George Elliott Clarke

My introduction to the poetry of Stephen Brown came via George Elliott Clarke's coy response when asked what he might read from during his upcoming U of Regina lecture. It was Brown who, under his birth name Stephen Kummerfield, picked up Pamela Jean George -- a 28 year-old  mom and occasional sex worker from the Sakimay First Nation -- and drove her to the edge of town, where he and his accomplice Alex Ternowetsky (whom Brown hid in the trunk of the car) beat George and left her to die -- then boasted about it.

Convicted and sentenced in 1995 (in his instructions to the jury, Justice Ted Malone of the Court of Queen's Bench inhumanly noted that George "indeed was a prostitute"), Kummerfield was paroled in 2000, after which he changed his name to Brown and moved to Mexico City, where he wrote poems like "Alejandra", about a sex worker. "Alejandra" is one of two Brown poems that Clarke, who considers Brown a friend, posted on his Parliamentary Poet Poem-of-the-Month page.

Alejandra

La pornai, in her one room installational
Gesamtkunstwerk, doing beads,
the stationed oddities of her 48 kilos of sweaty
anorixic perversity. Follow the blown words of Christ
in the bleached sands of her sandalprints,
for she has etched in the phrase: ‘s í g a m e.’ 1 

In the same blouse of black etamine
she hangs from wall to wall in her front dooryard,
an art-school chalk and charcoal of her
eating edamame in black etamine above her bathroom
wall cistern, also albaca, banana leaf;
Canteloupe Island in kef, with a Crosley turntable.

I follow her thru la fayuca in blinking light,
limp palm and plantain in corner limbo
between hammocks walled in with stacked blocks,
of asphodel, that greeny flower; obese market
women open-legged on wood stools fanning themselves
with leaves in the kaffir lime of tarped shade.

Day for night, a series of sounds in parenthesis,
so that it all sounds like music.
Or from when you begin
to listen to hear
until you no longer
hear what you’re
listening to.

A beaded curtain above a block half wall
separates watermelon Man on her suitcase Crosley
from her bed, where she sits cross-legged
in gestalt, her hair hung over a kitchen cutting board.
The tips snow white in the wet cake,2 and caked.

1 ‘f o l l o w m e’
2 Herb Alpert & Tijuana Brass – A Taste of Honey (1965)

Is it worth asking how our knowledge of Brown's killing of George has bearing on our reading of "Alejandra"? Does Brown's attention to detail belong to that of the psychopath? the poet? both? Is it worth wondering how Clarke might have presented Brown's material in the context of a talk entitled "'Truth and Reconciliation' versus the 'Murdered and Missing [Woman and Girls?]': Examining Indigenous Experiences of (In)Justice in Four Saskatchewan Poets"?

How Clarke could have even thought of presenting Brown/Kummerfield's poems without speaking first to George's family, community and relations is beyond me. That is not the George Elliott Clarke I know. But then Brown, until four months ago, was not the person Clarke knew either. Or so he says.

I am glad Clarke did the right thing and owned up to his behaviour. As for Clarke's "Metis" identification, I am sure that will be addressed in the Q&A.