I: Did you grow up writing, or reading a lot of anything in particular?
P: Theres no way I could be considered a child prodigy or anything like that, but I grew up being aware of language. This was largely my mothers influence and her fathers influence as well. My father and grandfather exercised their influences in different ways with respect to language. I was exposed to the play with words, although I was not particularly fascinated by words as some Writers are. My mother played with the sound of words and I could not help being exposed to this playfulness, to the way it felt to say certain words. I kind of had a physical understanding of language and thats one of the strange benefits of coming from the home I did at the time in history that I did, after WW11. But that is a separate story.
Within the larger Canadian context it was largely an oral culture and certainly various branches of my family had that focus on oral literature. So I grew up hearing s tories and being read stories. But the stories I heard were all the more interesting because they involved family members and ancestors, familiar things as well as the more strange and exotic. And I think I felt part of those stories. They insinuated themselves into my psyche. Language, I think, is just naturally musical and naturally figurative. Even the most humble uneducated people will use language in amazingly expressive ways. My father was an example of this. He had a powerful way with words. Metaphor and simile find their way into everyday talk and they find their way unconsciously. Because so much of my life was an oral culture, especially with TV and radio, with record players, in both the family and at school, I found means to compensate for my own quietness in this world of oral reality.
Everyday speech is expressive and is capable of communicating lots of things at once, in a way that literature is. And so I feel like in my family and through jobs I ha d growing up, through meeting all kinds of local characters and just being sort of afloat in all of this kind of stuff, I absorbed a lot of it, unknowingly. I think this was one reason that a quiet boy and adolescent became a talker, a verbal person unobtrusively, insensibly.
I: How do you think of your poetic projects as related to this oral tradition in which you grew up? To put this a little differently, how would you characterize the relation between the kinds of diction, imagery and syntax that show up in your work, and the aspects of spoken language you noticed as a child?
P: I think Im always aware of everyday language as being a starting point, a grounding point, in my writing. Its a major thread in the language thats in my head all the time. I certainly want my work to honour, to be based in, that kind of language. But I dont want this quotidian speech of everyman to limit my work. And so I like to think that Im taking the energy, the potential, of t hat language and extending it, spreading it widely in a richer, a more sophisticated, context.
I: So, back to the question of influence. What other voices are in your head all the time?
P: Thats a challenging question for me to answer partly because growing up beside Lake Ontario in the particular home that I did did not provide me with any literature available in this language of everyman, that I knew, that I heard every day. My mother had educated reading tastes in literature, poetry, Philosophy and Religion. So I think that my current reading interests derived from certain thematic or stylistic similarities to my local language and in the more serious idioms of my mothers reading. The Poets whose work I go back to all the time now are the folks my mother read, although not entirely. When I was growing up music and poetry were in the background even though I paid it little heed.
I: Just to go back to the Daniel Boone narrative for a final question or two: a great deal is happening around Boone in other parts of the USA and throughout the world which he has absolutely no awareness of. What parallel do you see for you and your life in the 20th and 21st centuries?
P: There is no question that at all times a great deal goes on which you cant possibly be aware of. This is the parallel with Daniel Boone. But in our world, we get a daily diet of images and information which we may not understand but at least we have a general idea of whats happening. The comparisons and contrasts are many and I could say much more, but this will suffice.
I: You see yourself as a pioneer; your Autobiography is called Pioneering Over Four Epochs. Could you say one or two more things about the example of Daniel Boone as pioneer?
P: I remember watching Daniel Boone on TV occasionally in the 1960s. I did not have a TV then, but from time to time Id watch Fess Parker. I did not know at the time that the real Boone did not wear a coonskin hat. I hat little idea of the historical context of the eighteenth century Daniel Boone. Even now, I find the comparison and contrast surprises me. Without going into a detailed analysis here, I think that only the future will place the reality of my experience as a pioneer in a true light. My generation and myself as a pioneerwe are too close to the experience to really understand its significance.
In the 1770s Daniel Boone was trailblazing, fighting Indians and hunting. In the 1780s he was a member of the state legislature of West Virginia. He did a lot of roaring and fighting. There is no question that my work as a Bahai has been as a trailblazer. The analogy is only partial, but its fun to play with the idea, with the language.
Ron Price November 22nd 2005
P UBLICATIONS :LIST
It is useful for people to have some idea of what others have published, if anything. It is not a crucial variable but, like talking, it's nice to have one's voice heard when one writes. I will list some of the items here. I think to myself: how come with all these publications I'm not rich and famous? My academic, career, personal and religious interests and activities are obvious in different ways by perusing the following. Although a little over the top, as they say these days, it will give readers at this site a sense of who I am and what Ive done.
2. PUBLICATIONS:
2.1 Articles and Reviews: Journals
1. * A History of the Baha'i Faith in the Northern Territory: 1947- 1997, Northern Lights, 30 Installments, 2000-2002.
2. * Periodic Articles in Newsletters, Regional Teaching Committees of the NSA of the Baha'is of Australia Inc., 1971-2001.
3. * Periodic Articles/Letters, Baha'i Canada and The Australian Baha'i Bulletin, 1 971-2001.
4. * Memorials of the Faithful, Baha'i Studies Review, September 2001. That's enough for now!
Author:: Ron Price
Keywords:: Interviews, Writers, Poets, RonPrice, Baha'i, Religion, Philosophy, Autobiography
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