International Development Week (IDW), an event in which many Canadian universities participate, was promoted by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) during the first week of February.
A national event in its 18th year, the theme for 2008 is Global Citizenship: a Framework for Development.
"I strongly believe that we are all connected. This sense of collectivity is, in my humble opinion, the hallmark of our postmodernist world." said Cyril Dabydeen, Department of English, University of Ottawa (OU), as he introduced IDW at the university on Monday.
The Arts department hosted a series of readings from some of Ottawa's internationally known authors, who represented cultures from Guyana, Singapore, and English and French Canada.
The first speaker was Ray Deonandan, a medical scientist associated with OU and one of the organizers of this year's IDW. Mr. Deonandan read one of the short stories from his book Sweet Like Saltwater, an award-winning debut collection.
"I have a theory that the medium, the technology you use to produce a piece of literature affects the timbre and emotional content of that work. So…if you write with a pen and paper you get a more ragged, rough, or primal feel to the emotion."
The story, Nateraj, was written "in one go with pen and paper—no editing." It described the birth, life, death, and ultimate reincarnation of a male in a northern Indian village. The full circle from birth to reincarnation was presented in just a few pages of text, yet the characters were thoroughly developed.
Betty Warrington-Kearsley, an English-born Chinese-Canadian raised in Singapore, read several poems from her collected works Red Lacquer Chopsticks and Remembering Saint Hilda's, a poem about life at the catholic schools she attended in Singapore.
Feeding Frenzy describe instances of animals showing compassions as lactating females of one species fed the pups of another species—a dog that fed lion cubs and a tigress who suckled orphaned piglets. The poem Cold was a tribute to winter.
The thread binding the selections was that each poem presented a vignette of life, both human and animal. Amanda Earl is the editor of Bywords.ca and Quarterly Journal, and author of chapbook Eleanor.
As she read he poem Speaking in Tongues, Ms. Earl used snatches of phrases and words from several languages, including German, French, Spanish, and English.
Her next poem, Welcome to Earth, was an introduction to the anomalies and vagaries of life on earth that would need to be explained to anyone—especially an alien—experiencing them for the first time.
As Lise Careau recited her poems, she used movements and body language to add a level of interpretation to her poems. The audience sat in rapt attention as she recited The Silence, Mon Corps (My Body), Les MOts (The Words), and C'est la Qui (Do you Know the One Who?).
Although all of her poems were in French, Careau's gestures helped make the meaning clear for non-French speaking listeners.
Dabydeen, who moderated the presentations, is a prolific writer who embraces the diasporic identities around the work in his works. He was Poet Laureate of the City of Ottawa from 1984 to 1987.
Mr. Dabydeen read three poems from his most recent collection Imaginary Origins and some short excerpts from his recent novel Drums of My Flesh. He introduced the first poem, How to Save a Life, as a naughty love poem."
Some phrases in particular sood out, such as, "Give me the maple leaves and I'll show you the veins…" from My Country North America is the World, and "I will soon be perfect without piquancy."
International Development Week runs from February 3-9. As part of its contribution to IDW, Canada's International Development Research Centre will be delivering talks at universities across the country. Refer to the OU website for the schedule in Ottawa: http://www.sdi-idw.uottawa.ca.
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