt4] [Character in Kafka's "Metamorphosis" who turns into an insect.]
in the hands of a mob, lust for a black
constance chatterley;
not even knowing that
all Black people not residing in Africa
are kidnap victims.
after all, how can you be an expatriate
of a country that was
never yours?

pastel paintings on paris pavement,
wall posters beardsley-styled:
you pause and admire them all.
and france soaks you in
with its kaleidoscope cafes,
chain-smoking intelligentsia, accordion poets,
continental women pursuing you...
have you ever seen post cards
of alabama or auschwitz?
mussolini or mississippi?
it is unsafe to wallow in ulyssean dreams,
genetic theories, vignettes of gertrude
stein, hemingway [rt5] [Stein and Hemingway were also American expatriate writers who sought a home in Paris.], other maudlin moderns,
while the godless globe
detonates its war-heart, loosing
goose-stepping geniuses and
dark, secret labs!

perhaps i suffer aphasia.
i know not how to talk to you.
i send you greetings of l'Afrique
and spirituals of catholic Negritude.
meanwhile, roses burst like red stars,
a flower explodes for a special sister.
you do not accept gravity in france
where everything floats on the premise
that the earth will rise to meet it
the next day.
where the eiffel tower bends over backwards
to insult the statue of liberty;
and a young girl in the flesh of the moment,
sprouts rainbow butterfly wings
and kisses a schizoid sculptor
lightly on his full, crimson lips;
and a green cat turns its head upside-down
to see such fun and collapses the same way
an argument is dropped over cocoa
by manic mulatto magicians
who feverishly hear whispers of eliot
in common prayers.

you have heard Ma Rainey [bg7] [Gertrude Pridgett — A pioneer of African/American blues music. She has been called the "Mother of the Blues."]. Bessie Smith [bg8] [Bessie Smith — One of the premier African/American recording artists of the 1920's. Bessie Smith performed with "Ma Rainey" and many other famous blues singers of her time.].
you need no passports.
your ticket is an all-night room
facing the ivory, voodoo moon,
full of henri rousseau lions and natives;
and your senses, inexplicably
homing in on gorgeous Ethiopia,
as roman rumours of war
fly you home.

Cotton Club [dh1] [Legendary jazz club in Harlem, New York City, most popular in the 1920's and 1930's. It was owned by noted mobsters and decorated in the style of the plantations of the old south. Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra gained fame with their weekly national radio broadcasts from the club]

the saxophone-shiny sea sultrily,
soulfully sounds;
elegant ellington waves
dance dashingly on the silver sand
ballroom-beach:
ooooooh dignified, dusky pines —
waiters in black suits that suit the night —
sway in time to the swinging
lindy of the careless wind (oh yes, the
moving, murmuring wind);
black, holy rolling rocks
and white, fervent foam form a keyboard
sea-creatures play
tonight - a cotton club of strip-teasing
stars and a moaning moon . . .
i want so badly to see you know
rum-rich mists, pine-pungent
perfumes for which lovers pine,
the sharp scents of brine, white bread,
and red wine.
oh, why won't you be mine?
where are you dear,
desired one,
with your crimson mouth panting,
your dark eyes lusting,
your bared breasts breathing in my arms?

Can't Seem to Settle Down

(for Anna)

motion is religion: a fast, non-stop,
irresistible faith.
i, its disciple, do not want roots, not yet
(they will mount with the shrink of time:
they will ooze through me
when i am still atoms of earth).

oh, the proud siren song
of a break-neck rushing locomotive attracts!
i long to marry atlases
and sire cosmopolitan, postcard children,
and never be chained
to clocks and calendars, but go on forever
and never
come to a conclusion.

Dominion Atlantic Railway [dh2] [Railway serving the Canadian Maritime Provinces from 1900-1990.]

(for Susan)

under the pink blossom branches,
she hears rose buds tick
as the green time slowly shortens.
her lips are gulls' wings
her lighthouse eyes watch birds come and go
along the dominion atlantic railway.

oh, unknowing, laughing life
under the blush of apple blossoms!

the annapolis river is a clear church
ringing with ripples,
cradling clouds and sunlight through pines darkly.
she hums happily its hymns of growth
in brand new blue-ribbon cornfields
along the dominion atlantic railway.

oh, springing, sprouting babes
planted under harvest moons!

all the pretty, little horses wail like engines,
and she dreams of stallion steam locomotives,
blacks and bays, and listens for their lonesome cries.
soon, boys of iron and steel will come to pick her
a flower
along the dominion atlantic railway.

oh, youthful, full-sexed life
beside the railroading tracks of time!

