CLASSIFICATION
Swallow ID:
1256
Partner Institution:
Concordia University
Source Collection Label:
SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds
Series:
The Poetry Series
Sub Series:
SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds
ITEM DESCRIPTION
Title:
Phyllis Webb and Gwendolyn MacEwen at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 18 November 1966
Title Source:
Cataloguer
Title Note:
“PHYLLIS WEBB. Recorded November 18, 1966 with Gwedolyn MacEwan. 3.75 its, 1/2 track on 1. mil tape” written on sticker on the back of the tape box. Gwendolyn MacEwen's name is misspelled. “PHYLLIS WEBB I006/SR130” written on sticker on the spine of tape box. “i006-11-130” written on sticker on the reel.
"GWENDOLYN MacEWAN I066/SR161" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. MacEwen is misspelled. "I006-11-161" written on sticker on the reel.
Language:
English
Production Context:
Documentary recording
Genre:
Reading: Poetry
Identifiers:
[I006-11-130, I006-11-161]
Rights
CREATORS
Name:
Webb, Phyllis
Dates:
1927-
Role:
"Author",
"Performer"
Notes:
Poet Phyllis Webb was born in Victoria, British Columbia in 1927. She completed a B.A. in Philosophy and English at University of British Columbia and at the young age of twenty-two, she ran as a CCF candidate for the B.C. legislature. She finished one year of graduate studies at McGill University in 1950 in Montreal. She traveled and lived in San Francisco, Paris and England before settling back in B.C. where she taught at UBC for four years. Her first poems were published in Trio (Contact Press) in 1954 with Eli Mandel and Gael Turnbull, and in Even your right eye in 1956 (McClelland and Stewart). The Sea is Also a Garden (Ryerson Press) was published in 1952, and Naked poems (Periwinkle Press) was published in 1965. While in Toronto, Phyllis Webb conceived and was executive producer of the CBC radio program “Ideas” from 1966 to 1969. Two years later in 1971, Webb published Selected Poems (Talon Books). Webb’s many publications also include Wilson’s bowl (Coach House Press, 1980), Sunday water: thirteen anti ghazals (Island Writing Series, 1982), The vision tree: selected poems (Talon Books, 1982) which won the Governor General’s Award and Hanging fire (Coach House Press, 1990). Along with poetry, Phyllis Webb also collected her essays, reviews and radio discussions in Taking (1982), Nothing but brush strokes: selected prose (NeWest, 1995). She was the writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and taught at University of Victoria and the Banff Centre. Phyllis Webb has also won the Canada Council Senior Arts Award in 1981 and 1987, as well as being awarded an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1992. She lives on Saltspring Island, B.C.
Name:
MacEwen, Gwendolyn
Dates:
1941-1987
Role:
"Author",
"Performer"
Notes:
Poet, novelist and short story writer Gwendolyn MacEwen was born in Toronto in 1941, and spent her childhood there and in Winnipeg. Her first poem was published in The Canadian Forum, and a year later, when she was eighteen, she left school to pursue a career in writing. She self-published her first two collections of poetry, Selah and The drunken clock in 1961 (Aleph Press). In 1962, she briefly married fellow poet Milton Acorn, published her first novel, Julian the magician (Macmillan, 1963), and a collection of poetry, The rising fire (Contact Press, 1963), which established her reputation on the Canadian scene at the age of twenty-two. That same year, her work was published in Jacques Godbout and John Robert Colombo’s anthology Poetry 64/Poesie 64 (Ryerson Press/ Editions du jour, 1963). MacEwen followed this success with poetry collections A Breakfast for Barbarians (Ryerson Press, 1966), The Shadow-Maker (Macmillan, 1969) which won a Governor General’s Award for poetry, The Armies of the Moon (Macmillan, 1972), which won the A.J.M. Smith Poetry Award, Magic Animals: Selected Poems (Macmillan, 1975), The Fire-Eaters (Oberon Press, 1976), The T.E. Lawrence Poems (Mosaic Press/Valley Editions, 1982) and Earthlight: Selected Poems (General Publisher, 1982). She was re-married to Greek singer Nikos Tsingos, who introduced her to worlds Mediterranean. MacEwen published in other genres, including a CBC verse play Terror and Erebus (reprinted as Afterworlds in 1987), novel King of Egypt, King of Dreams (Macmillan, 1971), collections of short stories Norman (Oberon Press, 1972) and Norman’s Land (1985), travel book Mermaids and Ikons: A Greek Summer (Anansi, 1978), a translation of Euripides’ The Trojan Women: A Play (Playwright’s Co-op, 1979), and two children’s books, The chocolate moose (New Canada Publications, 1981) and The honey drum (Mosaic Press, Flatiron Books, 1983). Her last publication, Afterworlds (McClelland and Stewart, 1987) won a Governor General’s Award, and was published shortly before her death in 1987. Two volumes of selected work appeared posthumously, The poetry of Gwendolyn MacEwen: the early years (Exile Editions, 1993) and The poetry of Gwendolyn MacEwen: the later years (Exile Editions, 1994) edited by Margaret Atwood and Barry Callaghan.
