In the works: Daphne Marlatt rewrites Steveston

Abstract

"In the Works: Daphne Marlatt Rewrites Steveston" traces the various textual incarnations of Marlatt's engagement with the people and geography of Steveston, B.C. Her project is comprised of multiple works, several of which overtly rewrite earlier works in the project. I explore these points of intertextual revision, as wel l as what I see as an intratextual revis i onary dynamic, and argue for the pertinence of processual models of language, ideology and art to Marlatt's writing. My introduction addresses how theories of translation can inform an approach to rewriting. In Chapter one I examine "Steveston. Support? Fish" (1973), and its revision, "Litter. wreckage. salvage" (1991), employing, as indices of comparison, the issues of voice, document and fact, which are central to the documentary poem. Chapter two offers an analysis of the rearranged photographs in the second edition of Marlatt's long poem, Steveston. Chapter three proposes that a poetics of rewriting propels the circling movements between words, phrases, stanzagraphs and poems in Marlatt's work. Chapter four deals with how Marlatt translates her experience into the aural genre of radio drama. Finally, in Chapter five, I focus on the radical rewriting, or 'salvaging,' of language in Salvage.