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“Like Light Off Water” sets poetry to a music landscape

Canadian Poet Daphne Marlatt collaborates with The Minden Duo
October 29, 2009
By Paula Meng

This evening Conron Hall will be transformed into a sensuous musical and poetic landscape.

In the collaborative “Like Light Off Water” performance, Canadian poet Daphne Marlatt will read passages from her book of poetry, Steveston, set to a musical soundscape score performed by the Minden Duo, comprised of Canadians Robert Minden and Carla Hallett.

The music aims to intensify the undercurrents and rhythms of Marlatt’s poetry. Marlatt is an experimental writer who has been praised for her use of poststructuralist technique and feminist theory. She is a member of the Order of Canada.

In her work, Marlatt is concerned with themes of subjugation, empowerment and the breaking down of hierarchical structures. Steveston is no exception — it is both a nostalgic and critical work.  It explores the sensory experiences of a small fishing village called Steveston on Canada’s Pacific coast, and also describes its history as a Second World War internment camp for Japanese-Canadians.

“There was something in Steveston which drew us, over and over again, and which our work attempted to enunciate — something under the backwater quiet, the river hum of comings and goings, the traffic of work, that was ‘shouting’ at us to tell it,” Marlatt once said of village.

She uses long-lines to capture the ebb and flow of the rustic lives lived by the sea, explores the dark times of the prison camps and gives a voice to a disempowered people.

Western English professor Manina Jones describes Marlatt’s work as innovative and avant-garde feminist fiction theory.

“The [poetry] is also about the changing relationship people have to the land,” Jones explains. “For instance the river Delta becomes an image of environmental change and the way people relate to it.”

When Steveston was first published in 1974, it was accompanied by a series of photographs taken by Minden.

“They are quite striking,” Jones says. “The Minden Duo has been really interested in how storytelling and song come together, incorporating experimental vocals, and unusual instrumentation,” she adds.

To imitate the feel of an accompanying symphony, an array of non-traditional instruments is used to marry the sounds to the imagery of the text, including waterphones, carpentry saws, blown bottles, conch shells, floating bowls and other percussion objects. Minden and Hallett have been creative partners since 1986 and formed the Robert Minden duo in 1996.

Born in Australia, Marlatt and her family immigrated to Vancouver in 1951. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in literature from the University of British Columbia and published her first volume of poetry in 1968. In 1996 she received her honorary LL.D. degree from the University of Western Ontario and served as writer-in-residence at Western.

Western’s current writer-in-residence, Penn Kemp, who has been a long time friend and collaborator of Marlatt, will introduce the “Like Light off Water” performance.

“Like Light Off Water” takes place tonight at 8 p.m. in Conron Hall, Room 224 in University College.

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