CONTRIBUTORS
Name:
Kiyooka, Roy
Dates:
1926-1994
Role:
"Presenter",
"Series organizer"
MATERIAL DESCRIPTION
Recording Type:
Analogue
AV Type:
Audio
Material Designation:
Reel to Reel
Physical Composition:
Magnetic Tape
Extent:
1/4 inch
Playing Speed:
3 3/4 ips
Track Configuration:
Half-track
Playback Mode:
Mono
Tape Brand:
Scotch
Sound Quality:
Good
Recording Type:
Analogue
AV Type:
Audio
Material Designation:
Reel to Reel
Physical Composition:
Magnetic Tape
Extent:
1/4 inch
Playback Mode:
Mono
DIGITAL FILE DESCRIPTION
File Path:
files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3
Duration:
00:32:43
Size:
78.5 MB
Content:
phyllis_webb_i006-11-130.mp3 [File 1 of 2]
Roy Kiyooka
00:00:00
Now perhaps some of you are wondering what these readings are all about and how the choices made, I have here a slight commentary on that which I would like to read to you. Our answer to this is that we have not attempted to make the series an exhaustive coverage of any particular school or faction of poetry. Nor has our concern been an attempt to seek out the so-called "great poets". Our choices have been made with the desire to present to you, hopefully, the possibilities of utterance that is more than parochial. In short, this is our attempt to sound just that diversity that so much characterizes the North American Poetry scene. Now tonight it is my very great pleasure to introduce to you two poets whose distinctiveness is more than the fact of their sex. I want to introduce each poet in turn, Phyllis Webb
will begin the readings and after the intermission, I shall introduce to you Gwendolyn MacEwen
. Now Phyllis Webb has published three books of poems, they are Even Your Right Eye in 1956, The Sea is Also a Garden in ‘62 and Naked Poems in ‘65. Her earlier work appeared in Trio along with Eli Mandel
and Gael Turnbull
. She is currently a program organizer for CBC's
Ideas Series
. Ladies and Gentleman, Ms. Phyllis Webb.
Unknown
00:02:20
[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Phyllis Webb
00:02:21
I'd like to begin with a found poem, in that it was simply given to me by a child behaving in my presence. It's called "Alec".
Phyllis Webb
00:02:35
Reads "Alec".
Phyllis Webb
00:04:07
Reads "Rilke".
Phyllis Webb
00:05:58
This next poem is called "Continuum" and it's not a very extraordinary or terribly good poem even, I don't think, but it came out of a rather extraordinary experience, which was television. And it was simply a news clip from Vietnam
, but this one had soundtrack on it, which made it rather more touching and inspired me to wire the Prime Minister. And shortly after that and I didn't know I was getting to the wire in the middle of it until I got there and it has to do with the almost totally impossibility of separating out objective events that happen out there in history and in time and one's own private history. "Continuum".
Phyllis Webb
00:07:04
Reads "Continuum".
Phyllis Webb
00:08:34
I'm afraid I am suffering from the Toronto
plague which may be rampant here too. The next poem has a title longer than the poem. The title is "A Loaf of Sliced Bread Wrapped in Cellophane and Bought at the Supermarket Where the Doors Open Without Pushing".
Phyllis Webb
00:09:04
Reads "A Loaf of Sliced Bread Wrapped in Cellophane and Bought at the Supermarket Where the Doors Open Without Pushing".
Phyllis Webb
00:09:13
And the next poem is dedicated to Paul Goodman
, and there is a quotation embedded in the poem which you will probably catch when I come to it. It's a short poem.
Phyllis Webb
00:09:32
Reads unnamed poem.
Phyllis Webb
00:10:06
Reads "Poetry".
Phyllis Webb
00:11:54
I will read now from my volume The Sea is Also a Garden. "Propositions".
Phyllis Webb
00:12:16
Reads "Propositions" from The Sea is Also a Garden.
Phyllis Webb
00:13:28
The next poem is one that seems to elicit negative vibrations from an audience in the first three quarters, so go ahead and zoom them at me.
Phyllis Webb
00:13:43
Reads unnamed poem.
Phyllis Webb
00:16:02
I don't think I have the voice to read both sides of this poems tonight, there are two poems, one called "Breaking" and one called "Making". They're about the creative process that involves both those things, but "Making" is rather long and a little hard to read, so I'll read "Breaking" which is better probably as a poem.
Phyllis Webb
00:16:47
Reads "Breaking".
Phyllis Webb
00:19:04
The next poem is called "The Time of Man" and had a rather interesting genesis. I was reading an article in Horizon
by Dr. Loren Eiseley
, which he was putting forward some ideas on evolution and it was very beautifully written this Dr. Eiseley's an excellent stylist as well as a good scientist and I discovered that as I was going through I was marking the sentences and a few days later I began writing a poem and picked up the book and listed the sentences, so this poem takes off from the Eiseley article which is called "The Time of Man" in which Eiseley says we must live evolution forward amongst many other interesting things and it is started with quotations, which you will get some of the time and some of the time you won't. I sent it to him for confirmation about the scientific aspects of it, he said okay, I used to write poetry too. "The Time of Man".
