{"id":19312,"date":"2011-12-28T22:38:15","date_gmt":"2011-12-28T22:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=19312"},"modified":"2015-08-08T18:31:16","modified_gmt":"2015-08-08T18:31:16","slug":"multicultural-%e2%80%98obsession%e2%80%99-drives-new-parliamentary-poet-laureate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=19312","title":{"rendered":"Multicultural \u2018obsession\u2019 drives new Parliamentary Poet Laureate"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Multicultural \u2018obsession\u2019 drives new Parliamentary Poet Laureate<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Globe and Mail<\/a>
\nToronto, Canada
\n2011-12-21<\/p>\n

Jane Taber<\/a><\/strong>, Senior Political Writer<\/p>\n

Fred Wah<\/a> is a little more familiar with the outside of Parliament than the inside, having from time to time protested on its sweeping lawn as part of the Writers\u2019 Union of Canada.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s about to change. Tuesday, the award-winning scribe was appointed the country\u2019s new Parliamentary Poet Laureate<\/a>. As such, the 72-year-old Saskatchewan<\/a>-born Vancouverite<\/a> is not required to be reciting poetry on the floor of the Commons or the Senate, but is hoping to at some point unleash his pen on the country\u2019s political institutions…<\/p>\n

…Although he sees his appointment as \u201ca symbolic gesture,\u201d he\u2019s got some ideas about what he wants to do, including the \u201cpossibility of developing some educational aspects\u201d into the post. \u201cI think there is a great need to get some our poetry and some of our Canadian literature into our schools,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Characterizing himself as a \u201cHeinz 57,\u201d Mr. Wah\u2019s father was half-Chinese, his mother Swedish and he grew up \u201cin my father\u2019s Chinese-Canadian restaurant.\u201d That has helped to fuel his \u201cobsession\u201d to the issue of race and multiculturalism.<\/strong> \u201cAnd I\u2019m very interested in the whole notion of hybridity and how we negotiate that in our culture,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

He points to his book of short prose fiction, Diamond Grill<\/a><\/em>, as a example of that. In it, he looks at family and identity. He is also proud of his 1985 book of poetry, Waiting for Saskatchewan<\/em>, for which he won the Governor-General\u2019s Literary Award…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Drag our Leaf Icon above to your taskbar to bookmark TGAM in Internet Explorer 9. Show me how Please don’t show me this again Remind me later Multicultural \u2018obsession\u2019 drives new Parliamentary Poet Laureate The Globe and Mail Toronto, Canada 2011-12-21 Jane Taber, Senior Political Writer Fred Wah is a little more familiar with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,19,125,8,26],"tags":[8386,20611,8907,8908],"class_list":["post-19312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-canada","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-politics","tag-fred-wah","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-jane-taber","tag-the-globe-and-mail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42169,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19312\/revisions\/42169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}