Today we take a closer look at one of the most iconic works by Canadian poet Daphne Marlatt in a unique setting. Like Light off Water: Passages from Steveston was originally released on CD by Otter Bay Recordings in 2008, and presents passages from Marlatt's beloved 1974 collaboration with photographer Robert Minden with musical embellishments written and performed by Minden and Carla Hallett. As Douglas Barbour observes, Steveston is "a carefully documented and deeply personal overview of the town in history," including its time as an internment camp for Japanese Canadians during the Second World War.
This is not the first time that Marlatt and Minden have revisited the Steveston project. The creators reconfigured the manuscript for a twenty-fifth anniversary edition, which separates the poems and photos into different portfolios, with both adding mew material. Speaking about the project as a whole, Marlatt notes, "There was something in Steveston which drew us, over and over again, and which our work attempted to enunciate — something under the backwater quiet, the river hum of comings and goings, the traffic of work, that was shouting at us to tell it." Writing in The WholeNote Magazine in 2009, Dianne Wells offered high praise for the album: "Marlatt's words bring you to the river's mouth and into a sensuous landscape of lives lived in canneries, fishing camps, on the sea and over time. Listen to the sounds of vintage waterphones, bowed carpenter’s saws, found object percussion and voice – a delicate resonance which surrounds Marlatt's poetic voicing, rhythm and imagery." She continues, hailing the music's ability to conjure up "the rippling and twinkling of water and light, together with haunting depictions of mysterious and erotic undercurrents mixed with the gentle beauty of the night sky.”
You can listen to all eight tracks — including "Imagine: A Town," "Moon," and "Intelligence (As If By Radio?" — by clicking here.
