CLASSIFICATION
Swallow ID:
1259
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:
Margaret Avison at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 27 January 1967
Title Source:
Cataloguer
Title Note:
"Marg. Avison (2 tracks 3 3/4"/sec ) I086-11-002" written on sticker on the reel and on the tape's box. Marg. Avison refers to Margaret Avison. "RT 518" also written.
Language:
English
Production Context:
Documentary recording
Genre:
Reading: Poetry
Identifiers:
[]
Rights
CREATORS
Name:
Avison, Margaret
Dates:
1918-2007
Role:
"Performer",
"Author"
Notes:
Poet Margaret Avison was born in Galt, Ontario in 1918. She was educated at the University of Toronto and received her Bachelor’s degree in 1940. During the early forties, she contributed her poetry to Sid Corman’s Origin, with the likes of Charles Olson, Denise Levertov and Robert Creeley. While she is often associated with this group of poets, her content differs from theirs. Avison worked as an English literature lecturer, a secretary, a librarian, a researcher and as a social worker at a mission in downtown Toronto. Her first collection of poems was published in 1960, titled Winter Sun (University of Toronto Press), followed by The Dumbfounding (Noron, 1966). Avison’s poetry was also anthologized in Eli Mandel and Jean-Guy Pilon’s Poetry 62 (Ryerson, 1961). In 1963, she returned to the University of Toronto to write her thesis on Don Juan and to pursue graduate work. Avison taught and lectured English at Scarborough College and at the University of Toronto, as well as working at the Presbyterian Church Mission in Toronto. In 1970, she collaborated with bp Nichol and published The Cosmic Chef Glee & Perloo Memorial Society under the direction of Captain Poetry presents...: [an evening of concrete, courtesy of Oberon Cement Works] (Oberon Press). Avison, staying on the periphery of the poetry scene, attended and participated in several readings, and supported other writers in their pursuits. She translated poems from Hungarian, which appear in The Plough and the Pen: Writings from Hungary, 1930-1956 (London, P. Owen, 1963). Sunblue was published in 1978 by Lancelot Press, and a collected edition of Winter Sun/The Dumbfounding: Poems 1940-1966 (McClelland & Stewart, 1982) and No time (Lancelot Press, 1989). Her Selected Poems was published in 1991 by Oxford University Press, followed by A kind of perseverance (Lancelot Press, 1994) and Not yet but still (Lancelot Press, 1997). Avison has produced a number of books, Always Now: The collected poems (Porcupine’s Quill) came as a three volume series published between 2003 and 2005. Momentary dark (McClelland & Stewart, 2006), Listening: the last poems (McClelland & Stewart, 2009) and I am here and not not-there: an autobiography (Porcupine’s Quill, 2009) have both recently been released. Margaret Avison died in Toronto in August of 2007.
CONTRIBUTORS
Name:
Kiyooka, Roy
Dates:
1926-1994
Role:
"Series organizer",
"Presenter"
MATERIAL DESCRIPTION
Recording Type:
Analogue
AV Type:
Audio
Material Designation:
Reel to Reel
Physical Composition:
Magnetic Tape
Storage Capacity:
01:20:00
Extent:
1/4 inch
Playing Speed:
3 3/4 ips
Track Configuration:
2 track
Playback Mode:
Mono
Tape Brand:
BASF
Sound Quality:
Excellent
DIGITAL FILE DESCRIPTION
File Path:
files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3
Duration:
01:17:54
Size:
187 MB
Content:
Roy Kiyooka
00:00:00
In view of the embarrassment of having made such a mess of introducing the last poet, I spent a considerable amount of time setting out what I should say this evening, so hopefully I'll be a little more successful. Well, this is our seventh poetry evening and we welcome you all here this cold and blustery evening. Now, this evening we're having Margaret Avison
read poems, and I wanted to say a few things about her. I first listened to Margaret read her poems at the poetry conference, University of British Columbia
, during the summer of 1963. Her reading, together with those of the other poets on hand, are among the most memorable occasions I've had in my love affair with poems and poets. Four years later, in early January, we spent an afternoon together. Now I don't want to attribute, what I felt with a thought, on Bloor Street, to our conversation, but the warmth of it was very real. Margaret Avison was born in Guelph
, Ontario
; some early years were spent in Alberta
; she graduated from Victoria College
, the University of Toronto
, in 1940, with a BA in English Language and Literature. She has been a secretary of all sorts for various firms, individuals, and organizations, and has also been a research assistant and librarian and presently teaches English at Scarborough College, Toronto
. 1956-57 she was a Guggenheim Fellow
in poetry, and during the forties her work appeared in various Canadian magazines, and in the fifties, mainly in American ones. She has published two books of poems; The Winter Sun in 1960 won the Governor General's Award
, and in 1966, W.W. Norton
in New York
issued The Dumbfounding
, her latest book. Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure in introducing to you Margaret Avison.