North Atlantic

white, bleached tombstones, mute,
overlook brackish, brawling, breaking
water that loudly lashes the lamenting land —
water, ivory with ice and violence,
striking implacable igneous rocks,
and insatiable sedimentary rocks,
and rolling up into thunderous,
mad, crashing, incomprehensible fury
that beats and beats against granite:
tombstones on a cliff that mark fishers surrendered,
and rock and stone of life at stand-still —
barren beach and abandoned lighthouses
or forlorn as gulls drowning in wind waves.

Lady Love

She is washing in from the revolving sea
Just like any piece of flotsam or slave.
I shall comb the shore and salvage her,
Scavenging in the silken sand
As if she were a treasure to plunder.
Her heart: a note in a bottle
That never reaches shore.
She touches me with shadows shapeless,
Conforms to my flesh,
Colours my every drifting dream.

There is hasting some never-ending waltz,
And it will be of dream boats with tidal waves.

The Emissaries

red apples and brown coffee
in the indigo dawn early.
paired, dark forms of ducks
moving in water,
seem like strange rocks
or the breasts of my daughter
as the motorway develops
images of autos and truck stops.

a motel sign glares blood-red,
opposite a home of the freshly dead.
the black body of a Bible,
lynched on the tree of a table,
is motionless as possible.
i would read it if i were able
(if its words were not birds of prey
in a bomber-sky, olive and grey).

coin-operated lovers
exchange lucre in cold covers.
piercing lights of moloch lamps
hurl arrows of electricity
to drive out darkness where it camps
in the stock markets of the city.
i would alter if there was change
to alter what is not pre-arranged.

i have lost so much of what was nothing
(even the stars above the lakes are frothing).
have i said that my daughter's breasts
are like two, young, black swans?
that each generation of emptiness rests
upon my toiling for such futile funds?
going forth mornings to keep alive
the human doom, the too-human drive . . .

Weymouth Falls

walk within dusk's goldcopper
autumn, oh you, who are black
but comely, transfiguring nefertiti! [ml1] [Queen Nefertiti the Great Royal Wife of King Amenhotep; as Queen of Egypt, she was an African.]
watch the jetjade of nightpines
become delicate, rippling hair
moon-dark as your own,
falling ebon-blue velvet;
wonder what seeking lover
will discover your secret beauty,
opening its sacred book
to find illumination, what solomon [ml2] [In the Bible King Solomon (970-928 BCE) is the son of King David. The Song of Solomon contains the phrase "Black but comely".]
found in egypt.

East Coasting

bagpipe jazz hymns sermonize
sunday air; oh amazing
grace of sounds, maritime [ml3] [A term commonly used by Canadians to refer to their three eastern-most provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.]
music; ocean voices
washing away sand-bound
cities' blues; silver-tongued
gravity seducing virgin
apples to fall . . .
we know this land's language,
its beach-broken speech,
of spitting water, roaring rocks;
aye, we know its taut tune:
saxophone sea spirituals,
moaning blacks in clapboard churches,
bagpipe jazz hymns
testifying their atlantic genealogy.

Relativity

sudden gulls comprise
a grey atom
which, split violently
by vision or bullet-wind,
expells energy,
sun light
blasting this world
to time's rubble,
the senses' hiroshima,
shadows of once-present beings
and things,
burnt onto
the eyes' walls.

Primitivism

he could not escape
the wilderness. bark
encrusted his wine bottles.
his pencils grew fur
and howled. sentences
became wild eagles that
flew predatory patterns,
swooping out of a white sky-
page to rip apart field
mice-images, scurrying
for meaning. a carcass-
manuscript rotted on a shelf
or a hillside. he could
not tell the difference.
a bear-trap of ideas
snared him: he could
not poeticize
the country
and not become it;
his poems filling with
neanderthal nudes,
prowling punctuation,
snarling sounds, guttural.

For Robinson Jeffers [sm1] [Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), a California poet, achieved fame from the 1920s through to the late 1940s. Jeffers is best known for his dark narrative poetry, which often alludes to the landscape of the California coastline.]

jeffers's coastline, jagged
from weathering history,
founded rock towers taut upon tense
stone and sand shuddering
to sudden cliffs, falls,
farms, forced itself into his verse.
now, eyes navigate the craggy
outcropping of his lines,
ears explore his metre's sea-sounds,
and one voyages to exquisite
understanding, circling his dark,
stark, breath-swept poems
islanded in white water.

