Cyril Dabydeen (Diaspora Dual Identities)

Cyril Dabydeen

Spilt Dreams

                                    

Everything requires for its existence its own

opposite, or else it fades into nothingness.

--Carl Jung

                        1                     

Almost languorous you tell me

about dreams you’ve been having,

grown-up as you are.

 

The same dream over and over,

what you remember most—

two faces, two heads.

 

And one talking on the phone

with the other, unheard voices,

like a mute tongue’s rasp.

                                   

                        2

Your mother now asking

Am I becoming Caucasian?

Who’s turning black? Not white!

 

A dating scene, images compelling

as life mustn’t pass us by,

I let you know.

 

A refrain, like doing a makeover--

Michael Jackson dancing

to “Victory,” believe me.

 

                        3

A moonwalk I tell my daughter,

about the man in the mirror

wanting to become a fashion model

 

making faces when you’re asleep

 as I listen to you like no other,

solid dreams coming my way.

Loveless

           

The man who’s loveless desires an old pain--

mediocrity lies in what he will say next

 

close to a trinity-peaked mountain

where a hummingbird flaps its wings

 

being never at rest as he considers himself

only in an island & travelling again

 

to other places like Florida, then to

Louisiana, boundaries bringing us closer--

 

where we haven’t been before, but

wanting to be in one place only as

 

his lyrics are like a dreamful song, if only

in America where all things are best,

 

he tells me, but now here in Canada

where he will make his mark though

 

people are sometimes prickly at best,

with one territory only in his mind--

 

the landscape reshaping itself as I

contemplate it the more he talks about

 

himself & looking up at the mountains

because of where he will live longest.

 

Distancing

            Like wasted prodigals,

            happy to be home again.

                                    -Will Durant  

 

            With new shirt on--

                        not bedraggled-looking

            but come from America

with a stranger’s smile

            unlike his parting ways.

 

            Being back in the village

                        he has bolstered a nerve

            to say who he isn’t anymore,

nothing of past years as

he longs for perfection

 

            Murmuring to himself

about wanting to remain

in one place only all his life

in his individual style

            being a stranger always.

 

 

Cyril Dabydeen is “a noted Canadian poet” (House of Commons, Ottawa). Recent books of fiction are Forgotten Exiles and My Undiscovered Country. Previous titles include: God’s Spider, My Multi-Ethnic Friends, Jogging in Havana, Black Jesus and Other Stories, My Brahmin Days, North of the Equator, and Imaginary Origins: Selected Poems (Peepal Tree Press, UK). His novel, Drums of My Flesh (Mawenzie House), is an IMPAC/Dublin Prize nominee and Guyana Prize winner. Cyril’s work has appeared in the Oxford, Penguin, and Heinemann anthologies, and in Poetry (Chicago), The Critical Quarterly (UK), Prairie Schooner (US), The Fiddlehead, Prism International, and Canadian Literature, etc. Ottawa Poet Laureate Emeritus, he taught Writing at the University of Ottawa. 

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Setu, April 2025

Cyril Dabydeen: FORGOTTEN EXILES/Short Stories. Mosaic Press, Ontario, Canada, 2024

Press Release: Ottawa-based Cyril Dabydeen’s newest volume of short stories, Forgotten Exiles, has just been released. 

In a prologue to the book, Dabydeen quotes Maya Angelou: “The greatest agony is an untold story.”  This collection shows the author’s mastery of the form after long years of writing. Here are stories of an earnestly searching soul as Dabydeen crosses boundaries where the “exile” longs for a real place with his Guyanese-Caribbean background.

 In Forgotten Exiles are stories that go back to the 1970’s when he lived in the Lake Superior region planting trees while in the quest for higher education and the search for identity. Outsider and insider images comprise his narrative forte as Dabydeen aligns north and south, hinterland and urban life of the coastal Amazon where Guyana is located with the urban landscape of Canada. The author’s sometimes poetic style, his inflection, makes the stories compelling to read with their striking metaphors, and inflection mixed in with his sometimes-dialectal rhythms.  (Note: Cyril Dabydeen is Ottawa Poet Laureate Emeritus.)

