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April may be over but that doesn't mean there's nothing going on as far as the literary arts are concerned.
I'm just home from a wonderful event at Oxygen Art Centre where tonight we celebrated the launch of Tom Wayman's new book of essays from Guernica Editions, If You're Not Free At Work, Where Are You Free? ~ Literature and Social Change / Selected Essays and Interviews 1994–2014, with the able assistance of John Lent who read a couple of beautiful pieces from a forthcoming collection, A Matins Flywheel and who is responsible for the Rickie Lee Jones rabbit hole I find myself down as I write this post. Why is that? Well, in addition to being a writer, Lent is a musician and he played a few songs with his guitar accompanied by Mark Nishihara on bass, including Jones' Easy Money. I still have the vinyl of that album, hadn't heard—or thought of—that song in yonks, and they did a great cover. So of course I had to find it on YouTube and the rest, as they say...
Tom chose May 1st as the launch date quite deliberately. That was the day, 34 years ago, the British Columbia provincial government of the day under Premier Bill Bennett announced that David Thomson University Centre (DTUC) was to be shut down.
So much has already been written about the history of post-secondary education in Nelson that I'm not going to go into the finer points of what happened, when, and why, but here are a few links, should you be curious.
An overview of the situation as written by Douglas P. Ormond, Administrator/City Clerk, Nelson, BC, in 1991.
When DTUC closed, where did some of the writers/teachers go?
What finally happened to the library? After the closure there was a sit-in populated by citizens from all ages and walks of life in order to save the books. Over the years they were moved from one place to another several times. I recall helping out during one such move in the late nineties into a building on Front Street that now houses a lighting store. It was back-breaking work.
The first thing I saw when I walked in was a display of black and white photographs by Jeremy Addington, who taught photography at DTUC from 1979 until it closed in 1984.
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| Anne DeGrace and Jeremy Addington |
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| Poet Susan Andrews Grace studies some of Jeremy's photographs |
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Tom spoke briefly before introducing John Lent and Mark Nishihara. They played a few songs in between which John talked about various singers who spoke—okay, sang—to him. (The rabbit hole continues; now I'm listening to Nancy Wilson putting her heart into The Very Thought of You along with Satin Doll.)
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| Tom made a reference to when DTUC closed for good, prompting someone behind me to say, "Closed for bad." |
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| Mark Nishihara and John Lent |
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| John Lent talked about coming to Nelson when he was 25 to teach at Notre Dame University (which preceded DTUC and was also closed) and read a couple of pieces from his forthcoming book, A Matins Flywheel. |
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| Tom Wayman read from his new collection of essays |
When news of DTUC's closure broke Jeremy had the foresight to ask people who worked at the college in various capacities to come have their photographs taken and to bring along a written statement on what they made of the closure. He took some sixty such photographs. Tonight, twenty of them were on display and they serve as a poignant reminder of how many lives were affected. I asked Jeremy for permission to reproduce a few of those images here and he very generously said yes.
Take the time to read the statements under the photographs. They tell a tale that we keep on hearing in one fashion or another. But oh, the resilience of this place!
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I look forward to digging into Tom's book. It begins with the poem that became the title:
If You're Not Free At Work, Where Are You Free?
Voices murmur concerning a "work/life balance"
or reverberate with conviction about
"our revered parliamentary heritage"
or intone why municipal tax subsidies are needed
to persuade someone to finance
a new mall. The words surge and drop and swell
like the fluctuating clamour of the drunken dinner parties
—symposiums—where the ebb and flow of wit
created the concept of democracy,
while around the guests
the lash, shackles, branding iron
ensured that grains and animals were raised
and brought to market, the meal was concocted
and served; locked windows and beatings
that resulted in broken limbs and teeth, permanent hearing loss
meant grapes were harvested, wine fermented,
bedchambers readied. Days, years of hopeless sweat,
the shattering of families
caused fresh flowers to be grown, cut,
arranged amid the company in vases
other slaves threw on wheels slick with wet mud
—flowers also placed
along the Senate's benches
in preparation for the next debate.
John Lent and Mark Nishihara closed the evening with Bob Dylan's A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall and the audience joined in on the chorus.
Of course we did. This is Nelson.
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| photo by Jeremy Addington |
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