Autobiography

out of one womb and into another,
into the world and out of my mother,
to blue-white coast and grey rock,
i came, thirsting.
in that driftpine desert,
i divined rain from placental sky,
drank dream-rum from the brown-breasts
of fish-women (all smoked honey,
wet, under stars),
but thirsted still.
then, i scrabbled among book-stones,
wandered, parched, the amniotic,
annapolis-appled [sm2] [Spanning the fertile, southwestern region of Nova Scotia, Annapolis Valley is famed for its apple orchards.] world,
then saw the rock-cupped Atlantic
crimson with gospel blood
at a sacrifice-sunset, and drinking,
was satisfied, was born
to a new heaven and a new earth.

[[Photo: group of nine children and one adult, outdoor scene.]]One-room schoolhouse, Nova Scotia - circa 1905.

[[Photo: full figure, formal pose of male in sailor uniform.]]Black Sailor - Arnold White.

[[Photo: formal pose of male in Oddfellows decoration.]]Oddfellows member - A.H. Pinder.

[[Photo: formal portrait of male.]] W.R. Crichton

[[Photo: formal portrait of male seated at desk.]]First Black Nova Scotia Lawyer - James R. Johnson [ln1][^7].

[^7: James Robinson Johnston (1876-1915) was born in Halifax,Nova Scotia, and received his Bachelor of Laws degree from Dalhousie Univeristy in 1898. Dalhousie subsequently established an Endowed Chair in his name, the James Robinson Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies.]

[[Photo: wintertime street scene with horse-drawn wagon and lamppost; streetcar and Navy League Club sign in background.]] Halifax Christmas tree vendor - 1940 s.

[[Photo: three males, one standing, two seated, inside a cabin.]] Tim McPherson, Tracey and Garth Cromwell - a cabin in Meagher's Grant, N.S.

[[Photo: male with hockey stick in foreground; hockey game in background.]] Garth Cromwell - Dartmouth, N.S.

[[Photo: male standing with hockey stick in front of fence, facing away.]] Terry Cromwell - Dartmouth, N.S.

THE BOOK OF JUBILEE

I — Invocation of the Prophet

starting from visions, cells, then tidewater land,
after natal hungers, whip-terror, american egypt,
bastard night and lynch laws,
I came, Richard Preston [ln2][^8], called Prophet by some,
apostle of liberty,
to this earth dreaming shimmer-water,
shadow-pines, to this birchbark canaan
of wood, wind, and water gods, to this
nova scotia.
and i came, drawn by a fire-faith,
that not all be frozen in idolatry,
vain postures,
but some saved with baptist-blaze,
their combustion birthing a flaming church,
a true new light chapel,
illuminating dark world and Heaven.

[^8: Rev. Richard Preston (1790-1861), an escaped slave, became President of the Abolitionists in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and founded the African United Baptist Association in 1854. See Introduction for additional information.]

these pages record my acts,
committed now to fire,
even to burn future hearts.

—Halifax, 1854

II — Genealogy

divining by light,
a cradle of flowers
rocked in a moment of vision,
this morning, this evening, so soon,
i see the primeval, infant dream.
in memory, other cradles, past
plants, ancient ages:
palm leaf cushions for Ashanti kings, [mp1] [A West African kingdom ruled by a powerful monarchy from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.]
Sheba queens, [mp2] [A rich and powerful biblical figure, the Queen of Sheba is a African monarch who visited Solomon to test his wisdom.] on warm close nights
of coitus-comfort;
then the gunnysack beds of darkies,
slaves, never wed,
their love-making a cursed joy,
their parents strangers, their children sold,
their light dashed, flowers crushed.
ah, some of these memories
drive me to the ocean;
some of these memories
take me home to Africa.

III — Portents

at my birth,
scarecrow priests grimaced,
sickle-lightning reaped black trees,
blood drops splattered corn,
haystacks burst into hills of fire,
one old man saw white angels
and black angels battle in skull-sky.
another understood and explained.
my mother wailed to know such pain,
greater than love, yet love,
but when i was withdrawn,
oh, into the thick night, the
creak-cabin near collapse,
the moan and murmur wind,
the wild-minded ministers seeing things,
i cried not.

