"Dr. Howard McCurdy is the author of this autobiography. Period," writes George Elliott Clarke in the introduction to Black Activist, Black Scientist, Black Icon. "But in July 2017, seven months before his decease, he requested that I edit this work, which was already progressing toward a conclusion." McCurdy passed away in February 2018, and with the encouragement of McCurdy's widow, Clarke took on the challenge of editing and completing the memoir. Fortunately, says Clarke, "The man can write, good people!... Howard delighted in the extemporaneous peroration, which, issuing in electrifying combustion out of heart and head, had audiences...presenting standing ovations so often that their chair seats never had a chance to warm." McCurdy indeed lived an extraordinary life. He was Canada's first Black tenured professor; a founder of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association; a founder of the National Black Coalition of Canada; the person who named the New Democratic Party; the second Black elected to Parliament. With twenty-five photos from McCurdy's personal archive, Black Activist, Black Scientist, Black Icon illuminates and celebrates the life of one of Canada's most worthy figures. Says Clarke: "Dr. Howard McCurdy was exemplary in self-sacrifice; he was stellar in avant-garde thought and vision; he was...the most unforgettably proud Black man that I ever had the pleasure to know."

I take Libertiespoeticand take License to relate her story In her voice, to tell History Who she wasas I hear her say Or sing. [...] But still you will come face-to-face With a "Portia," whose life outshines All brilliance this black ink divines.... In his unique brand of spoken word, Africadian poetry, the incomparable George Elliott Clarke explores a personal subject: his great-aunt Portia White. The result is a stirring, epic poem vibrating with energy and music that spans White's birth in 1911, a coming of age amidst the backdrop of two World Wars, and her life-long love affair with musicfrom singing in to directing the Cornwallis Street Baptist Church choir to her bel canto tutlege at the Halifax Conservatory of Music to her final, command performance before Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 1964. Portia White is a stunning testament to the first African Canadian to become an international star. Features vibrant illustrations by contemporary artist Lara Martina.

Blues singer, preacher, cultural critic, exile, Africadian, high modernist, spoken word artist, Canadian poet-these are but some of the voices of George Elliott Clarke. In a selection of Clarke's best work from his early poetry to his most recent, Blues and Bliss: The Poetry of George Elliott Clarke offers readers an impressive cross-section of those voices. Jon Paul Fiorentino's introduction focuses on this polyphony, his influences-Derek Walcott, Amiri Baraka, and the canon of literary English from Shakespeare to Yeats-and his "voice throwing," and shows how the intersections here produce a "troubling" of language. He sketches Clarke's primary interest in the negotiation of cultural space through adherence to and revision of tradition and on the finding of a vernacular that begins in exile, especially exile in relation to African-Canadian communities. In the afterword, Clarke, in an interesting re-spin of Fiorentino's introduction, writes with patented gusto about how his experiences have contributed to multiple sounds and forms in his work. Decrying any grandiose notions of theory, he presents himself as primarily a songwriter.