George Elliott Clarke (Ma’89, LLD’99), Canada’s former Parliamentary Poet Laureate and author of Dalhousie’s bicentennial poem, performed the full poem at City Hall on February 5, 2018. Clarke shared his thoughts leading up to the performance with the Globe and Mail.

George Elliott Clarke expects that it will take about an hour Monday at Halifax’s city hall to perform his epic commissioned poem condensing 200 years of the history of Dalhousie University into 34 pages. He plans to perform rather than recite the poem because Canada’s former parliamentary poet laureate believes that emotion is essential to poetry, especially when the verses are about a place that transformed him.

“All good poetry is spoken word, or it’s sitting on a screen,” said Dr. Clarke, a 1989 master’s graduate from Dalhousie who received an honorary PhD from the school 10 years later. “You have to have it emoted, it has to be dramatized, it has to be lived, in my mind.”

It was at Dalhousie that Dr. Clarke began the journey to who he is today: one of the country’s foremost literary critics, particularly of the work of African-Canadian writers, and a poet as well known for the cadence and power of his voice as for his ability to weave political and personal narratives into new social histories.

Read more in “Poet George Elliott Clarke celebrates 200 years of Dalhousie University” on theglobeandmail.com.