writing matters.

The performance I took part in at The Cultch on May 30th wasn’t exactly about anything. The general plot of the three-scene “Mump and Smoot (with Thug) in Something” was that Mump (Michael Kennard) and Smoot (John Turner) visited a café, a wake, and a doctor’s office, interacting sporadically with the impassive, intimidating Thug (Candace Berlinguette). As the lights dimmed and dark, pulsating music began to play, there arose an atmosphere of tense excitement, as promised by the event’s description in my pamphlet: “Enter a giddy, scary world of pure imagination, as the duo turns conventional clowning on its head in this darkly humourous work that ranges from zany to macabre. Not for children!” Now, I am no child, but I had never been to a clown show before. I had no idea what “conventional clowning” was, let alone what a zany and macabre twist from two “clowns of horror” might look like (mumpandsmoot.com). As improbable as it sounds now, typing from the safety of my living room, I be...

"A poet’s work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep." - Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses The educational value of teaching students to become proficient in the intricacies of reading, speaking, and writing in English cannot be overstated. Bertolt Brecht, arguing that “literacy empowers in a Marxist sense,” directs the following imperative to those of the lower classes: “Learn the ABC, it’s not enough, but learn it. Don’t let it get you down! …You who are starving; grab hold of the book” (qtd in Fleming and Stevens 65). The discipline of English is invaluable to people of all classes in North American society as we know it. No other language in the world is spoken and understood as widely. In my personal experience, however, I’ve often been told a different story—one that depicts studying English as a fascinating but ultimately useless endeavour. In what follows I want to weave...