Poem gives fresh voice to African-Canadian pioneer of song and stage, Portia White

Canadian operatic singer Portia White poses for a portrait in Ottawa in a January 15, 1946, archival image. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Library and Archives Canada, Yousuf Karsh, PA-192783)

As a boy, George Elliott Clarke browsed a family album and marvelled at the "shimmering career" of his great aunt Portia White, an African-Canadian woman who became an acclaimed classical singer in the 1940s. 

Now the author's readers can share in the link between songstress and writer through his six-part, 49-page poem imagining her thoughts on topics ranging from racism to rock music. 

 "I confirm facts, but say/ Also what I think she'd've said," Clarke writes in the preface of the recently published "Portia White: A Portrait in Words" (Nimbus), a chronicle of her life from 1911 to 1968. Poetry allows the author latitude with apostrophes and freedom to recreate a life as "part fable," he notes in opening verses.