The Artist & the Moose: A Fable of Forget

This book was edited by Roy Miki, who included his 40 page afterword.  Roy Kenzie Kiyooka who lived from 1926 to 1994 was a well respected, admired creator with accomplishments in many fields: writer, poet, artist, sculptor, videographer, photographer and musician.

The Artist & the Moose was an unpublished manuscript which Roy Miki and others wished to publish as an important addition to Kiyooka’s collection of achievements. Included in this volume are some 22 pages presented in typewriter print, dated from December 1971, through January 1972. In these letters to Annie, Kiyooka discusses his Tom Thomson project, which includes some poems and black and white photographs.

The central tenet of Kiyooka’s theme or belief is to develop examples into criticisms of Canadian nationalism as the price of colonization of First Nations, mainly by appropriation of their land and culture.

Kiyooka has fun with language as well as ideas. The character Ol Moose gives Wilderness Wisdom after being stopped at the Yankee border and frisked for “arctic cannabis.” “An emptied mind is nothing if not an undisguised blessing if it wipes out all the antinomies.” Kiyooka adds flavour with some song spoofs and other interjections.

This entire fable is a romp through Canadian cultural — real or imagined — icons.  It is ready for transformation into a popular animated video for all ages.