Accomplished journalist, author, teacher, poet and poetry critic – Brian Brett is ready to lead participants on a wild ride through the world of literature at the Word on the Lake Writers’ Festival.
“I’ll go back to Gilgamesh, The IIliad and work my way around the world, and not just in poetry, there will be song,” he says with raspy-voiced enthusiasm. “We’ll explore the history of world literature.”
Brett says he will also discuss modern prose and how many rules have emerged through oral history and how they don’t make sense on the page.
“People are culturally conditioned by what we have,” Brett says, noting he plans to open participants to a whole genre of wonderful writing and different ways of looking at the world and writing.
“Culture flows and when people see all these things, it opens their mind to what they are doing themselves,” he says. “It’s quite a wild and woolly ride.”
And the same could be said for how Brett has lived his life – fiercely and unequivocally.
Born in the Fraser Valley to a Cockney pedlar, he has vivid memories of viewing the world through the flapping canvas on the back of his father’s truck.
Many trips were made to the B.C. Interior for potatoes that were then delivered on the Coast.
“We went up and down to First Nations communities and he would park me at a reserve,” Brett says, noting his early fascination with the native culture, their sense of humour and storytelling tradition.
Brett was born with Kallmann Syndrome, a genetic condition whose primary symptom is a failure to start puberty or a failure to fully complete it.
“I had no male hormones until I was 20,” he says, pointing out being bullied was the hallmark of his school years. “I was so totally defiant; I grew my hair down to my ass and snuck into night clubs as a woman to see Janis Joplin and a few other greats. I was a strange hippie.”
Brett was awakened to possibilities by a First Nations high school teacher, who took his students beyond the bounds of the school curriculum.
The Bella Bella native sparked Brett’s interest by introducing him to the writing of Rimbaud, the great 19th Century French poet.
“I thought, ‘I can do something else; there had been no path for me beyond being a mutant teenager or teenage delinquent,” he says, noting he put his encyclopedic brain to the test and earned the highest history marks the school had ever seen in a matter of weeks, because he wanted to go to university.
An impoverished student, Brett slept in Simon Fraser’s rotunda and spent his days in the school library soaking up information on other cultures and drawing inspiration from the works of Chinese and Persian poets.
At the age of 22, Brett worked in the forestry industry, helping to log The pristine Queen Charlotte Islands, now known as Haida Gwaii.
He recalls lying on the trunks of felled trees whose width at 18 feet were three times the length of his body.
He also remembers how the province announced plans in the mid 1970s, to prevent logging near watercourses, two years before legislation was introduced.
Forest industry reaction, was to get as much wood out of the forest by any method, including dynamite, he says.
Seeing the destruction of what he considered his spiritual home finished logging for him.
“I am still trying to write Clouds and Rain about my experience there,” he says. “I am terrified to go back because it
was so magical for me.”
Over the years, Brett has worked as a freelance journalist and critic, written his own column, inaugurated the B.C. Poetry-in-Schools program in 1974 and has taught and given workshops across Canada.
“I’ve been teaching rap and performance singers the history of our world’s literature,” he adds, noting that, thanks to the Internet, he has been able to build a large and precious collection of world literature.
The Word on the Lake Writers’ Festival takes place Friday, May 15 to Sunday, May 17. Sessions will include both skill development workshops and open forums with presenters based on questions and answers in an intimate setting.
Other festival highlights include a coffeehouse and Saturday night gala. Visit www.wordonthelakewritersfestival.com for more information or to register.
