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Moose Jaw Weather

Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada
Festival 2004    July 22 - 25

George Elliott Clarke

Photo credit:  Geeta Paray Clarke

George Elliott Clarke, born in Windsor, Nova Scotia in 1960, is a seventh-generation Canadian of African-American descent.  A graduate of the Universities of Waterloo, Dalhousie, and Queen’s, he is now the E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto.  An Assistant Professor of English and Canadian Studies at Duke University, North Carolina, 1994-1999, Clarke also served as the Seagrams Visiting Chair in Canadian Studies at McGill University, 1998. 

Clarke is widely regarded as one of English Canada’s most musical and dramatic poets. His verse-novel, Whylah Falls, placed second in the CBC Canada Reads contest in 2002, while his narrative lyric suite, Execution Poems, won the 2001 Governor General’s Award for Poetry.  His stage works include two operas: Beatrice Chancy (1998) and Québécité (2003), both of which have won popular and critical acclaim. 

Also a noted scholar and literary critic, Clarke, who hails from Nova Scotia’s “Africadian” community, is also a primary interpreter of African-Canadian experience.  Clarke lives in Toronto, Ontario, but he also owns land in Nova Scotia.