Unknown
00:02:59
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Margaret Avison
00:02:59
I don't know about the reading but I do know about the pleasure of meeting Roy
again here, and being introduced by him. If this were Monday, or up to a week from tonight, I would be able to join the Angry Art Week. I don't know if anybody else has received these letters, but in New York City initially they're trying this and anybody who gets a letter from them is asked to dedicate any reading or event to what they're trying to do. You can still send them money, too, I'll give you the address if you want it later. What they're going to do is play harps in railroad stations and have...lets see, Bach
cantatas in railroad stations, play-ins in various museums and the lobbies of concert halls, recital halls, business buildings--I like that one--dramatic presentations in laundromats and supermarkets, [audience laughter], a paint-in, and fences and billboards throughout Manhattan
with their work showing and so on. This is a series. "What we're trying to do is through art to reach the American people as human beings." So...[audience laughter]. If this were Monday I'd dedicate the reading [audience laughter and applause]...This is all very orderly, although it doesn't look it, and it starts with other people's poems of various kinds. A little section of C. Bukowski
, somebody said that's Charles, an American poet. It's a great long thing that was in a mimeograph magazine, and the description is of a woman with a bicycle and a baby carriage, high-heeled shoes, white socks, and all her belongings, on a hot day in the middle of a road in a city.
Margaret Avison
00:05:28
Reads unnamed poem by Charles Bukowski.
Margaret Avison
00:06:30.
That's sad, so on the same page I copied one of Al Fowler's, which was in a magazine called Lines, which is the all-time happiest little poem, and I don't know why. I'm going to stop where the lines stop, not where the sense stops, so you can see the shape of it. There's no capital letters. There's no title.
Margaret Avison
00:07:01
Reads “Are you a root or a tendermint” by Al Fowler [published in Lines 6].
Audience
00:07:20
Laughter.
Margaret Avison
00:07:30
This is one by Gerry Gilbert
, called "Zoo".
Margaret Avison
00:07:39
Reads "Zoo" by Gerry Gilbert.
Margaret Avison
00:08:00
I may bring in some more of other people's, but this is just a little, it's a friend of mine in Toronto who's made it to grade seven this year. He calls it "The Delinquent", and he has, in this copy he has said that it's his copyright so if you betray the fact that I read some of it, I'll be in trouble with him.
Margaret Avison
00:08:33
Reads "The Delinquent" by an unnamed author [audience laughter throughout].
Margaret Avison
00:10:20
It goes on, a bit, I want to go back to where it gets sad, though. I love "She twisted her pinkies behind her but all the knots held more".
Margaret Avison
00:10:30
Resumes reading "The Delinquent" [audience laughter throughout].
Margaret Avison
00:11:33
There's an awful line in the next verse. [Audience laughter].
Margaret Avison
00:11:41
Resumes reading "The Delinquent" [audience laughter throughout].
Margaret Avison
00:12:43
It ends up with knotting a burning matchstick into her old man's hair. [Audience laughter]. I think as he goes on he'll be somebody. If I'm not reading mine I'll warn of you. Some of these...the first one is a Toronto poem with footnotes, saying that TTC
means Toronto Transit Commission, and the Ditch is an open cut on the Yonge subway between Bloor and Rosedale.
Margaret Avison
00:13:38
Reads unnamed poem.
Margaret Avison
00:14:37
The second subway poem...a little child, it's called "Subway Station Why Not."
Margaret Avison
00:14:53
Reads "Subway Station Why Not".
Margaret Avison
00:15:56
This next one is St. Clair Avenue, where I live on the car tracks. It's called "Insomniac Report".
Margaret Avison
00:16:11
Reads "Insomniac Report".
Margaret Avison
00:17:07
Feels as if I should be doing something different, but I don't know what. I did a poem to people writing examinations I'm hunting for, but I think I've forgotten it. There's three about this odd experience of teaching and students. This one was written before I had had the experience, but was looking forward to it. And it had the title "Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?" And it's very full of fine theory and idealism.
Margaret Avison
00:18:18
Reads "Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?".
Margaret Avison
00:19:21
And I've got two other incomplete ones that should be read with that. I'll just read two stanzas of the first one, it's got one four-line stanza for the students...
