Nov 20 2009
Once Moore, with feeling
[Suzannah Showler, from 'Walrus Blogs', November 5th 2009]:
When February came out, one critic accused it of being too Canadian. We’re at a point where “Canadian” is sometimes used as shorthand for literature that is too aesthetic or intellectual. What are your thoughts on where such “Canadian-ness” fits into our national literature?
I’m from Newfoundland, and that probably comes before being Canadian, or at least gets mixed up in it: they’re two separate identities mixing together. Since becoming a writer, I’ve travelled through Canada a lot to do readings, and that has really informed my idea of what it means to be Canadian — just travelling in the landscape and seeing how different it is and meeting the people. I really don’t believe there is such a thing as a Canadian kind of writing. I think that Canadian literature is as diverse as the country is big, and it gets more and more diverse every day. I read last night with three other writers, and each of the books that we read from was completely different. Of the three books written by Canadians, one is set in Beirut, one is love poetry, and mine is about the sinking of the Ocean Ranger. That’s a literary experience in Canada: if you go to a reading, you hear all of that.