Oct. 12, 2011 - Issue #834: Protest in the riot
Prevue
LITFEST
LITFEST
» Alice Major
"I have no idea why my mother gave me a book about relativity," she laughs, "but I found it fascinating. I found it quite mind boggling, actually."
Now, decades on, having become one of our most enduring poets, (and first poet laureate), Major's looking to probe the perceived gap between science and art. She sees a connection where others see a rift.
"I am really interested in edges, in what happens at the gaps," she says, before slightly adjusting her thought. "Not the gaps, I don't like gaps ... I like connections, of human brains, human functions. "I practise an art form that humans have been practising since the beginning of language. And we think of science as something that is brand new, something that is being done now, and we often think of it as being very alien from art. And I just want to explore what science can tell me about what I'm doing."
Her upcoming book, Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science, explores that divide. It's a series of essays, mixing memoir and observation, that sees Major bridging the connections between the two disciplines through examining her own life, her readings in science and what she's found in creating her poetry.
It's arriving just as Edmonton's Litfest gets into full swing, with authors as varied as Canuck humourist Will Ferguson and Ross King—whose The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism earned the Governor General's award in 2006—to locals like Major and writer-in-exile Jalal Barzanji taking to various stages around town. Major's particular event, happening Tuesday at the Stanley A Milner theatre, explores not just her own meditations in the forthcoming book (which launches there), but also the work of playwright David Belke, whose Sterling-clinching play the Science of Disconnection explored the criminally ignored life of physicist Lise Meitner, with actress Coralie Cairns performing exerpts, and electroacoustic guitar artist Shawn Pinchbeck.
With that combined lineup, Major's looking to make the evening more than just a static run of readings.
"I see a bit of a dialogue among people between David and Shawn and I," she notes. "It's not just a stand up-sit down kind of thing."
Until Sun, Oct 23
Various locations
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