Hawaiian Hotbox, a holographic Rockhead’s Paradise and globetrotting translation…
Shelley Pomerance
One of the wonderful things about programming an international literary festival is the books that keep arriving in the mail, sent by publishers from across the country and beyond. The books pile up on my bookshelves, as well as on, under and around my desk, beside my bed, in the living room… How to keep up with all this reading? It’s a perennial challenge…
I’m going to delve into the stacks and tell you about just a few of the titles that have landed in my mailbox in recent months, and I’ll stick to Canadian titles because otherwise there would be no end to this list…
Ever heard of Hawaiian Hotbox? According to Richard Van Camp, author of Moccasin Square Gardens, “it’s when you’re too poor to go to Hawaii so you sit in the bathroom with your buds and crank the shower and turn it all the way on hot but don’t turn on the fan so the room gets hotter and the humidity index rises… Yeah, they say the truth always comes out in the bush or when you’re in rehab or when you Hawaiian Hotbox with your cousins.” Richard Van Camp is a member of the Tłı̨chǫ Dene Nation, from Fort Smith, in the Northwest Territories, currently based in Edmonton. Reading his stories doesn’t really feel like reading, it’s more like you’re listening to a neighbour tell you wild stories while you’re leaning over the fence in your back yard. Van Camp’s tales are downright gossipy and laugh-out-loud funny, with a little bit of everything tossed in: gambling, sex, supernatural creatures, a grown man named Baby, a shoulder-crunching wrestling move called the Camel Clutch, and Jimmy who is neither man nor woman… A must read!
In Dominoes at the Crossroads, Montreal-based writer and sound performer Kaie Kellough, takes the reader from Sénégal to Switzerland, Jamaica, Vancouver and beyond. Yet Montreal is omnipresent in these stories. We encounter Oscar Peterson in a holographic recreation of Rockhead’s Paradise. The Royalmount project shows up in the future, abandoned and derelict, to be salvaged by immigrants who turn it in to a bustling mix of ethnic markets, shops and cafés. Marie-Joseph Angélique, the African slave who allegedly planned a rebellion, set fire to her mistress’s house, and destroyed Montreal’s Old Port makes multiple appearances, as does a character named Kaie Kellough, “a 21st century author who wrote several books before the gradual collapse of publishing in the first half of that century”. Slavery, racism, history, politics, it’s all here in this riveting collection.
And here’s one more for the road. Translation Sites: A Field Guide by translation theorist and Concordia University prof Sherry Simon. Ideal for the armchair traveller who enjoys the intricacies and idiosyncracies of language. Simon takes the reader to Lviv (called, at different times, Leopolis, Lemberg, Lwów and Lvov) and demonstrates how the populations that moved through this city left behind layers of language. She compares Montreal’s Printemps érable with Cairo’s Arab Spring, examining the complexities of translating the vocabulary of street activism. Museum labels in Inuit, a Toronto street sign in Anishinaabe, a TV series in Danish and Swedish, Zen gardens, synagogues, libraries, cemeteries, Simon’s interest is voracious and all-encompassing.