Daphne Marlatt joins McMaster as Writer in Residence

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Marlatt_Daphne.jpg” caption=”Daphne Marlatt is McMaster’s 2007 Mabel Pugh Taylor Writer in Residence. Photo by Taryn Beukema. “]What does a career as a creative writer offer? For Daphne Marlatt, McMaster's 2007 Mabel Pugh Taylor Writer in Residence, it is far more than a way to make a living.

According to the long-time Vancouver resident, “Writing offers a way to question and reflect on the way we live. In our present culture of waste, the unquestioned life seems to me a waste of this phenomenal occasion of being alive.”

This accomplished poet, novelist and playwright was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2005. Significant amongst Marlatt's many literary achievements are her long poems and collections of poetry, including Steveston, Touch to my Tongue, Salvage, and more recently, This Tremor Love Is.

Her first novel, Ana Historic, received critical acclaim, and spring 2006 saw full production by Pangaea Arts of The Gull, a contemporary Noh play about Steveston's Japanese-Canadian fishing community. Marlatt is one of four founding editors of the bilingual feminist magazine, Tessera, dedicated to inventive and original writing, theory and criticism.

An early childhood spent in Penang, Malaysia in a household where many languages were spoken contributed to her interest in language.

“I was just always interested in putting words together,” says Marlatt.

Paradoxically, she is now known as much for what she pulls apart, notably the conventional frameworks surrounding language.

“Writing has been a very important avenue for that — looking at a way of inhabiting language differently. It's been largely shaped by educated males and there have been various masculine narratives and even masculine loading — semantically — of certain terms, so I was interested in exploring how you undo those terms and make them women appropriate.”

McMaster University is one of a handful of universities privileged to welcome Marlatt as a writer in residence where she is hosted by the Department of English and Cultural Studies. The position, generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Taylor family, makes her available to members of the McMaster and wider Hamilton communities for consultation about their own creative writing.

“It's always interesting to see how other minds work in terms of genre and language because, of course, language informs the way we think,” says Marlatt. “So getting involved in someone else's thought process on an intimate level, which is what you're doing when you're reading and making editing suggestions to somebody, is a very intriguing process.”

The forthcoming publication of Marlatt's long poem in prose fragments, The Given, is eagerly anticipated next March. In the meantime, if you have some creative writing of your own, you are encouraged to contact the Department of English and Cultural Studies at ext. 24491 to schedule an appointment to discuss your work with Marlatt (maximum 10 pages of poetry or 15 pages of prose).

A reception to welcome Marlatt as the Mabel Pugh Taylor Writer in Residence will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 10 at 7:30 p.m. at Gallery on the Bay, 231 Bay Street North, Hamilton (905-540-8532). All are welcome to attend.