Phyllis Webb
00:20:24
Reads "The Time of Man".
Phyllis Webb
00:21:38
Reads "Sitting".
Phyllis Webb
00:22:08
I want to read an old poem now, which I wrote in Dublin
, long years ago, if I can find it. It's called "Poems of Dublin", where I'd gone on a sort of literary pilgrimage in search of the spirit of Yeats
and Joyce
among others, it's a very down to earth sort of poem, in four parts.
Phyllis Webb
00:22:45
Reads "Poems of Dublin".
Phyllis Webb
00:25:33
I want to move on now to my latest book called Naked Poems and which one of your local critics, or at least he wrote for the Montreal Star
at this particular point, exclaimed of the price because there are so few words in the book. It's 2.25$. These poems are very small, and therefore very expensive and came at a bitter price, I may say, to me. They came quite as a surprise, I didn't know what I was doing when I wrote them, the first fourteen or so I thought, my goodness, what are these little things doing here, and I couldn't quite take them seriously and then I began to see the order that really was intrinsic in them, and realized that here was something, almost a new form for me to work on, and it's very bare, naked, undecorated and I wanted to get rid of all my affectations. And so I decided to write a couple hundred of them, and I wrote about a hundred and then got hung up on a technical problem, and finally reduced them to, I don't know, forty or so that are in this book. So this is a distillation, let's say. I'm going to read the first fourteen which comprise a total poem, in a sense the whole book is a poem. And then I'll read a few more as long as my voice and your patience will hold out. "Suite I".
Phyllis Webb
00:27:56
Reads "Suite I" from Naked Poems.
Phyllis Webb
00:28:53
Reads "Flies" from Naked Poems.
Phyllis Webb
00:29:10
Reads "Your Blouse" from Naked Poems.
Phyllis Webb
00:29:41
Reads "Suite II" from Naked Poems.
Phyllis Webb
00:31:27
One of the things I was interested in doing in these poems is again this subjective and the objective, here the subject and the object relationship, so that I use objects just to speak for themselves, in a sense, and yet they are all prismed in the way I see them. And again this impossibility of the dichotomy of subjective-objective.
Phyllis Webb
00:32:09
Reads unnamed poem from Naked Poems.
END
00:32:43
Notes:
Phyllis Webb reads from The Sea is Also a Garden (Ryerson Press, 1962), Even Your Right Eye (McClelland & Stewart, 1956), and Naked Poems (Periwinkle Press, 1965).
00:00- Roy Kiyooka Introduction [INDEX: Kiyooka explains decisions behind Reading Series Poets, North American Poetry scene, Phyllis Webb, Gwendolyn MacEwan, Even Your Right Eye in 1956, The Sea is Also a Garden in 1962 and Naked Poems in 1965 by Phyllis Webb, Trio with Eli Mandel and Gael Turnbull, CBC’s Ideas Series]
02:21- Phyllis Webb introduces “Alec” [INDEX: found poem]
02:35- Reads “Alec”
04:07- Reads “Rilke”
05:58- Introduces “Continuum” [INDEX: Television clip from Vietnam, Prime Minister, objective events and private history]
07:04- Reads “Continuum”
08:34- Introduces “A Loaf of Sliced Bread Wrapped in Cellophane and Bought at the Supermarket Where the Doors Open Without Pushing” [INDEX: Toronto]
09:04- Reads “A Loaf of Sliced Bread Wrapped in Cellophane and Bought at the Supermarket Where the Doors Open Without Pushing”
09:13- Introduces first line “What decides the vision...” [INDEX: Paul Goodman]
09:32- Reads first line “What decides the vision...”
10:06- Reads “Poetry”
11:54- Introduces “Propositions” [INDEX: from The Sea is Also a Garden]
12:16- Reads “Propositions”
13:28- Introduces first line “To friends who have also considered suicide...”
13:43- Reads first line “To friends who have also considered suicide...”
