Maple Leaf Rag is a dynamic, jazz-infused riff on Canadian culture. With rhythm and edge, Kaie Kellough’s verbal soundscape explores belonging, dislocation and relocation, and national identity from a black Canadian perspective. This collection of poems is both written word and musical score — a dictated dub replete with references to African Canadian and African American culture (current and dated), Canadian history and politics, and characters ranging from dancers to piano players to boxers.
Kaie Kellough spells out the 21st century inheritance of multiple movements: the engaged pedigree of dub poetry, the identity politics-infused lyric, and the advancement of a so-called “spoken word” that bends—synesthetically—back to the page in concrete form. It is our luck that Kellough’s remarkable book-length experiment in form and social criticism occurs on this terrain. And it is a challenge that Canada, the black diaspora, and all followers of progressive poetics must meet. “News that stays new”? Kellough’s verse is New School that will stay New School.”
— Wayde Compton
These classy poems spring into motion like a jazzy urban pop-up book with its own musical score. Their craftsmanship recalls an age when attention to detail was an artisan’s signature, imagery fully-awake and precise by smooth linguistic sleight-of-hand. How supplely Kellough’s poems reflect the contours of the cultural landscapes they inhabit will be well borne out by time. Read these poems aloud—or better yet, go hear Kaie read them.”
— Catherine Kidd
| Subject | Poetry/Canadian |
|---|---|
| Published | April 2010 |
| Price | $14.95 CDN |
| Pages | 80 pp (Paper) |
| Dimensions | 8″ × 10″ × .25″ |
| ISBN-10 | 1-894037-42-1 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1894037-42-6 |
Related Titles
Reviews
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Vincent Tinguely, in Rabble.ca writes:
…a rollicking guided tour of an “other” Canada, a black diasporic, jazzy-bluesy rumination on notions of place and identity in this 21st century. Whether commenting on encounters of racism in Calgary schoolyards or delivering brief lessons on the secret history of Canadian Blacks in B.C., Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, or ruminating on farther-flung locales like Harlem, New Orleans and the U.K., Kellough’s poems remain rooted in personal experience, with a voice that’s sometimes acerbic, often ironic, occasionally angry, but always compassionate, a voice which carries a high level of commitment to the craft of the poet.
News
- Interview on The Kitchen Bang Bang Law
Audio June 10th 2010 - NFB documentary on Kaie Kellough
Video November 4th 2009
About the Author
Kaie Kellough has lived in Vancouver and Calgary, and has been based in Montréal since 1998. He is a bilingual author, editor, educator, and performer. His bebop inflected words syncopate Canada’s multiple solitudes. Kaie has dubbed and inked his way across Canada and into the United States. He is the author of Lettricity (Cumulus Press, 2004) and the editor of the Talking Book anthology (Cumulus Press, 2006). He was writer in residence for the 2005 Toronto International Dub Poetry Festival and the subject of a short documentary titled “Ebon Flow” in 2009. He is set to record a suite of the poems in Maple Leaf Rag with instrumental accompaniment in 2010, which will be available on his website.
