Friday, April 1, 2016

Border/lines: Ore interviews visiting author Garry Thomas Morse

Ore Samples aims to bring some of Canada’s finest, critically-acclaimed professional writers north to connect with local readers, local literary, visual and performing artists, and anyone engaged with and invested in the vibrant local arts scene. The 2016 lineup is stellar.


The series launches at the Flin Flon Public Library on April 28, 7 pm, with a dynamic visiting author known for his innovative writing and unforgettable performances. Garry Thomas Morse is the author of five poetry titles and four fiction titles, notably Governor General’s Award poetry finalist Discovery Passages about his ancestral Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations myth, history, and fallout of the potlatch ban. Morse’s latest poetry title Prairie Harbour features a long poem set in Saskatchewan, and includes an interlude about fur trade history in Manitoba. He currently resides in Winnipeg.

Garry Thomas Morse took the time to entertain a few questions ahead of his visit. Conversation starters, if you will.

Ore:
Our communities are situated along the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border, the relationships between them many, varied, and continually shifting. Your latest book Prairie Harbour is set around what the cover describes as “vigilantly maintained border/lines that mark the relatively “unsung” decline of natural prairie life.” How do you define and approach borders in your work?

Garry Thomas Morse:
Not long after I arrived in Regina, a writer there told me that “the rigid streets and right-angled trucks need your influences.” Lovely. Approaching from a First Nations perspective, borders do not necessarily exist. Ecologically, we as human beings seem to want to box in the natural landscape, to contain its wildness, even to the point of extirpation and extermination. I used to think this was chiefly for economic reasons but now I’m more inclined to think it is down to our inherent irrationality. Aesthetically, I struggle with the margins on the page and also with notions of a national literature. A major shift from Discovery Passages in this book is from the voice of cultural insider to the voices of exilic outsiders, or howling souls outside those margins, throughout history.

Ore:
Your work is deeply engaged with history. When did you begin this exploration and how has your engagement with historical texts and the historical record changed over the course of your writing life?

Garry Thomas Morse:
I think it probably began with Discovery Passages. My trip to Alert Bay in BC got me interested in local history, from the immediacy of experience to documents, records, and personal stories. Though my novel Minor Expectations uses a different approach, cycling through a number of literary styles from different epochs to make up the story. More recently, I’m interested in the obvious biases to be found in journals, biographies, and respective histories. That process began with research on fur trade history and the Métis, resulting in those rather caustic “heritage minute” poems smack in the middle of Prairie Harbour.

Right now, I’m working on a forthcoming novel in which a relatively ageless totem/man travels around Western Canada and retells a number of historical events along the way. I would say that engagement with historical texts is more entertaining to me than ever before. I tend to tease out the humour and absurdities in my books, whenever possible.

Ore:
Many of our citizens moved here for jobs and involvement in the local arts scene has long played an important role in community-building. Originally from BC, in recent years you’ve lived in Regina and now in Winnipeg. What has been your experience of community? 

Garry Thomas Morse:
Since quitting my editor job and moving away from Vancouver in 2013, I’ve experienced a lot of unanticipated culture shock, going from the Yukon to Saskatchewan to Manitoba, and it has definitely been hard to start over a few times before knowing where I need to be. Usually, it’s a handful of hearty individuals in any given place who make time to reach out, exchange ideas and writing, and keep me from feeling too lonely. Though mostly it is geography and climate that have made me into an entirely different person, teaching me that all my priorities were out of whack before.

Ore
In close-knit rural communities such as this, the border/lines between arts disciplines are often very fluid. Local musicians, actors, visual artists, and writers frequently collaborate to mount ambitious productions and create unique cultural experiences. How have the various arts disciplines informed and affected your writing?

Garry Thomas Morse:
Well, aspects of the history of the development of Western music (or classical music), along with those of opera, have a powerful impact on my writing. An RSO performance of Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony gave Prairie Harbour a new structure and trajectory, especially because of the tension between rural and urban dance forms in the scherzo movement. Dmitri Shostakovich is there in that text too, although his music has had a greater influence on “Twelve Preludes and Fugues,” a long poem that is part of my next book of poetry. Also included will be a sequence that re-poeticizes that Orpheus opera by Philip Glass along the streets of Winnipeg. 


With financial assistance from The Canada Council for the Arts through The Writers' Union of Canada.