“Our symbiotic relationship with the stories that we tell”: An Interview with Michael Crummey

This is an interview with Michael Crummey which took place in 2011 following the publication of his award-winning novel Galore. Michael Crummey is one of the foremost writers of contemporary Newfoundland. His poetry and fiction is renowned for its focus on the stories and traditions of Newfoundland culture. A central theme of his work is the mixed form of indebtedness people in the present owe to the past as inheritors of its traditions, prejudices, violence, and stories. As Crummey elucidates in this interview, these myriad forms of cultural memory combine in intangible ways to constitute the living world of contemporary Newfoundlanders. In this interview, Crummey discusses how these questions informGalore and many of his other writings, particularly the ways conceptions of the carry-oneffect of inheritance and emplacement are integral to a Newfoundland sense of cultural-historical identity.