George Elliott Clarke will not recite the poetry of Stephen Kummerfield Brown ‘because of my sensitivity to the feelings of the survivors of his victim’
EDMONTON — A renowned Canadian poet who has worked with a man convicted of beating an Indigenous woman to death will still give a talk at the University of Regina, despite calls from some to cancel the event.
But his relationship with Steven Kummerfield, who now goes by Stephen Brown and is a published poet, has caused controversy: Kummerfield was convicted of manslaughter in 1997 in the beating death of Pamela George. “I did not become aware of Mr. Brown’s crime until September of 2019, and it has changed my view of him, especially given my own, well-documented anti-racism and pro-social-justice writings and statements,” Clarke said in a statement released Thursday evening in which he apologized to George’s family and those offended by his earlier comments to CBC that he “admired lots of poets who committed crimes of one sort or another.
“I am disgusted, disheartened and hurt that University officials would consider promoting — even indirectly — this murderer’s work or even to allow the potential of it to be read aloud publicly within the community that still mourns her death,” said FSIN Vice Chief Heather Bear.“The Faculty of Arts was unaware of this relationship when the invitation to speak was first extended,” said an emailed statement from Richard Kleer, the dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Regina.
I deplore all efforts to suggest that I can be in any way complicit with violence against Indigenous people
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