Daphne Marlatt on Ana Historic

Daphne Marlatt talks with George Bowering on Fine Lines episode hosted and co-produced by Jim Andrews

In an episode of Fine Lines, “Canada’s coast-to-coast underground literary show,” Daphne Marlatt talks with George Bowering about and reads five extracts from her then-new novel Ana Historic. Hosted by Jim Andrews and broadcast on campus radio, CFUV FM at the University of Victoria, the production quality of this episode is very high; not only does the studio recording make for clear audio, but the scaffolding of the episode, the well-researched introduction, the relation between interview and readings, the musical interludes, and so forth, all chime a professional note. At the end of the episode, Andrews advertises that this is the first in a series of interviews and that a recording of Sarah Murphy will be broadcast the following week.

During the interview, Bowering labels Ana Historic as an “autobiographical novel of the imagination,” a description that Marlatt finds to be apt. She discusses her interest in the tension between autobiography and imagination, saying: “the thing about autobiography is […] remembering is a fiction, in any case and we know that from hearing eye-witness accounts of an accident, of the same accident that they all viewed, and they all have different versions of what happened.” Her openness to indeterminacy is framed in feminist discourse as Marlatt continues to question the predominantly male narratives associated with historical truth and fact, and advocates for history that is not simply told, but also retold — a history that allows for different subject positions, especially those of women, to shape their own narratives. This is where the titular prefix “ana-” is so interesting, alluding not only to the word “ahistoric,” but also to its multiple implications such as up, back, and again.

Bowering emphasizes the archival nature of Ana Historic and places it within Marlattt’s larger oeuvre: “you archived your way into a book called Vancouver Poems and another book called Steveston, these oral histories of places.”

Note: This recording from the Frank Davey fonds is likely a bootleg copy taped from the radio. We are grateful to Jim Andrews for supplying the newspaper article about Fine Lines and his permission to share the recording publicly. While the exact date of the recording is not known, it likely took place in 1988, shortly after the book’s release with Coach House Press.

—Karis Shearer & Klara du Plessis