The Language Ghosts (I)

Ghosts surround us constantly. We live with them; we walk through them and they through us, as we close a door, or make a sandwich. And this is what I’m interested in as a writer. The specters that can never be exorcised— that are more real than the solid walls we surround ourselves with.

I say all this with a type of certainty as though this has always been obvious. But of course this is all expressed through hindsight. None of this was really clear to me—it’s still a bit spectral now. It has become clearer, however, as I’ve juggled these ghosts in the course of writing a number of very personal books.

One was my collection of poetry, Neighbourhood of Memory, my first attempt at writing about Montreal, but also of coming to terms with my migration to Australia. It is in this book that I realised that I was haunted by the past, but also where I realised that I was haunted by the present. Ironically, these hauntings contaminated each other, and I carried the scars and the richness of living between languages.