Cyril Dabydeen

He is widely published in the literary magazines in Canada, UK, USA, etc. The title story first appeared in Prairie Schooner (University of Nebraska), which later recommended him for a Pushcart Prize (for another story). 

In the sixteen stories in the collection, triangles of love associated with personal and social concerns are with imagery about race and class comprising the essence of his characters with their human foibles--as Dabydeen flits between past and present, Janus-like. He associates memory and landscape in most of the stories here, many of which are set in Ottawa where he has lived for decades.  Notably, in Forgotten Exiles, Dabydeen looks into the proverbial mirror and what’s behind the cracked glass of the mirror in lived experiences.

 His writing is aligned with his work in human rights and social service, in government, and as an educator. He taught writing for many years at the University of Ottawa. He has read his stories in Europe, USA, Canada, the Caribbean and Asia often as a guest of the International Conference of the Short Story in English coordinated in the USA.

 This new collection adds to Dabydeen’s many books of fiction (novels and previous short story volumes such as My Undiscovered Country, My Multi-Ethnic Friends and other Stories, and North of the Equator).  Many of these stories here were first published in key literary journals; and this new collection confirms Dabydeen’s status as an established writer of fiction. 

He has been nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Prize for fiction, and won the Guyana top prize for his novel Drums of my Flesh (Mawenzie House).  He has also won the Okanagan Fiction Prize, the Canute A. Brodhurst Prize, is a shortlisted finalist of the Ottawa Book Prize (fiction), recommended for a Pushcart Prize via Prairie Schooner (USA) for fiction, and also recommended for a Journey Prize.  

Dabydeen is sometimes better known as a poet because of his Ottawa Poet Laureateship (emeritus) role, and with his major poetry collections such as Imaginary Origins: New and Selected Poems (Peepal Tree Press, UK). The Canadian Parliament described him as “a noted Canadian poet” (Hansard, April 24,2001).  He has done over 300 readings from his books in Canada, US, UK and Europe, the Caribbean, and in Asia. 

This new fiction collection enhances what has been said about his stories being “the epiphany, the moment of illumination, which comes out of an ordinary experience” (World Literature Today/University of Oklahoma). 

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EXCERPTS OF REVIEWS:

“I know it's like all your work--astute in politics and artful in poetics.”

--George Elliot Clarke (Parliamentary Poet Laureate Emeritus).

“Cyril Dabydeen...he is a consistent and eloquent witness of the man-on-the-way, the traveller, the pilgrim. He captures the spirit of the displaced, the dislocated, and the alien within the Canadian experience.”

--Canadian Ethnic Studies (University of Calgary)

“There is a kaleidoscopic quality to these short stories, a shifting and colliding of the bits of coloured glass held up to the light. Much to share that is not necessarily easy to render in a short story format.”

-- Montreal Serai. 

“It is the epiphany, the moment of illumination, which comes out of an ordinary experience.”

-- Peter Nazareth (University of Iowa), World Literature Today

“Dabydeen is a short story master.”

--Canadian Literature. 

“Unique background and stellar writing.”

--Fred D’Aguiar, Director of Creative Writing, Virginia Tech University, USA.

“…interesting and thought-provoking…well worth reading carefully...I have enjoyed your stories, and I have enjoyed reading them in this new collection!”

--David Staines, Dean of Arts, University of Ottawa

“Cyril Dabydeen creates imagery, narratively and metaphorically, that confronts his diasporic condition. His characters are deep and psychologically complex, conflicting and not conflicting with the natural and human environments encompassing them.”