16:02- Introduces “Breaking” [INDEX: “Making”, creative process]
16:47- Reads “Breaking”
19:04- Introduces “The Time of Man” [INDEX: article in Horizon by Dr. Loren Eiseley, evolution]
20:24- Reads “The Time of Man”
21:38- Reads “Sitting”
22:08- Introduces “Poems of Dublin” [INDEX: pilgrimage to Dublin, Yeats, Joyce]
22:45- Reads “Poems of Dublin”
25:33- Reads “Suite I” [INDEX: from Naked Poems, critic from the Montreal Star, writing process of Naked Poems]
28:53- Reads “Flies” [INDEX: not in Howard Fink List of poems]
29.10- Reads “Your Blouse” [INDEX: not in Howard Fink List of poems]
29:41- Reads “Suite II” [INDEX: not in Howard Fink List of poems]
31:27- Introduces first line “An instant of white roses...” [INDEX: in section “Non Linear” in Naked Poems, subject-object relationship; not in Howard Fink List of Poems]
32:43.57- END OF RECORDING
Content Type:
Sound Recording
File Path:
files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3
Duration:
00:25:42
Size:
61.7 MB
Content:
gwendolyn_macewan_i006-11-161.mp3 [File 2 of 2]
Roy Kiyooka
00:00:00
Second half of our program...on the second half of our program we will have Gwendolyn MacEwen reading for us. I have notes in my hand concerning her, but on the back of this album, here, a CBC
publications release of...is it eight Canadian poets? One, two, three, four… [Audience laughter]. Yes, eight Canadian poets, this album is about to be released very shortly. There's a much more comprehensive biography of her, so I shall read this as an introduction to her. Born in Toronto
in 1941, began publishing poetry in the Canadian Forum
at age fifteen. She left school at eighteen, a high school dropout, as the sociologists would say [audience applause and laughter] to devote herself to writing. She has published three books of poetry, The Drunken Clock, The Rising Fire, and most recently, A Breakfast for Barbarians. She has also published a novel called Julian the Magician. In 1965, she was awarded the prize for poetry in the CBC's new writing contest. With the aid of a Canada Council
grant, she is currently at work on a novel on the, how do you pronounce the guy's name? [whispers off-mic to MacEwen]...Pharaoh Akhenaten
[laughter] of the eighteenth dynasty in Egypt
. Ladies and gentlemen, Gwendolyn MacEwen.
Unknown
00:01:47
[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:01:47
So listen, I had a great idea that if our voices gave out we were just going to open up the record and bring a recorder up on a stage and place the needle in the proper groove, and then just let the record speak for itself. However, I guess the voice is intact. I'm reading first from my latest work, poems from the last year. The first is called "The Zoo".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:02:22
Reads "The Zoo".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:03:38
Not feeling that I'd sufficiently exploited beasts and things, I wrote another called "The Taming of the Dragon".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:03:49
Reads "The Taming of the Dragon".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:04:57
Still not having exploited the animal kingdom, I wrote a poem which, well, is not connected with the animal kingdom at all, really. It's called "The Horse-head Nebula".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:05:12
Reads "The Horse-head Nebula".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:06:19.86
Reads "Wheels".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:07:18
This is a poem which, oddly enough, came out in a Mexican magazine in Spanish not too long ago, looking completely unrecognizable to me. It's called "I Should Have Predicted".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:07:38
Reads "I Should Have Predicted" [published later in The Shadow-Maker].
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:08:47
Some people have asked me if that poem was about Toronto, and I'm at a loss to answer, not having seen horses, riders, chariots, or anything remotely similar in Toronto. Plus the fact, I'm sure many people have predicted the death of Toronto, as far as that goes. I recall Phyllis reading a poem on perhaps an evolutionary theme, and I have one here called "The Heel".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:09:32
Reads "The Heel" [published later in The Shadow-Maker].
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:11:16
Now, I think I can safely move into Breakfast for Barbarians. It needs a little preparation, a little cushioning, perhaps. This is a poem called "The Garden of Square Roots: An Autobiography".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:12:01
Reads "The Garden of Square Roots: An Autobiography" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:13:33
I think all poets should have some suffering poems, poems of great anguish. So feeling I was somewhat deficient in this area [audience laughter], I made use of a very opportune situation, recovering from an appendectomy in hospital. [Audience laughter]. Deciding that surely this was my moment, if I was ever going to write a painful poem it must be now. [Audience laughter]. So this is "Appendectomy".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:14:20
Reads "Appendectomy".
Unknown
00:14:22
[High-pitched sound. Possible damage to recording].
Unknown
00:14:57
[High-pitched sound. Possible damage to recording].
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:15:20
Although I can't say that I'm convinced that that suffering was valid, either. But. The next poem is called "The Self Assumes", and I rarely talk about how a poem gets written because it seems mostly irrelevant, but I would remark that the last line of this poem was one of those very strange, surprising things that comes to one almost instantaneously, and one plucks it out of the air. I was very delighted with it. "The Self Assumes".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:16:08
Reads "The Self Assumes".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:18:01
The next poem is one of a group of poems toward the end of this book where the, I think the tone or the voice takes a somewhat radical departure from the poems in the rest of the book. It's called "The Caravan".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:18:23
Reads "The Caravan" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:20:29
I'm trying to locate a poem in this book which I realized doesn't exist. It's somewhere else altogether. I'd like to end this reading with a trilogy of poems. Which are also toward the end of Breakfast for Barbarians. Poems which, for me, represent a stage in my own growth as a poet. They are called the Arcanum poems, I believe they're on the record which Roy Kiyooka
was showing you.
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:21:15
Reads "Arcanum One" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:22:35
Before I go into "Arcanum Two", in case anyone is mystified with beetles and suns and various creatures like that, let me say that the book is, the poem, rather, is of an Egyptian theme. A royal house. And the events taking place within it. So we move on: "Arcanum Two".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:23:05
Reads "Arcanum Two" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:24:33
And finally, "Arcanum Three".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:24:39
Reads "Arcanum Three" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:25:31
Thank you very much.
