The Question For Alistair MacLeod I Didn't Ask

Shelagh Rogers had just finished interviewing Alistair MacLeod. Their conversation, which (false :) ranged from his driving an N.A.D.P. milk wagon in young Edmonton, through his thoughts about a chandelier's point of view and on to his sense of the vanished in our interior and exterior landscapes, kicked off the Words In 3D Conference happening this weekend at MacEwan.

Alistair MacLeod
It was an enjoyable chat to listen in on. Two people who know about words written (MacLeod) and breathed (Rogers) talking about the literary sensibility, the changed perspectives that time delivers, the mystery of metaphor.

And then it was time for the punctuation mark on the evening: questions from the audience.

The questions, as Rogers graciously acknowledged, promising them a home in an upcoming CBC The Next Chapter podcast, were good. Was MacLeod a writer who teaches or a teacher who writes? What did he learn from his students? Can creative writing be taught? A question about the horses on the milk wagon. And more along this vein.

As sometimes happens, my question didn't happen until the event was over and Shelagh (Kubish, that is) and I were walking back to the car.

Shelagh Rogers
First, though, a short rewind to the start of the evening:

Shelagh (Rogers, that is) started her time at the mic by welcoming the audience and reminding them she was proud to be here in Edmonton on Treaty 6 lands. It was an unexpected and effective way to remind us of the territorial plateaus we live and move in, whether recalled or unrecalled.

And that observation, rhizomatic thought being what it is, sent me to another space we are now in in parts of Alberta, that smokestacked landscape where the liberal arts tradition that has nurtured MacLeod and Rogers is under attack by the technocratically formed. And, so, my question that I didn't ask comes from that space:

Alistair MacLeod, Shelagh Rogers, welcome back and welcome to Alberta. It is good to have you here.  I can't help but think that your very presence is a contradiction to the emerging argument of what higher education is supposed to be about. But here is my question: In 2013, in Alberta, where the endless talk is of pipelines, why read literature in university?

Can I ask Shelagh Rogers to get that question to Alistair MacLeod the next time their paths cross in front of an audience? :)

Canadian Literature Centre in action: MacLeod and Rogers







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hello!

Image
The potential socialness of a bicycle is built right into its roofless and windshieldless and doorless frame. It is easy to say hello on a bicycle. Like this morning. These sidewalkers nodded to me in unison at the exact instant I nodded to them. I said hello to the jogger, and he waved back. Hi, I said, to the dog walkers and the dog, and they nodded a greeting back. Both joggers smiled and said hello as our lives passed. I said hello to the squirrel. I said hello to the woman walking with poles and she returned the hello. The jogger looked over and I said hello as she said hello. I said hello to this fellow egg picker upper and we talked for a couple of minutes. Her bicycle comes out April 1. She is excited. Hello, I said. Hi, she said. I said hello to the  man on the other end of this leash and he said he and his dog were enjoying the beautiful morning. I said hello to this woman and she said hello, and we laughed ab
Read more

:)

Image
One of the joys and dangers of studying in the MACT program is that you start to feel scared enough to feel confident enough to fool around and try simple new things with technology. The danger is that you're not good enough not to spend most of your time fiddling around doing those things. And, so, this morning I am proud to announce that, taken by the hand, I have managed to embed html vimeo code into my blog. Please, no applause. This is not much, I know. Your basic 8 year old can do more. Asleep. But it is a minor accomplishment for me, because of me. And how I get in the way with my pre-wired reaction that new things won't work. The effect of that kind of thinking (or that lack of thinking) is that I transform the machine in front of me into an antagonistic force working to undo me. But it does remind me of me when I attribute malevolence to the skies when they conspire to bring rain on a morning of golf! Either way, that's bad storytelling. On another leve
Read more

On the way to and from Coffee Outside

Image
I have wondered about the the flight to artifice when natural beauty is encountered. Standing in front of a mountain vista, I will routinely offer some version of, wow, it looks like a painting! Or like a postcard. Or that is just out of a movie! This morning as I pedalled in the MacKinnon Ravine the April snow felt etched onto the limbs of the trees. I have often felt dissatisfied with this transposing of the beauty out there into the key of human making.  But, maybe, painting and photography and engraving and the rest of the human arts are as natural to us, as lovely, as nature itself. Or, maybe, so entwined that it is hard to tell nature and art apart. My bicycle has certainly transported me to feelings of freedom I would not have achieved were it not a piece of technology.  Who are we, really?                                                                           At the turn at the bottom of the ravine, a plastic orange fence encircles a soggy sink
Read more