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
Kellough is not ragging on the maple leaf. Rather, he paints it’s true colours: red, black, white, and all the colours that have come and are coming. Too bad our flag wasn’t created by Kellough and people who think like him. His collection brings much needed truth, colour, and history.”
— Jorge Antonio Vallejos
| 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 |
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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.
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Maxianne Berger, in The Rover writes:
How does a self-described “word-sound systemizer” convey the syncopations of his “bop inflected vox” onto a printed page? Montrealer Kaie Kellough’s second collection, true to its title Maple Leaf Rag after the Scott Joplin composition, does just that and then some.
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Raphael Cohen, in Doveglion Press writes:
Through his embrace of far-ranging poetic modalities and styles, a wealth of African Canadian and African American historical references, and dazzlingly original experiments in conjuring sound and music from and upon the static page, Kaie Kellough succeeds in creating a poetry collection that indeed functions as “both written word and musical score,” both diagram of Africa’s recent influence on literary and auditory culture in the Americas and portal to what a further hybridized, border-resistant artistic and political future very likely resembles.
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Jorge Antonio Vallejos, in Black Coffee Poet writes:
Kaie Kellough, a well traveled dub poet now living in Montreal, writes of the people everyone writes of when talking about Blacks and their fight for equality: Martin Luther King and Malcom X. Not to knock these men but it does get tiring when everyone mentions their names as if no other Black heroes and heroines exist. So, when Kellough writes of rarely mentioned Black heroes alongside never mentioned Black heroines you begin to see how special his collection is.
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jesse chase, in ARC Poetry Magazine writes:
Poets spend time questioning the truth of the words we say and read, inhabiting a fine liminal space within the synaesthesia of imagination. Kaie Kellough’s mindscape is occupied by a marginal Babylon. His newest book of poetry, Maple Leaf Rag, weaves in and out of the liminal void. In it, he mimics jazz-dub stylistic sounds. His poetry often deals with dysfunction and corruption in opposition to an identity. Most hear the word ‘Babylon’ and think either ancient Mesopotamia or Rastafari culture. Kellough acts outside of both senses of the word, but acknowledges and exercises its value as cultural currency.
News
- Spoken word artist Kaie Kellough on language, poetry & power
Video April 20th 2011 - Manitoba Book Award Nomination
News March 17th 2011 - Interview with Kaie Kellough
News February 3rd 2011 - Maple Leaf Rag Makes Top Ten List
News December 7th 2010 - Interview with Kaie Kellough
Audio August 12th 2010 - 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.