Unknown
00:25:34
[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Roy Kiyooka
00:25:34
...everybody here, I want to thank Gwendolyn MacEwen. Our night three is on December the second. Thank you very much.
END
00:25:42
Notes:
Gwendolyn MacEwen reads from Breakfast for Barbarians (Ryerson Press, 1966) and poems published later in The Shadow-Maker (Macmillan, 1969) and a few unknown poems.
00:00- Roy Kiyooka introduces Gwendolyn MacEwen. [INDEX: second half of reading, CBC recording of eight Canadian poets (Phyllis Webb, Earle Birney, John Newlove, Al Purdy, Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, George Bowering and Gwendolyn MacEwen (CBC, 1966), biography, born in Toronto in 1941, publishing poetry at age 15, high school dropout, sociologists, three poetry books: The Drunken Clock, The Rising Fire and Breakfast for Barbarians, novel Julian and the Magician, 1965 award from CBC’s
writing contest, Canada Council grant, Pharaoh Akhenaton and the eighteenth dynasty in Egypt, (perhaps King of Egypt, King of Dreams (Macmillan, 1971)].
01:47- Gwendolyn MacEwen introduces reading and “The Zoo”. [INDEX: loss of voice,
recording, record, latest work].
02:22- Reads “The Zoo”.
03:38- Introduces “The Taming of the Dragon”. [INDEX: exploited beasts].
03:49- Reads “The Taming of the Dragon”.
04:57- Introduces “The Horse-head Nebula”. [INDEX: exploited the animal kingdom].
05:12- Reads “The Horse-head Nebula”.
06:19- Reads “Wheels”.
07:18- Introduces “I Should Have Predicted”. [INDEX: published in Mexican magazine in
Spanish; later published in The Shadow-Maker (Macmillan, 1969)].
07:38- Reads “I Should Have Predicted”.
08:47- Explains “I Should Have Predicted” and introduces “The Heel”. [INDEX: about
Toronto, horses, riders, chariots, death of Toronto, Phyllis [Webb] poem, evolutionary
theme; later published in The Shadow-Maker (Macmillan, 1969)].
09:32- Reads “The Heel”.
11:16- Introduces Breakfast for Barbarians. [INDEX: preparation, cushioning].
11:52- Introduces “The Garden of Square Roots: An Autobiography”. [INDEX: from
Breakfast for Barbarians].
12:01- Reads “The Garden of Square Roots: An Autobiography”.
13:33- Introduces “Appendectomy”. [INDEX: suffering poem, poets, appendectomy in hospital,painful poem; from Breakfast for Barbarians].
14:20- Reads “Appendectomy”.
14:22- Damage to recording
14:57- Damage to recording
15:20- Explains “Appendectomy”, introduces “The Self Assumes”. [INDEX: suffering,
validity, how a poem gets written, irrelevant, last line, strange surprise, instantaneous, out of air; from Breakfast for Barbarians].
16:08- Reads “The Self Assumes”.
18:01- Introduces “The Caravan”. [INDEX: group of poems, tone, voice, radical departure; from Breakfast for Barbarians].
18:23- Reads “The Caravan”.
20:29- Introduces “Arcanum One”. [INDEX: poem that doesn’t exist, trilogy of poems, at the end of Breakfast for Barbarians, stage in growth as a poet, Arcanum poems, on record, Roy Kiyooka].
21:15- Reads “Arcanum One”.
22:35- Introduces “Arcanum Two”. [INDEX: beetles, sun, creatures, Egyptian theme, royal house].
23:05- Reads “Arcanum Two”.
24:33- Reads “Arcanum Three”.
25:31- Gwendolyn MacEwen thanks the audience.
25:34- Roy Kiyooka thanks Gwendolyn MacEwen, announces date of next reading. [INDEX: next reading December 2].
25:42.80- END OF RECORDING.
Content Type:
Sound Recording
File Path:
My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet
Title:
Phyllis Webb Tape Box - Back
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
File Path:
My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet
Title:
Phyllis Webb Tape Box - Front
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
File Path:
My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet
Title:
Phyllis Webb Tape Box - Spine
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
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File Path:
My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet
Title:
Phyllis Webb Tape Box - Reel
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
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File Path:
My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet
Title:
Gwendolyn MacEwen Tape Box - Back
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
File Path:
My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet
Title:
Gwendolyn MacEwen Tape Box - Front
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
File Path:
My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet
Title:
Gwendolyn MacEwen Tape Box - Spine
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
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File Path:
My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet
Title:
Gwendolyn MacEwen Tape Box - Reel
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Dates
Date:
1966 11 18
Type:
Performance Date
Source:
Accompanying Material
Notes:
Date written on sticker on the tape box. Date is also referenced but not specified in "Georgantics" by Bob Simco
LOCATION
Address:
1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Venue:
Hall Building Basement Theatre
Latitude:
45.4972758
Longitude:
-73.57893043
Notes:
Location specified in printed announcement "Georgantics" by Bob Simco (Supplemental material)
CONTENT
Contents:
phyllis_webb_i006-11-130.mp3 [File 1 of 2]
Roy Kiyooka
00:00:00
Now perhaps some of you are wondering what these readings are all about and how the choices made, I have here a slight commentary on that which I would like to read to you. Our answer to this is that we have not attempted to make the series an exhaustive coverage of any particular school or faction of poetry. Nor has our concern been an attempt to seek out the so-called "great poets". Our choices have been made with the desire to present to you, hopefully, the possibilities of utterance that is more than parochial. In short, this is our attempt to sound just that diversity that so much characterizes the North American Poetry scene. Now tonight it is my very great pleasure to introduce to you two poets whose distinctiveness is more than the fact of their sex. I want to introduce each poet in turn, Phyllis Webb
will begin the readings and after the intermission, I shall introduce to you Gwendolyn MacEwen
. Now Phyllis Webb has published three books of poems, they are Even Your Right Eye in 1956, The Sea is Also a Garden in ‘62 and Naked Poems in ‘65. Her earlier work appeared in Trio along with Eli Mandel
and Gael Turnbull
. She is currently a program organizer for CBC's
Ideas Series
. Ladies and Gentleman, Ms. Phyllis Webb.
