standing still
three First Nations children
in twilight
my spring-roll stand
at the Taste of Greece Fest
Atlas Poetica, 15, 2013
Notes:
1 you can read its preceding tanka or the whole sequence here.
2 The First Nations are the various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis.
3 Spring rolls are a large variety of filled, rolled appetizers. The name is a literal translation of the Chinese chūn juǎn (春[spring]卷 [roll]) .
My tanka was written in response to Neil Bissoondath's critique of multiculturalism (for more info. see his book, Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada). Below is excerpted from his article, Multiculturalism:
ReplyDeleteBut 'culture' is a most complex creature; in its essence, it represents the very breath of a people. For the purposes of multiculturalism, the concept has been reduced to the simplest theatre. Canadians, neatly divided into 'ethnic' and otherwise, encounter each other's mosaic tiles mainly at festivals. There's traditional music, traditional dancing, traditional food at distinctly untraditional prices, all of which is diverting as far as it goes - but such encounters remain at the level of a folkloric Disneyland.
We take a great deal of self-satisfaction from such festivals; they are seen as proof of our open-mindedness, of our welcoming of difference. Yet how easily we forget that none of our ethnic cultures seems to have produced poetry or literature or philosophy worthy of our consideration. How seductive it is, how reassuring, that Greeks are always Zorbas, Ukrainians always Cossacks: we come away with stereotypes reinforced.