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list price: $20.00
edition:Paperback
category: Literary Collections
published: Feb 2009
ISBN:9780978498108
publisher: New Star Books

The Artist and the Moose: A Fable of Forget

by Roy Kiyooka, edited by Roy Miki

tagged: canadian
Description

Often zany and wildly humourous, The Artist & the Moose features a narrator who is commissioned by the federal government to come up with a multicultural aesthetics for the 21st century. The answer, he thinks, resides in the big mystery that surrounds artist Tom Thomson.

Was Thomson's sudden death in Algonquin Park, in that fateful summer of 1917, an accident or was he murdered? To solve this mystery, the narrator sets out from his hometown, Forget, Sasatchewan, to visit the national archives in Ottawa. As his quest unfolds, readers meet the usual suspects in the Tom Thomson saga, including Tom's love interest, but as well a cast of fabulous non–human characters, such as the little bird, Thomson's pipe, Plot, Text, and most prominent of all, the magical Moose, named Ol' Twig–Eater.

While recognizing Thomson's artistic legacy, Kiyooka's fable offers a compelling critique of Canadian cultural nationalism and its violent appropriation of native land and culture., a long process of colonization that exiled the Moose from the very homely spaces once his own.

Complementing this newly edited work is the serial poem, "letters purporting to be abt tom thomson," first published in Artscanada in 1972. These poems capture Kiyooka's initial thoughts on Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, and set the stage for his writing on Tom Thomson in the years ahead.

The Artist & the Moose: A Fable of Forget is edited with an afterword by Roy Miki, editor of Pacific Windows: The Collected Poems of Roy K. Kiyooka

About the Authors

Roy Kiyooka (1926–1994) was a painter, poet, photographer, and arts teacher. A second generation Japanese Canadian, he was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in 1926, grew up in Calgary, Alberta, and died in Vancouver, B.C. in 1994. He was one of Canada’s first 'multi-disciplinary' artists, and the subject of several important exhibitions during his lifetime. His visual artwork included paintings, sculpture, film, and photographs. During his career he taught at a number of universities, including the University of British Columbia. Kiyooka was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1978.




Roy Miki teaches contemporary literature at Simon Fraser University. He has published widely on Asian- Canadian literature as well as writers such as bpNichol, George Bowering, and Roy Kiyooka. He is the author of Broken Entries: Race, Subjectivity, Writing and received the Governor General’s Award for his poetry book Surrender.

Out of print

This edition is not currently available in bookstores. Check your local library or search for used copies at Abebooks.

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