Unknown
00:02:20
[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Phyllis Webb
00:02:21
I'd like to begin with a found poem, in that it was simply given to me by a child behaving in my presence. It's called "Alec".
Phyllis Webb
00:02:35
Reads "Alec".
Phyllis Webb
00:04:07
Reads "Rilke".
Phyllis Webb
00:05:58
This next poem is called "Continuum" and it's not a very extraordinary or terribly good poem even, I don't think, but it came out of a rather extraordinary experience, which was television. And it was simply a news clip from Vietnam
, but this one had soundtrack on it, which made it rather more touching and inspired me to wire the Prime Minister. And shortly after that and I didn't know I was getting to the wire in the middle of it until I got there and it has to do with the almost totally impossibility of separating out objective events that happen out there in history and in time and one's own private history. "Continuum".
Phyllis Webb
00:07:04
Reads "Continuum".
Phyllis Webb
00:08:34
I'm afraid I am suffering from the Toronto
plague which may be rampant here too. The next poem has a title longer than the poem. The title is "A Loaf of Sliced Bread Wrapped in Cellophane and Bought at the Supermarket Where the Doors Open Without Pushing".
Phyllis Webb
00:09:04
Reads "A Loaf of Sliced Bread Wrapped in Cellophane and Bought at the Supermarket Where the Doors Open Without Pushing".
Phyllis Webb
00:09:13
And the next poem is dedicated to Paul Goodman
, and there is a quotation embedded in the poem which you will probably catch when I come to it. It's a short poem.
Phyllis Webb
00:09:32
Reads unnamed poem.
Phyllis Webb
00:10:06
Reads "Poetry".
Phyllis Webb
00:11:54
I will read now from my volume The Sea is Also a Garden. "Propositions".
Phyllis Webb
00:12:16
Reads "Propositions" from The Sea is Also a Garden.
Phyllis Webb
00:13:28
The next poem is one that seems to elicit negative vibrations from an audience in the first three quarters, so go ahead and zoom them at me.
Phyllis Webb
00:13:43
Reads unnamed poem.
Phyllis Webb
00:16:02
I don't think I have the voice to read both sides of this poems tonight, there are two poems, one called "Breaking" and one called "Making". They're about the creative process that involves both those things, but "Making" is rather long and a little hard to read, so I'll read "Breaking" which is better probably as a poem.
Phyllis Webb
00:16:47
Reads "Breaking".
Phyllis Webb
00:19:04
The next poem is called "The Time of Man" and had a rather interesting genesis. I was reading an article in Horizon
by Dr. Loren Eiseley
, which he was putting forward some ideas on evolution and it was very beautifully written this Dr. Eiseley's an excellent stylist as well as a good scientist and I discovered that as I was going through I was marking the sentences and a few days later I began writing a poem and picked up the book and listed the sentences, so this poem takes off from the Eiseley article which is called "The Time of Man" in which Eiseley says we must live evolution forward amongst many other interesting things and it is started with quotations, which you will get some of the time and some of the time you won't. I sent it to him for confirmation about the scientific aspects of it, he said okay, I used to write poetry too. "The Time of Man".
Phyllis Webb
00:20:24
Reads "The Time of Man".
Phyllis Webb
00:21:38
Reads "Sitting".
Phyllis Webb
00:22:08
I want to read an old poem now, which I wrote in Dublin
, long years ago, if I can find it. It's called "Poems of Dublin", where I'd gone on a sort of literary pilgrimage in search of the spirit of Yeats
and Joyce
among others, it's a very down to earth sort of poem, in four parts.
Phyllis Webb
00:22:45
Reads "Poems of Dublin".
