"The brightest boy in the village challenged me to a reading race. At school, he proved to be an exceptional runner ("I was the champion schoolboy athlete for seven consecutive years," he boasts in 'Membering) although it was a far different kind of race, as he told The Globe and Mail in 2013, that led to a life in books. Clarke writes became his father "in word, in love and in deed." It was an impoverished household, but young Austin earned a scholarship to the Combermere School for Boys, in Bridgetown, the capital, and then attended the elite Harrison College for two years. He was born to a single mother, Gladys Clarke, though within roughly a year of his birth she'd married a police constable, Fitz Herbert Luke, whom Mr.
Clarke's writing, she adds, "cracked open what was possible."Īustin Ardinel Chesterfield (Tom) Clarke was born on July 26, 1934, in the parish of St. "He laid down so many tracks for so many of us," says his friend, the writer and filmmaker Sylvia Hamilton. Michael's Hospital in Toronto following a lengthy battle with prostate cancer. Clarke, a teacher, activist, journalist, public servant and pioneering author of Caribbean-Canadian literature whose work sparred with issues of colonialism and racism, immigration and destination, and lit a path for future generations of writers, died on June 26 at St. "There is something within the writer's body, some gadget like a sensor, like a piece of metal which attracts other pieces of metal … that rings a bell announcing destination."Īfter a life filled with a novel's worth of detours and digressions, Mr. "This makes me believe, and believe after many incomplete and detouring journeys, that a writer can end up at the correct destination, even after many digressions, detours and wrong turns," he writes. While admitting he holds "dawdling thoughts concerning the best way to construct a character," he nevertheless feels "a fair satisfaction" regarding this particular protagonist.
At one point he turns his attention to Mary-Mathilda, the elderly plantation worker at the heart of his best-known novel, The Polished Hoe. About halfway through his twisting, soulful 2015 memoir 'Membering, Austin Clarke spends a few pages contemplating how a writer can best bring a fictional character to life.
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