“There’s a line by William Carlos Williams I mentioned in a speech: ‘The pure products of America go crazy.’ If you go for that kind of purity, you’re going to box yourself in a very small room. We are in a universe where everything around us is mongrel. I come from Sri Lanka; I’ve lived in England; I live in Canada; I go to the States. I’m a complete mixture, as my family background is. We’re in an era, with all the immigration and emigration, surrounded by this great mixture, which is one of the healthiest things we could have. I mean, to have a pure republican belief in something is kind of crazy, and so evasive.”
Rumpus contributor Maddie Oatman interviews author and poet Michael Ondaatje.
