This article is an essay completed during my final year at the University of Waterloo, undertaken as part of Professor Winfried Siemerling‘s Black Canadian Writing course.

In this piece, I took a close look at one work from the course materials, focusing on Dionne Brand’s An Ars Poetica from the Blue Clerk structural elements and key themes.

The novel presents a series of meditative and lyrical dialogues between the poet and the eponymous ‘Blue Clerk’, who is a sort of alter ego or internal auditor for the poet. Brand makes a striking dichotomy between the visible and the unvoiced, suggesting a broader canvas for poetry beyond traditional confines. Reflected by the novel’s format, distinguished by its right and left-hand pages, this dynamic becomes more evident. On one side, the writer captures the aesthetic elements of the narrative, while on the other, the clerk addresses the remaining aspects, composing on the verso. This side represents the unseen, the elements that remain unwritten.

From its title which might refer to Horace’s poem Ars Poetica (19 BC), Brand’s novel is a metatextual reflection on poetry and on art itself, encompassing references to the act of writing, music and mentions of photography.

The theme of duality is inherent to the text. First, it works as a running dialogue between the two main characters: the author and the Blue Clerk, reflecting the interplay between the writer, art, and the world. The poet and the clerk are one, each completing the other’s work—the author writes initial thoughts on the notebook’s left-hand pages while the finalized work appears on the right. As a sort of mise en abyme, it mirrors the literary discussion between the reader and poetry/narrative: “I suggest that the reader interrogates Narrative but Poetry interrogates the reader.” (Verso 1.1) and in doing so, Brand captures exactly the way we think, as the ‘clerk’ stands for our inner self, with whom we constantly debate and refine our thoughts. Moreover, Brand’s work echoes W.E.B. Du Bois‘ idea of “double-consciousness”, but delves deeper with a metatextual examination of black diasporic language (usually part of a larger attempt to retain cultural identity), addressing its limitations and racial nuances in contemporary society. In fact, she argues that “The Black body in narrative is always spectacular, always spectacularized”, in other words, the white colonial perspective sensationalizes black people, reducing them to stereotypes and “putting them on display” as if to hide their conditions.

The structure of the text takes a very innovative form, challenging traditional narrative conventions that Brand judges inadequate. She explores themes of culture, memory and power, while intertwining prose and poetry. Series of lists and repetitions (Verso 18.4.2) plunge the reader into the depths of woeful memories, some kind of hypnotic flow. Words and images cycle endlessly, just as black people’s lives have been doomed to nothing and endless monotony in an immutable society, as she perceives it. She handles the word as a weapon “to do what war should or might do”. With her ideas, Brand is a sort of defector; which is a form of diaspora in a way, a social diaspora, and what she can do to change the world is using the word as a political instrument. With terms like “maroon,” her use of language bears witness to the collective histories of black diasporic communities, as it refers both to someone abandoned in a desolate place but also to African descendants who escaped slavery in the Americas.

In the poem at the middle of the excerpt, she omits periods to create a rapid flow (she defies traditional literary structures, maybe as a form of resistance), but then contrasts this pace by pulling out the constant image of the color blue—reminiscent of sadness, but also of music and of the slow, soulful rhythm of blues (interestingly, the term ‘blues’ originates from the abbreviation of the English expression ‘blue devils’, meaning ‘dark thoughts’) and which emerged from Negro spirituals during the times of slavery, echoing with the text full of allusions to the slaves’ hardships. In conjunction with the hue of blue, she incorporates shades of yellow (lemon) and violet, both of which are complementary colors. This may serve as a metaphor, suggesting that varied skin tones must harmoniously coexist within a same society, emphasizing the importance of inclusion, but also reminiscent of their inherent opposition.

Moreover, there is also an interesting parallel with the image of the sea: the clerk works in the wharf, a metaphor for time’s passing, or for the crossing of slave ships. Akin to the sea, the poem is untamed: penned in free verse, the lines come and go without any particular grammatical and visual constructs, capital letters or rhyming pattern. Similarly, the writer liberate herself from the established conventions that have restricted her ability to convey her ideas. The way the author and clerk navigate through the rectos and versos—mirroring poetry’s capacity to show silence and what is “withheld”—echoes with the idea that black people are often outsiders to the society. This term also signifies what the poet keeps within herself, highlighting her primary audience as the black community. She speaks both “about” and “for” her people but also engages “with” them. Brand’s language creates a safe space for individuals to break free from societal stereotypes, further marked by her frequent references to ports and doors in her writing evoke thoughts of diaspora and “breaking”.

Questions to consider:

1. Given Brand’s innovative narrative approaches, how might the reader’s interaction with her work differ from more traditional poetic or narrative forms? In what ways does this challenge or invite the reader to participate in the poetic experience?

2. What do you make of Brand’s intricate use of botanical imagery, particularly her symbolic associated to the leaves and her “stipules”?