Margaret Avison
00:19:36
Reads unnamed poem.
Margaret Avison
00:20:36
The teacher's answer hasn't got written yet. Here's another bit, two stanzas, the student and the teacher, that isn't finished. The student is talking although it doesn't sound like it.
Margaret Avison
00:21:01
Reads unnamed poem.
Margaret Avison
00:21:51
There's a daybreak bus I have to catch and this one is called "October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way".
Margaret Avison
00:22:03
Reads "October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way".
Margaret Avison
00:23:07
I had planned to get all this organized on the plane, but I was in the middle of the three seats and I kept getting the briefcase out and everything would fall to the floor, and this one would dive for it, or this one, and I finally gave up, so it's upside down. This is dedicated to Jacques Ellul
, The Technological Society
, a book he wrote that's a little mad but very stirring.
Margaret Avison
00:23:56
Reads [“Making Senses”, published later in No Time].
Margaret Avison
00:26:39
There's one here that is just the equivalent to sketching, I guess. I know a poet in Chicago
who used to go and sit around in the Art Institute
, when it was a fairly quiet room, and stare all morning, and if any words occurred to him, he dashed them down. And sometime he worked up his sketches and sometime he didn't, which is a technique that's lots of fun to practice, and occasionally something grows out of it. In this case I don't think I'll ever do anything but it'll show you the kind of thing that I mean, if, as I assume, most of you are writers.
Margaret Avison
00:27:38
Reads unnamed poem.
Margaret Avison
00:28:25
Now a poem with syntax and stuff called "The Seven Birds". A corner of Bathurst and College Street in Toronto which is the kind of buildings that have been there since the first world war, where there's often stores on the street level and an apartment or two above.
Margaret Avison
00:29:01
Reads "The Seven Birds" [published later in sunblue].
Margaret Avison
00:30:15
I think I should read a long, fierce poem. This is not by me except translated. It's the poem of Gyula Illyes
, called "Of Tyranny, In One Breath". Ilona Duczynska
did a literal translation for me and then read it to me for sound and we worked through it that way. Apparently the poem started, or happened, in 1956 in Budapest
. Illyes had written it some years before but hadn't been angry enough at the time to risk what it was to bring it out. But he grew angry enough and somebody said the one thing that nobody censors is the magazine which tells you what lectures are going on where and what movies are running where and is just a news sheet, and the middle spread was for advertising, so they printed this in the middle sheet and it was, they tried to stop it as soon as the authorities found it but by then they were storming the radio station or however it started. I can't do it in one breath because it goes on for several pages. In the first part of it, "it," meaning "tyranny" is small "i" and towards the end it's a capital "I."
Margaret Avison
00:32:27
Reads English translation of "Of Tyranny, In One Breath" by Gyula Illyes [published later in Always Now, Vol. 1].
Margaret Avison
00:39:26
So, after the revolution he was much too well-known to disappear but they said he was insane and he was in an asylum for a while, but he wrote a lot of lovely things there, so I don't think he was, and he's not there now. It's much better, I think. A group of silly things it's embarrassing to read but I will, called "Bestialities".
Margaret Avison
00:40:19
Reads "Bestialities", parts 1-5 [from The Dumbfounding; audience laughter throughout].
Margaret Avison
00:41:14
The last one I think is just beautiful, but nobody gets it unless I explain, so I'll explain, it's like you take a piece of 8 by 11 typing paper...
Audience Member 1
00:41:26
Don't explain, just say it.
Margaret Avison
00:41:28
Alright, you can tell me then, eh?
Margaret Avison
00:41:33
Reads "Bestialities", part 6 [from The Dumbfounding].
Margaret Avison
00:41:40
Now, come on...[Audience laughter]. Hmm? Does anybody want the explanation? Well I've read it. It's just a crumpled-up letter, you know, you get it and you read it and you cry and you crumble it up and you throw it down and the mite goes up...Now I'll read it again.
Margaret Avison
00:42:17
Reads "Bestialities", part 6 [from The Dumbfounding].
Margaret Avison
00:42:35
“The Absorbed". This is one of the very cold days, I guess about ten below, enough. It's inside the pane of glass separating inside from outside comes into it, a certain kind of sky that goes with that which is like glass again.
Margaret Avison
00:43:09
Reads "The Absorbed" [from The Dumbfounding].
Margaret Avison
00:45:50
Reads ["Thaw" from Winter Sun].
Margaret Avison
00:47:37
I would like to read two other weather ones and then I'll give you a break. This is “Two Mayday Selves”.
Margaret Avison
00:47:54
Reads "Two Mayday Selves" [from The Dumbfounding].
