Episode 13: Smaro Kamboureli interviews Fred Wah
This interview of Fred Wah by Smaro Kamboureli was recorded during a TIA House symposium called Wisdom Council in September of 2019. Wisdom Council recognized the imperfect knowledge transmission methods of the colonial system, and particularly the ways it has tended to fragment non-Western knowledges and privilege the textual over the oral. Using a combination of traditional and contemporary practices, it brought together a small council of mostly BIPOC senior practitioners in the contemporary arts to sit in council over three days to discuss such topics as what our communities need now; memory and forgetting; care of elders in racialized communities; stories of the past, present and future; stories in cyclical time; community formations they’ve experienced; community formations they remember; how they understand the work that needs to be done; and practices and strategies that might be of use or interest in the present moment. This interview was recorded as part of the gathering’s work.
Bio:
(From Smaro’s website)
Smaro Kamboureli joined the Department of English at the University of Toronto as a Professor and as the inaugural Avie Bennett Chair in Canadian Literature in 2013. A specialist in contemporary Canadian literature and criticism, she was a Canada Research Chair (CRC) Tier 1 in Critical Studies in Canadian Literature in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph (2004-2013). Her CRC research project included founding and directing the TransCanada Institute, organizing three international and interdisciplinary TransCanada conferences, and initiating collaborative research on the methodologies and institutional structures and contexts that inform and shape the production, dissemination, teaching, and study of Canadian literature.
(From Fred’s Digital Archive)
Fred Wah Wah began publishing poetry in the 1960’s as part of an international avant-garde movement located in Vancouver. His early poetry is improvisational and experimental, based partly on his interest in jazz. Yet it is also deeply rooted in the geography of the Nelson area, as his first seven titles show: Lardeau, Mountain, Among, Tree, Earth, Pictograms from the Interior of B.C., and Loki is Buried at Smoky Creek. In the 1980’s Wah’s focus shifted to his mixed-race history in Breathin’ My Name with a Sigh and Waiting for Saskatchewan. With the publication of Diamond Grill (1996), a biofiction based on his experiences working in his father’s café. He has received major literary awards such as the Governor General’s and Alberta’s Stephanson awards.
TIA House Talks