IV — Childhood

field niggers moaned tidewater blues,
endless, endless sorrow songs,
all my livelong, lovelorn youth.
and i was spiritualized
by cornhusker poets
hollering melody from rivers and rocks,
pulling rhythm from ploughs and earth,
finding words in hoes, horses, whores,
the chink, clink, of chains,
the apple-brandy slur-speech of horseback preachers
bell-gabble and rain-whisper . . .
all was music melancholy,
all sang, "many thousands gone;
none comin' back".
but when august baked berries black,
then tambourine and timbrel tintinabulation
sounded jubilee; all sang
joy-joined: "all i want in dis creation
is a pretty girl and a big plantation ."

V — That Stars are Winged Creatures Over a Blue World

twinkle-fire glittered, glared, more God
than earth-gold gashed against holy Heaven,
highest hallelujah home, and i knew
and saw bright angels wizarding
wisdom night, singing train-proverbs,
tree-psalms,
above blare-black horn-harbour
and winter-whited fortress-hill.
ah, incandescent angels
whirling in crayon-blaze,
fire-wings fluttering
in dark, bare, drear-branches,
whirling in divers colours;
i whirled, too, and winded;
then, whirlwind, roar and rush of mighty wings,
beating above my blessed head.

VI — Virginia

tyrant state, ghost-towned by taxes,
gutted by gallows, guns, and axes,
where bondsmen [jr1] [Alternate wording for slavery. People forced to work for no wages.] sip cold corn mush,
bacon fat, and in grips groan;

where plantation prophets water-douse,
find mere, dark dust or a dead mouse,
and the winter world of wilderness
howls with hound-hatred, wind-woe;

where i grew, and groaned when i knew
lash-slash, chain-pain, and hunger, too;
where i vowed not to die but leave;
where i vowed never to return.

VII — Signs

i saw the seagull, saint of harbours,
grey pier-prophet, miles inland,
burning but not burning;
i saw a book of stone through water-light,
its words moved when read,
scattering like tadpoles,
yet i was not deceived.
i prophesied storms from leaf-equations,
practiced prayers to resurrect rain.
some scoffed, but i had heard
a royal voice boom from screaming air,
intone: "This is your duty,
you are called to do;
rough or hewn, you must
surely bear it."
then Christ's great arms,
extended as on the cross,
stretched across the blood-black horizon.

VIII — Exodus

at a time pre-time set,
noting conspiracies of angels and ash,
saints and smoke,
seeing, too, the rapture of roses
and robins caught up in the air,
the Sun descended, a New Jerusalem [jr2] [Revelation 21:2. Reward for the faithful after Armageddon.]
of freedom augured by North Star
and slave song ciphers, i
stole away to Jesus, following
His arms compassing the horizon,
praying, praying: "Oh, Lord, lead lost me
where you will. Life or death, peace be still.
Oh, Lord, lead lost me where you will."
and, after minutes and miles,
moments and mountains,
i emerged new, free,
somewhere, anywhere,
north of Virginia.

IX — Evangelist

crows crack a white, porcelain sky
with one fine, black line;
through the fracture, some light
falls, filters, but little.
beneath that pale plate,
i was pressed, flattened,
made weary, the same as everyone,
my gospel-fire fainting.
then, i found a few believers, forest
boards, and raised a bonfire-church
in the name of God and the old songs
no other church would sing.
We dark ones joined,
becoming incendiary,
one vast conflagration unto God.

X — Nova Scotia

pursuing asylum, peace, beyond pursuers,
wanting to torch the inhuman
results of human lust,
directed, too, by God,
by villages and cities come down to water,
drawn by trees and light,
and serenaded by sailors' tales
of arcadia/acadia where many maroons [rt7] [Free Blacks from Jamaica, expelled by the British to Nova Scotia in 1796.]
await the Word, the match,
that inflames dry hearts,
to these mournful, misty,
sorrow-shores i came,
to North Mountain
Annapolis Valley
South Mountain
to a fresh, feral world, blue-watered,
greed-foliaged,
to deliver many unto God.

[XI — A Root and a Name*]

no earth:
no heaven.

no people:
no God.

to planters and pioneers, farmers
and fishers, i preach.

no church:
no Christ.

"A root and a name,
a model of Africa", i urge.

i baptise many in rivers;
their water is oil to these living flames.