Margaret Avison
00:49:42
And the last one is late spring, early summer. Jet-plane and terminuses, called "Black-White Under Green, May 18th 1965”.
Margaret Avison
00:50:06
Reads "Black-White Under Green, May 18th 1965” [published as “May 18 1965” in The Dumbfounding].
Unknown
00:52:53
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Margaret Avison
00:52:54
I've been asked to read "The Valiant Vacationist". It was written so many years ago...I think I would be quite right in saying thirty years ago, and probably a little more. And I couldn't write this well now but in a way when you're very young you've got the whole world in one lump without any lump, and you only get bits later on.
Margaret Avison
00:53:34
Reads "The Valiant Vacationist" [published later in Always Now: Vol. 1].
Margaret Avison
00:56:54
Then the one "To Professor X, Year Y".
Margaret Avison
00:57:03
Reads "To Professor X, Year Y" [from Winter Sun].
Margaret Avison
00:59:57
I'd like to read one introductory poem to the long one, "The Earth that Falls Away", and that one, and two short ones, if you'll bear with me that long. This is called "The Absolute, the Day".
Margaret Avison
01:00:22
Reads "The Absolute, the Day" [published later as “Absolute” in sunblue and in Always Now Vol. 2].
Margaret Avison
01:01:39
This one is "The Earth that Falls Away". There's an epigraph from Beddoes’
Death's Jest-Book
: "Can a man die? Aye, as the sun doth set, it is the earth that falls away from light". There are a number of human situations, some into the past, through the present generation, the rest various city people, myself, and the stories come interleaving so that as I name a new section it'll be a new group of people, and by request I'm going to stop at the line-ends here.
Margaret Avison
01:02:32
Reads "The Earth that Falls Away" [from The Dumbfounding].
Margaret Avison
01:15:52
Reads ["He Couldn’t Be Safe (Isaiah 53:5)”, published later in sunblue].
Margaret Avison
01:16:54
There's one more and I'll stop with this one.
Margaret Avison
01:17:00
Reads [section from “The Jo Poems”, part 6. Published later in No Time. Subtitled “Having” in Always Now: Vol. 2].
END
01:17:54
[Cut off abruptly].
Notes:
Margaret Avison reads from Winter Sun (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960) and The Dumbfounding (W.W. Norton & Co, 1966), as well as a few poems published years later in books like sunblue (Lancelot Press, 1978) and No Time (Lancelot Press and Brick Books, 1998). The majority of the poems read were also collected in three volumes, entitled Always Now (The Porcupine’s Quill, 2003).
I086-11-002.1=AC
(Rachel has indexed poems)
00:00- Roy Kiyooka introduces Margaret Avison. [INDEX: seventh poetry evening, poetry conference at UBC summer of 1963; Bloor Street, Guelph Ontario, Alberta, Victoria College of the University of Toronto in 1940 with BA from English Language and Literature, secretary at firms, research assistant, librarian, teaching English at Scarborough College (Toronto), Guggenheim Fellow 1956-7, Canadian and American magazines; books: The Winter Sun won Governor General’s Award in 1960, The Dumbfounding (W.W. Norton in New York, 1966).]
02:59- Avison introduces poem by Charles Bukowski, first line “She had gone wrong somewhere...” [INDEX: Roy Kiyooka (meeting), Angry Art Week in NYC, dedicate readings to Angry Art Week, Bach, Manhattan, American people, American poet, Mimeograph Magazine.]
05:28- Reads section from a poem by Charles Bukowski “She had gone wrong somewhere...”
06:30- Introduces poem by Al Fowler first line “Quote: Are you a root or a tender mint tea?”. [INDEX: magazine Line, line stops, shape of poem, no capital letters, no title.]
07:01- Reads poem by Al Fowler, first line “Quote: Are you a root or a tender mint tea?”.
07:30- Introduces poem by Gerry Gilbert called “Zoo”.
07:39- Reads poem by Gerry Gilbert, called “Zoo”.
08:00- Introduces poem called “The Delinquent” by unknown child. [INDEX: friend in Toronto, in grade seven.]
08:33- Reads “The Delinquent”.
10:20- Interjects comment about poem.
10:30- Continues reading “The Delinquent”.
11:33- Interjects comment about poem.
11:41- Continues reading “The Delinquent”.
12:43- Explains “The Delinquent”, Introduces poem, first line “Inside the TTC’s fence...”. [INDEX: Toronto poem, footnotes, TTC means Toronto Transit Commission, Yonge Subway between Bloor and Rosedale.]