Phyllis Webb
00:25:33
I want to move on now to my latest book called Naked Poems and which one of your local critics, or at least he wrote for the Montreal Star
at this particular point, exclaimed of the price because there are so few words in the book. It's 2.25$. These poems are very small, and therefore very expensive and came at a bitter price, I may say, to me. They came quite as a surprise, I didn't know what I was doing when I wrote them, the first fourteen or so I thought, my goodness, what are these little things doing here, and I couldn't quite take them seriously and then I began to see the order that really was intrinsic in them, and realized that here was something, almost a new form for me to work on, and it's very bare, naked, undecorated and I wanted to get rid of all my affectations. And so I decided to write a couple hundred of them, and I wrote about a hundred and then got hung up on a technical problem, and finally reduced them to, I don't know, forty or so that are in this book. So this is a distillation, let's say. I'm going to read the first fourteen which comprise a total poem, in a sense the whole book is a poem. And then I'll read a few more as long as my voice and your patience will hold out. "Suite I".
Phyllis Webb
00:27:56
Reads "Suite I" from Naked Poems.
Phyllis Webb
00:28:53
Reads "Flies" from Naked Poems.
Phyllis Webb
00:29:10
Reads "Your Blouse" from Naked Poems.
Phyllis Webb
00:29:41
Reads "Suite II" from Naked Poems.
Phyllis Webb
00:31:27
One of the things I was interested in doing in these poems is again this subjective and the objective, here the subject and the object relationship, so that I use objects just to speak for themselves, in a sense, and yet they are all prismed in the way I see them. And again this impossibility of the dichotomy of subjective-objective.
Phyllis Webb
00:32:09
Reads unnamed poem from Naked Poems.
END
00:32:43
gwendolyn_macewan_i006-11-161.mp3 [File 2 of 2]
Roy Kiyooka
00:00:00
Second half of our program...on the second half of our program we will have Gwendolyn MacEwen reading for us. I have notes in my hand concerning her, but on the back of this album, here, a CBC
publications release of...is it eight Canadian poets? One, two, three, four… [Audience laughter]. Yes, eight Canadian poets, this album is about to be released very shortly. There's a much more comprehensive biography of her, so I shall read this as an introduction to her. Born in Toronto
in 1941, began publishing poetry in the Canadian Forum
at age fifteen. She left school at eighteen, a high school dropout, as the sociologists would say [audience applause and laughter] to devote herself to writing. She has published three books of poetry, The Drunken Clock, The Rising Fire, and most recently, A Breakfast for Barbarians. She has also published a novel called Julian the Magician. In 1965, she was awarded the prize for poetry in the CBC's new writing contest. With the aid of a Canada Council
grant, she is currently at work on a novel on the, how do you pronounce the guy's name? [whispers off-mic to MacEwen]...Pharaoh Akhenaten
[laughter] of the eighteenth dynasty in Egypt
. Ladies and gentlemen, Gwendolyn MacEwen.
Unknown
00:01:47
[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:01:47
So listen, I had a great idea that if our voices gave out we were just going to open up the record and bring a recorder up on a stage and place the needle in the proper groove, and then just let the record speak for itself. However, I guess the voice is intact. I'm reading first from my latest work, poems from the last year. The first is called "The Zoo".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:02:22
Reads "The Zoo".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:03:38
Not feeling that I'd sufficiently exploited beasts and things, I wrote another called "The Taming of the Dragon".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:03:49
Reads "The Taming of the Dragon".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:04:57
Still not having exploited the animal kingdom, I wrote a poem which, well, is not connected with the animal kingdom at all, really. It's called "The Horse-head Nebula".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:05:12
Reads "The Horse-head Nebula".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:06:19.86
Reads "Wheels".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:07:18
This is a poem which, oddly enough, came out in a Mexican magazine in Spanish not too long ago, looking completely unrecognizable to me. It's called "I Should Have Predicted".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:07:38
Reads "I Should Have Predicted" [published later in The Shadow-Maker].
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:08:47
Some people have asked me if that poem was about Toronto, and I'm at a loss to answer, not having seen horses, riders, chariots, or anything remotely similar in Toronto. Plus the fact, I'm sure many people have predicted the death of Toronto, as far as that goes. I recall Phyllis reading a poem on perhaps an evolutionary theme, and I have one here called "The Heel".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:09:32
Reads "The Heel" [published later in The Shadow-Maker].
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:11:16
Now, I think I can safely move into Breakfast for Barbarians. It needs a little preparation, a little cushioning, perhaps. This is a poem called "The Garden of Square Roots: An Autobiography".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:12:01
Reads "The Garden of Square Roots: An Autobiography" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:13:33
I think all poets should have some suffering poems, poems of great anguish. So feeling I was somewhat deficient in this area [audience laughter], I made use of a very opportune situation, recovering from an appendectomy in hospital. [Audience laughter]. Deciding that surely this was my moment, if I was ever going to write a painful poem it must be now. [Audience laughter]. So this is "Appendectomy".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:14:20
Reads "Appendectomy".
Unknown
00:14:22
[High-pitched sound. Possible damage to recording].
Unknown
00:14:57
[High-pitched sound. Possible damage to recording].