-- Cultural and Pedagogical Enquiry, University of Alberta

***

Cyril Dabydeen

Email: cdabydeen@ncf.ca

Phone: 613-230-7854

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Setu, November 2024

Cyril Dabydeen (Towards Visibility)

Cyril Dabydeen

ALLEN GINSBERG: HITCHHIKING TOWARDS LONDON

 

Thumb stuck out,

And nothing will do,

Nothing to persuade anyone--

The cars going by, too quickly,

Hoity-toity British types, you see,

Or don’t really see, speeding along--

No-one turning back, if only for

A short while to see the black-bearded

Hippie-looking man, from America--

Oh, America. Let him howl!

Then it came to him in a flash

To be Buddhist, real Asia now, 

Hands held together, clasped,

Prayerful indeed, asking with

Spiritual aura or bhakti yoga--

His supplication, indeed,

Blessed, so let him be--

And quickly one car stopped,

Ready to pick him up, driving him

Beat-generation style--

Peace-loving, tantric oh,

“The heart is your guru,” said

The swami, reminding him

Of his metier, verse only,

In America, far-out!

*Adapted from Poets at Work: The Paris Review Interviews (1989).

 

MY DARJEELING TEA PLANTATION                                                              

He wanted me to know how

tea is grown, the sprawling

plantation set up near villages,

and the women who must pick

the leaves; oh, such drudgery.

 

Real painstaking work, you see,

believe me, about women

who must accept their fate,

to grow the best tea

--only the world knows.

 

This Canadian diplomat--

telling me how one grower

with compassion spotted

an intelligent girl here

--among the peasants.

 

He suggested to her parents

that she should be trained

to become a nurse to escape

her fate, you see--

    his story retold to me

 

Like from yesterday, more 

than once upon a life-time,

as the tea plantation grew

bigger, a continent far away

--I must really know.

 

 

PASSAGES TO INDIA

(or Getting to Know Tigers Better)

 

Rukmin, one of the cubs,

had several tastes of Mrs Walker

in accidental bites and scratches

but showed no tendency to develop

a taste for human flesh.

 

While Mrs Walker agrees that tiger cubs

cannot resist attacking a bending

or squatting human being--“I’ve experienced

numerous attacks of this kind,”

she says--she certainly wouldn’t

 

be willing to offer herself for an experiment

of this kind with a full-grown tiger,

the above is borne out by

reports of tigers attacking people

bent over while gathering wood

 

or grass, or simply squatting--

the victims naturally scream or struggle,

then the true natural instinct

of the tigers to what they

bite is incited!

 

Mrs Walkers avers, “Once a person

is dead, he’s just meat and fair game

for dinner; the law of the jungle

allows little sentiment really

you must know.”

 

Cyril Dabydeen-- “a noted Canadian poet” (House of Commons, Ottawa), short story writer, novelist, and anthologist. His recent books are My Undiscovered Country (Mosaic Press), God’s Spider (Peepal Tree Press, UK), and My Multi-Ethnic Friends/Fiction (Guernica Editions). Other titles include: Jogging in Havana, Black Jesus and Other Stories, My Brahmin Days, North of the Equator, Imaginary Origins: Selected Poems, and Drums of My Flesh (IMPAC/Dublin Prize nominee and Guyana Prize winner for best novel. He won the Okanagan Fiction Prize and the Canute A. Brodhurst Prize for fiction. Cyril’s work has appeared in the Oxford, Penguin, and Heinemann Books of Caribbean Verse, as well as Poetry (Chicago), The Critical Quarterly (UK), The Fiddlehead, Prism International, and Canadian Literature. Ottawa Poet Laureate Emeritus, he taught Writing for many years at the UofOttawa. 

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Setu, September 2023 :: Towards Visibility

Author of the Month: Cyril Dabydeen (Ottawa Poet Laureate Emeritus)

Cyril Dabydeen

SONG FOR ZEUS

--for Alana

 

Wherever he is,

let him be, in what nether

world it may seem--

a farther place.

 

Those knowing eyes,

looking at me, his face

and manner too, my tabby

Zeus he will always be.