[*A term borrowed from Mrs. Pearl Oliver] [ds2] [A co-founder of the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People with her husband, the Rev. William P. Oliver.]

XII — Scripture

micmac dirges,
rivers cascading from shadow to light,
sky bleeding from purple to black,
tortured, twisted apple trees,
spiritual chants:
sights and sounds common; the elements
of sermons, prayers, hymns.
every Bible word literal,
every letter law:
in the beginning, spruce
and willows, pleached,
were natural chapels,
when earth was not grave
but bright, green grove.
now, we must build
our means of mating
Heaven and world.

XIII — Sermon

homing gulls spin
yarns of light and shadow
above our heads and hearts
so attached to gravity.
we would be nearer Heaven
if winds Were ours, we believe;
but, no: land, earth, humble us —
we rise from it, then return,
sinking through broken twigs and fog,
finally to lend our substance
to mushrooms and insects,
completing the ordained circle, distance.
seek not God on the wing;
knowing our farness from Him,
He hath descended to us this moment.
Amen.

XIV — Work

laden with briny hay,
weary wains plod from marsh-meadows,
creep across a crazy, sagging bridge,
become mere, moving lights.
no rest is theirs,
neither any sustenance of apples and molasses.
there is the immaculate conception
of an image:
an inshore church, lighthouse, a fiery home,
leaping into flame-vision
out of the tinder of thine tenderness,
the kindling of thy love, Lord.
see here: a holocaust of roses,
a delirium-dazzle of white wood.

XV — Harvest

across orchard country,
marsh-wander, well-willows,
green slope-forest amlamkook, [js1] [A Mi'Kmaq place name for Memramcook, New Brunswick meaning"variegated".]
the spark-words have gone.
now ochre angels, sepia saints, gather,
holding final lilies and mayflowers,
name the earth where they kneel
Paradise, gather into one bunch
of saplings, set afire invisibly by God,
become lights upon the earth,
illuminating the path
of Christ's coronation procession.

XVI — Drought

a peck of corn, a pint of salt:
our rations.
a withered, hungry horse
stands in the need of prayer.
the spindrift heavens
refuse rain.
what ash-faith, doubt,
a dream dried to dust produces!
oh Lord, remember me, your servant!
stretch forth thine arms across
the firmament, fertilize the clouds.
oh, for i am more desolate
than an abandoned homestead
or faded church.

XVII — Shelley

in this province of wonder,
bluenose ghosts of lovers
conjure an undulating ocean
that snuggles up to rocks,
hugs the shoreline passionately.
ah, they conjure romances of drowning
in love, layers of flesh, waves of love,
as on the latinate coast, near
Lerici, [js2] [A small Italian town on the North end of the Tuscan coast that stretches along the eastern side of the Gulf of La Spezia, home to the poet Shelley when he drowned in 1822.] with Shelley, there. oh,
but Shelley, here, at woodland
waters, her pine-purple hair
dark in the wind leaf-falling,
is cunning beauty: her breasts
are like two young deer that are twins;
her lips are two crimson fire-brands;
she is all peat-moss and fire,
welkin and ingle,
raising my desire.

i sing: "Avon creek and roaring river,
There, my dear, we'll live forever.
Let our love burn the gloom,
Come on, honey, jump the broom."

ah, gird up they loins, young man;
light up they lamp, little sister;
for you know not when the Lord will come
to Weymouth Falls.

XVIII — The Christmas Song of the African Fishers

The land self-contained,
ingrained with snow,
flax-fielded, blue, brown,
and white, requires naught else,
water-insulated from want.
we follow troubled tides
with measured motion,
this is time, and give thanks
to the Father of Waters
for sea-beach and common country.
we sing: "d'world reel, but
we get in glory;
oh, when we get in glory,
glory be to the new-born Baby."

Let the fir-firm land
cradle our salvation.

XIX — Year of Jubliee

Though blood batter, break, bones,
black bodies hung out to dry
on dumb trees death-terrified,
oh Lord, let this year
be the year of jubilee.

shall we not be free?
shall we not make a joyful noise unto thee?

