NEW FROM GASPEREAU PRESS

14 March 2007

Book title: Trudeau: Long March, Shining Path
Author: George Elliott Clarke
Publisher: Gaspereau Press
Genre: Poetry
Details: $21.95 Can / $19.95 US / 1554470372 / trade paper

Release date: 30 March 2007

George Elliott Clarke’s newest dramatic poem, Trudeau, makes an irreverent, jubilant portrait of the life and politics of one of Canada’s most controversial political heroes, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Clarke’s poem provides a whimsical and informative look at the balance of world powers in the 1960s and 70s, infused with the spirit of the many revolutions taking place throughout the world during these years. The poem opens on a hillside in Nanjing, China, April 1949, in the midst of the country’s civil war. Our hero exchanges political stances with Mao and falls for a beautiful young flautist. From China the drama moves to Fredericton, NB, where Trudeau chats with Massachusetts Senator and future American president John F. Kennedy, who has just received an honorary doctorate from the university. The two men cavalierly discuss the perks of political power, each on the cusp of leading their countries. Then, in Havana, on the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Fidel Castro treats Trudeau to rum and cigars and offers his take on revolutions, Cuban and otherwise. When the focus moves to the Quiet Revolution and Trudeau’s response to this crisis in his leadership, Clarke presents a leader at once loved and loathed at home, who perseveres through both political and personal upheaval.

Originally composed as the libretto for a new opera by D.D. Jackson to be presented at Toronto’s Harbourfront Festival in April 2007, Trudeau is a political caper, an extravagant portrait and a dramatic study of influence, power, revolution and liberation. Clarke injects the life of one of this country’s most intriguing personalities with the exuberance and grimy frankness his readers have come to love and expect.

According to the author: As a teenage poet in the 1970s, seven artist-intellectuals – or poet-politicos – helped me to conceive my voice. They were jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, troubadour-bard Bob Dylan, libertine lyricist Irving Layton, guerilla leader and poet Mao Zedong, reactionary modernist Ezra Pound, Black Power orator Malcolm X and the Right Honourable Pierre Elliott Trudeau. These ‘idols’ inspired me to sculpt an individualist poetic scored with implicit social commentary. Yes, this ‘Gang of Seven’ is flawed. But, taken as a whole, I find their blunt talk, suave styles, acerbic independence, raunchy macho, feisty lyricism, singing heroics and scarf-and-beret chivalry quite, well, liberating.
For me, no Canadian stood more for liberation than Trudeau, that aloof populist, rights-trampling democrat and tax-and-spend millionaire. An operatic figure in life (1919–2000), he now merits dramatic treatment. My dramatic poem imagines the politician as ‘player’: Plato meets Chaplin.

George Elliott Clarke won the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry in 2001 for Execution Poems, published by Gaspereau Press. In 1998, he won the prestigious Portia White Prize and in 2006 the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellowship Prize. Among Clarke’s recent publications are the novel George & Rue and the libretto Québécité (GP, 2003). He was inducted into the Order of Nova Scotia in 2006 and holds the E.J. Pratt professorship in Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto.

This book is a smyth-sewn paperback. The text was typeset by Andrew Steeves in Aldus and printed offset on laid paper. Includes photographs.

Please note that on Saturday, April 14, 2007, there will be a New World Stage International Performance Premiere of Trudeau at 7:30 pm at the Enwave Theatre, Harbourfront Centre, 231 Queens Quay West, free admission.
For more information, please visit the Harbourfront Centre web-site, New World Stage calendar for April 14.

TOUR DATES
Toronto, ON
Monday, April 2, 2007
This is Not a Reading Series:
Gaspereau Press Tenth Anniversary Celebration
7:30 pm – Gladstone Hotel Ballroom
(Doors open at 7:00)1214 Queen Street West

Toronto, ON
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Reading (with Kim Barry Brunhuber)
7:00 pm – Hart House, University of Toronto
7 Hart House Circle

Toronto, ON
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Reading
6:30 pm – Parliament Street Library
269 Gerrard Street East

Quebec City, QC
Friday, April 13, 2007
Quebec Writers Festival
7:30 pm – Morrin Centre
44 Chaussée des Ecossais
Price: $4 members & students, $6 non-members

Toronto, ON
Saturday, April 14, 2007
New World Stage International Performance
Premiere of Trudeau
7:30 pm – Enwave Theatre, Harbourfront Centre
231 Queens Quay West
Free admission

New Glasgow, NS
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Reading
7:00 pm – Pictou/Antigonish Regional Library
182 Dalhousie Street

Halifax, NS
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Reading (with Harry Thurston)
2:30 pm – Spring Garden Road Memorial Public Library
5381 Spring Garden Road

Hamilton, ON
Sunday, May 6, 2007
LitLive Reading Series
7:30 pm – King Paisley Pub
1019 King Street West

Peterborough, ON
Monday, May 7, 2007
Cooked & Eaten Reading Series
8:00 pm – Gordon Best Theatre
216 Hunter Street West

Toronto, ON
Monday, May 16, 2007
Draft Reading Series
7:30 pm – Artists Play Studio Theatre
276 Carlaw Avenue

For more information, contact:
Beth Crosby at Gaspereau Press
47 Church Avenue, Kentville, NS B4N 2M7
902-678-6002 | booksales@gaspereau.com
www.gaspereau.com

Gaspereau Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Nova Scotia Department of Tourism, Culture & Heritage and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.