 

Inside, in his home,

then outside looking out

long on Somerset Street,

passersby knowing him.

 

His vulnerability, yes,

sometimes purring,

living his own life--

I didn’t know much about

 

Remembering him only,

a lifetime, far away--

memory, or consciousness,

his soul, you see.

 

Spirit locked in, with mine,

nothing less, now gone--

our Zeus, always with

a blessing I know.

-----------------

HIMALAYA

In her own space,

vibrations only

in the cave

 

An ashram where

she dwells with

an inner glow

 

The heart’s own place

I’ve come to know,

the soul’s journey

 

Wandering far--

but how far,

I will never know

 

Looking up at the mountain:

harmony it seems,

universal being

 

Hands folded, knees bent,

her face reflecting

the stars I imagine

 

The Himalaya no less,

making meaning

out of nothing

 

Being herself only,

life everlasting

I yearn for

__________

 

 

FEALTY

 

A choir of words I sing to you,

the self with other longings

 

the oath taken, calling out

from a distant place, and

 

being a believer because

of the mote in my eye

 

seeking affection always,

wanting forgiveness only

 

singing louder to you--

with the cathedral of hope,

 

what I never knew before,

but will keep longing for

 

paradise I let you know

walking in the Garden,

 

my Gethsemane with longings

down through the years.

_________________________

BEING INDIAN

He asks me what I am,

if an Indian and to know

where I was born.

 

Ukraine he’s from, oh

with strong Russian ties

now living in Canada.

 

What kind? he asks me,

Indian South American style,

I will let him know.

 

Places we care about; and

am I an elephant Indian,

or a bow-and-arrow Indian?

 

Being only who I am

indeed, you see—

always in my style.

 ___________

 MAHATMA GANDHI POEM

--Barack Obama, A Promised Land

 

Taking off our shoes

we entered a simple room with

a floor of smooth, patterned tile,

its terrace doors open

to admit a slight breeze

and a pale, hazy light.

 

I stared at the spartan floor

bed and pillow, the collection

of spinning wheels, the old-fashioned phone,

a low wooden writing desk

 

Trying to imagine Gandhi

present in the room, a slight,

brown-skinned man in a plain

cotton dhoti, his legs folded

under him

composing a letter

to the British viceroy

 

Charting the next phase of

the Salt March; and in that moment

I had the strongest wish

to sit beside him and talk--

to ask him where he’d found

 

the strength and imagination

to do so much with so very little,

to ask how he’d recovered

from disappointment;

(more/new stanza)

 

he had more than his share; and

Gandhi hadn’t been able to heal

the subcontinent’s religious schisms,

--prevent its partitioning into

a predominantly Hindu India, and

an overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan

--do you know?

_________

 (Found poem)

***

 

BIO Cyril Dabydeen-- “a noted Canadian poet” (House of Commons, Ottawa), short story writer, novelist, and anthologist. His recent books are My Undiscovered Country (Mosaic Press), God’s Spider (Peepal Tree Press, UK), and My Multi-Ethnic Friends/Fiction (Guernica Editions). Other titles include: Jogging in Havana, Black Jesus and Other Stories, My Brahmin Days, North of the Equator, Imaginary Origins: Selected Poems, and Drums of My Flesh (IMPAC/Dublin Prize nominee and Guyana Prize winner for best novel. A twice nominee for the Pushcart Prize, he won the Okanagan Fiction Prize and the Canute A. Brodhurst Prize for fiction. Cyril’s work has appeared in the Oxford, Penguin, and Heinemann Books of Caribbean Verse, and in over 60 literary magazines, eg., Poetry (Chicago), The Critical Quarterly (UK), The Fiddlehead, Prism International, and Canadian Literature. He is Ottawa Poet Laureate Emeritus. He taught Writing for many years at the UofOttawa. He has done over 300 readings across Canada, the USA, Europe, the Caribbean, and India.

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Setu, February 2023