XX — Granville Mountain

after the glare and fire
of sunrise water in a creek
where speckle-spotted, ring-streaked,
fat-fleshed kine shimmered in sacrifice;
after this ritual and others,
water-lily, flame-flowers, illuminating
the Annapolis River:
after ruminating of rocks and clefts,
and speaking the prayer of exile
and the lover's cry,
guttural songs,
i toiled up Granville Mountain
guided by a secret, silent voice,
and, burning in the sun,
standing at a stone-summit,
proclaimed the African United Baptist Association. [st1] [At a convocation of the twelve African Baptist Churches of Nova Scotia, Richard Preston (see Introduction) founded the African United Baptist Association at Granville Mountain in 1854.]

XXI — Christ Church

(To Septimus Clarke [st2] [Septimus Clarke assisted Richard Preston in founding the African United Baptist Association; see introduction p. 8])

the holy mountains reverberate
with fish and lumber cries,
campaign promises, glint
in sunlight and fog.
withdrawn now, awaiting
transport to my scourged nation again,
Shelley mine and joy, the
Africans of Megumaage [st3] [A Mi'kmaq term for the entire Maritime region east of the St. John river and west to the St. Lawrence river.] established in
Christ church, true church, baptist church,
ablaze with spirit, each member
a pentecostal flame, i see
rural chapels sparkling white, prayers requited.
no matter now, death or destiny,
i have other fires to bank.
i go. this record?
Go tell it on the mountain.
Go sound the Jubilee.

[[Photo: Landscape of lake and surrounding trees, crowded with people.]] A Black baptism ceremony in a Dartmouth lake near the turn of the century.

[[Photo: portrait of four children, one girl in the foreground and three boys seated behind her.]] Halifax children - late 1800 s.

[[Photo: Large group seated on grass.]] Outdoor gathering near Weymouth, N.S.

[[Photo: Portrait of young girls standing side by side.]] Two girls in Sunday best - early 1900 s.

[[Photo: Portrait of two young boys standing side by side.]] Brothers - Halifax, 1890 s.

[[Photo: Rural landscape with people seated along a dirt road.]] The home of Mrs. David Smith, New Road, north of Long Lake, Preston, N.S., 1934.

[[Photo: Group portrait of five men holding tools.]] Dockworkers.

[[Photo: Infant dressed in white]] Baby portrait - 1890 s.

[[Photo: Road leading to town in the distance]] North Preston (named after Richard Preston), the largest all-Black community in Canada.

George Elliott Clarke was born in the Black Loyalist community of Windsor Plains, Nova Scotia on February 12, 1960. A descendant of the late Dr. Rev. William A. White, he is the son of William and Geraldine Clarke. He was raised and educated in Halifax where he studied marine tropology and biblical blues poetry. He is currently completing an Honours English Degree at the University of Waterloo. His poems have appeared in several journals, and in 1981, he won the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia First Prize Award for Adult Poetry. Clarke believes that his poetry "attempts to explicate the essences of things." He has travelled Nova Scotia and Canada extensively.

Photograph Credits

The publisher is grateful for the permission granted by the following:

- P. 25. Public Archives of Nova Scotia
- P. 26. Black United Front of Nova Scotia
- P. 27. Irvine Collection Public Archives of Nova Scotia
- P. 28. Black United Front of Nova Scotia
- P. 29. Black United Front of Nova Scotia
- P. 30. Dalhousie University Archives
- P. 31. Black United Front of Nova Scotia
- P. 32. Black United Front of Nova Scotia
- P. 54. Irvine Collection, Public Archives of Nova Scotia
- P. 55. Public Archives of Nova Scotia
- P. 56. Notman Collection, Public Archives of Nova Scotia
- P. 57. Notman Collection, Public Archives of Nova Scotia
- P. 58. Notman Collection, Public Archives of Nova Scotia
- P. 59. Norwood Collection, Public Archives of Nova Scotia
- P. 60. David Middleton
- P. 61. David Middleton
- P. 62. David Middleton
- P. 86. Dalhousie University Archives
- P. 87. Irvine Collection, Public Archives of Nova Scotia
- P. 88. Dalhousie University Archives
- P. 89. Irvine Collection, Public Archives of Nova Scotia
- P. 90. Irvine Collection, Public Archives of Nova Scotia
- P. 91. Public Archives of Nova Scotia
- P. 92. Public Archives of Nova Scotia
- P. 93. Irvine Collection, Public Archives of Nova Scotia
- P. 94. Black United Front of Nova Scotia

The Minister of State for Multiculturalism and the Multiculturalism Directorate disclaim any responsibility in whole or in part for the views and opinions expressed and for the completeness or accuracy of information included in this publication.