Shortlisted, Acorn-Plantos Award for People's Poetry and Dartmouth Book Award

In the "Boogie Nights" era of the 1970s, Betty Browning and her lover, boxer Malcolm Miles, travel from the fog-anchored grime of Halifax, Nova Scotia, to sunburnt Corpus Christi, Texas, and back — meeting tragedy and bloodshed along the way. I & I smoulders with love, lust, violence, and the excruciating repercussions of racism, sexism, and disgust. Rastafarian for "you and me," "I & I" expresses the oneness of God and man, the oneness of two people or the distinction between body and spirit.

In George Elliott Clarke's hands, this existential aesthetic crystallizes in a love story of Gothic grit. The narrative gives this verse novel shape; the poetry makes it sing, straddling folk ballad, soul, and pop music, all the while moaning the blues.

George Elliott Clarke is a Canadian poet and playwright. Born in Windsor Plains, Nova Scotia, he has spent much of his career writing about the Black communities of Nova Scotia and served for a time in the African-American Studies department at Duke University. He earned a BA Honours degree in English from the University of Waterloo (1984), an MA in English from Dalhousie University (1989), and a PhD in English from Queenâ??s University (1993). In addition, he has received honorary degrees from Dalhousie University (LLD), the University of New Brunswick (LittD), the University of Alberta (LittD), and the University of Waterloo (LittD). He is currently professor of English at the University of Toronto.

In 2001 he won the Governor Generalâ??s Literary Award for poetry for his book Execution Poems. Clarkeâ??s work largely explores and chronicles the experience and history of the black Canadian community of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, creating a cultural geography that Clarke often refers to as Africadia. Clarkeâ??s Whylah Falls was one of the selected books in the 2002 edition of Canada Reads, where it was championed by Nalo Hopkinson.

George Elliott Clarke's profile page

Lateef Martin's profile page

• Short-listed, Dartmouth Book Award (Fiction)
• Short-listed, Acorn-Plantos Award for People's Poetry

"One of Canada's most important and readable poets."

<i>TORO Magazine</i>

"Clarke marches and dances and stomps and skates (but never ever shuffles) all over the story. Don't even think about trying to put this musical novel down. Betty Baker Browning [is] the sweetest alter ego this side of Bedford Basin. Or in this life, oh sweet life."

George Bowering

"The poetry itself is the thing, the overflowing energy of the language in this book — a profusion of rhetorical tropes and schemes and a breathtaking array of literary and cultural allusion. . . . Truly an original creation. It was probably fun to write; it is certainly a pleasure to read."

Eric Trethewey