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:15:20
Although I can't say that I'm convinced that that suffering was valid, either. But. The next poem is called "The Self Assumes", and I rarely talk about how a poem gets written because it seems mostly irrelevant, but I would remark that the last line of this poem was one of those very strange, surprising things that comes to one almost instantaneously, and one plucks it out of the air. I was very delighted with it. "The Self Assumes".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:16:08
Reads "The Self Assumes".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:18:01
The next poem is one of a group of poems toward the end of this book where the, I think the tone or the voice takes a somewhat radical departure from the poems in the rest of the book. It's called "The Caravan".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:18:23
Reads "The Caravan" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:20:29
I'm trying to locate a poem in this book which I realized doesn't exist. It's somewhere else altogether. I'd like to end this reading with a trilogy of poems. Which are also toward the end of Breakfast for Barbarians. Poems which, for me, represent a stage in my own growth as a poet. They are called the Arcanum poems, I believe they're on the record which Roy Kiyooka
was showing you.
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:21:15
Reads "Arcanum One" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:22:35
Before I go into "Arcanum Two", in case anyone is mystified with beetles and suns and various creatures like that, let me say that the book is, the poem, rather, is of an Egyptian theme. A royal house. And the events taking place within it. So we move on: "Arcanum Two".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:23:05
Reads "Arcanum Two" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:24:33
And finally, "Arcanum Three".
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:24:39
Reads "Arcanum Three" from A Breakfast for Barbarians.
Gwendolyn MacEwen
00:25:31
Thank you very much.
Unknown
00:25:34
[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Roy Kiyooka
00:25:34
...everybody here, I want to thank Gwendolyn MacEwen. Our night three is on December the second. Thank you very much.
END
00:25:42
Notes:
Phyllis Webb reads from The Sea is Also a Garden (Ryerson Press, 1962), Even Your Right Eye (McClelland & Stewart, 1956), and Naked Poems (Periwinkle Press, 1965). Gwendolyn MacEwen reads from Breakfast for Barbarians (Ryerson Press, 1966) and poems published later in The Shadow-Maker (Macmillan, 1969) and a few unknown poems.
NOTES
Type:
General
Note:
Year-Specific Information:
In 1966, Phyllis Webb was executive producer of CBC’s “Ideas” radio show in Toronto. She had just published Naked Poems in 1965.
In 1966, Gwendolyn MacEwen published Breakfast for Barbarians (Ryerson Press).
Type:
General
Note:
Local Connections:
While studying at McGill in the early 50’s, she became involved with the literary circle that included F.R. Scott, Louis Dudek and Irving Layton. Her work was published by Toronto’s Coach House Press, McClelland and Stewart, Ryerson University Press and Vancouver’s Talonbooks. She also kept correspondences with George Bowering (Archives Canada).
The direct connection between Sir George Williams University and Gwendolyn MacEwen is unknown. However, MacEwen was an important emerging poet from Toronto, associated with poets Margaret Atwood, and husband Milton Acorn.
Type:
Cataloguer
Note:
I006-11-130:
Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones
Additional research and edits by Ali Barillaro
I006-11-161:
Original transcript by Rachel Kyne
Original print catalogue, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones
Additional research and edits by Ali Barillaro
Type:
Preservation
Note:
2 reel-to-reel tapes>2 CDs>2 digital files
RELATED WORKS
Citation:
Atwood, Margaret. “MacEwen, Gwendolyn (1941-87)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post- Colonial Literatures in English. Eugene Benson & L.W. Connolly (eds). London: Routledge, 1994
Citation:
Atwood, Margaret and Barry Callaghan (eds). The Poetry of Gwendolyn MacEwen; Volume One: The Early Years. Toronto: Exile Editions, 1993.
Citation:
Beddoes, Julie. “Webb, Phyllis (1927-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly (eds). London: Routledge, 1994.
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Bowering, George, ed. The Contemporary Canadian Poetry Anthology. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1994.
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Cooke, Nathalie. Margaret Atwood: A Biography. Toronto: ECW Press, 1998.
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Davey, Frank. “Gwendolyn MacEwen”. From There to Here. Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1974.
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Geddes, Gary. “Gwendolyn MacEwen (1941-1987)”. Fifteen Canadian Poets Times Two. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990.
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Geddes, Gary. "Webb, Phyllis". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2001.
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MacEwen, Gwendolyn. A Breakfast for Barbarians. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1966.
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MacEwen, Gwendolyn. Magic Animals: Selected Poems Old and New. Toronto: Macmillan, 1974.
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Mandel, Eli. “Gwendolyn MacEwen”. Poets of Contemporary Canada 1960-1970. Montreal: McClelland and Stewart, 1972.
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Manhire, Bill."MacEwen, Gwendolyn". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996.
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Webb, Phyllis. The Sea is Also a Garden. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1962.
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Webb, Phyllis. Even Your Right Eye. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1956.
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Webb, Phyllis. Naked Poems. Vancouver: Periwinkle Press, 1965.
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Woodcock, George & Rosemary Sullivan. "MacEwen, Gwendolyn". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2001.
Citation:
MacEwen, Gwendolyn. The Shadow-Maker. Toronto: Macmillan, 1969.
Citation:
“Poetry Readings”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 6 October 1967, page 6.