13:38- Reads first line “Inside the TTC’s fence...”. [INDEX: cities, Toronto, transportation, subway; from an unknown source.]
14:37- Introduces “Subway Station Why Not”. [INDEX: subway poem, child, from unknown source]
14:53- Reads “Subway Station Why Not”. [INDEX: cities, Toronto, transportation, subway, child; from an unknown source.]
15:56- Introduces “Insomniac Report”. [INDEX: St. Clair Avenue (Toronto), car tracks.]
16:11- Reads “Insomniac Report”. [INDEX: cities, Toronto, night, streets, sounds, sleep; from an unknown source.]
17:07- Introduces “Is that You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?”. [INDEX: students writing exams, teaching, theory, idealism; from an unknown source.]
18:18- Reads “Is that You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?”. [INDEX: school, teaching, work, children, student.]
19:21- Introduces incomplete poems, first line “No instant morality for us...”. [INDEX: incomplete poem, two stanzas of first, one four-line stanza for the students; from an unknown source.]
19:36- Reads first line “No instant morality for us...”. [INDEX: school, teaching, work, children, students.]
20:36- Introduces incomplete poem, first line “The boy with the brilliant promises...”. [INDEX: teacher’s answer, two stanzas, incomplete poem; from an unknown source.]
21:01- Reads first line “The boy with the brilliant promises...”. [INDEX: work, school, teaching, children, students.]
21:51- Introduces "October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way.". [INDEX: daybreak bus; from an unknown source]
22:03- Reads "October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way.". [INDEX: nature, time, day.]
23:07- Introduces unknown poem first line “A junk truck stopped beside my bus...”. [INDEX: plane, dedicated to Jacques Ellul who wrote The Technological Society; from an unknown source.]
23:55- Reads first line “A junk truck stopped beside my bus...”. [INDEX: cities, bus, truck, metal, urban, waste, stone, wreck, yard, grass, gargoyle.]
26:39- Introduces first line, “Grey by water...”. [INDEX: sketching, poet in Chicago, Art Institute; from an unknown source.]
27:38- Reads first line “Grey by water...”. [INDEX: language, play, process, sketch.]
28:25- Introduces “The Seven Birds”. [INDEX: poem with syntax, corner of Bathurst and College Street in Toronto, First World War building; from sunblue in “Sketches”.]
29:01- Reads “The Seven Birds”.
30:15- Introduces poem Avison translated, called “Of Tyranny in One Breath” by Gyula Illyes. [INDEX: Ilona Duczynska, translation, 1956 in Budapest, censorship in magazines, newsheets, radio station, authorities, protest, tyranny; collected in Always Now, Vol. 1 (Porcupine’s Quill, 2003).]
32:27- Reads “Of Tyranny in One Breath” by Gyula Illyes.
39:26- Explains “Of Tyranny in One Breath”, introduces “Bestialities”. [INDEX: revolution, Gyula Illyes, insane asylum; from The Dumbfounding.]
40:19- Reads “Bestialities”. [INDEX: play, animals, language, puns.]
41:14- Introduces first line “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka...”. [INDEX: misunderstood poem, 8x11 typing paper.]
41:26- Audience member interjects, asks her to read it without explanation.
41:28- Avison reads first line “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka...”.
41:40- Explains “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka...”. [INDEX: crumpled up letter, mite; from unknown source.]
42:17- Re-reads “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka...”.
42:35- Introduces “Be Absorbed”. [INDEX: cold day, glass pane, sky; from unknown source.]
43:09- Reads “Be Absorbed”. [INDEX: nature, weather, glass, window, cold, winter, ice.]
45:50- Reads “The Thaw”. [INDEX: city, children, weather, winter, spring, streets, dog, sparrow, pigeons, boy; published as “Thaw” in Winter Sun.]
47:37- Introduces poem, first line “The grackle shining in long grass...”. [INDEX weather poem, May; Howard Fink list “To May Day”.]
47:54- Reads “The grackle shining in long grass...”. [INDEX: colours, birds, grackle, city, streets, winter, day, breath; from unknown source.]
49:42- Introduces “Black-White Under Green”. [INDEX: late spring, early summer, Jet-plane terminuses, May 18th, 1965.]
50:06- Reads “Black-White Under Green”. [INDEX: nature, flowers, birds, plane, flight, leaves, snow, sky, sea, music, ice; from The Dumbfounding.]
52:53.49- END OF RECORDING.
Poem (by stated title or first line):
FIRST CD: I086-11-002.1=AC Time Duration
["She had gone wrong..."]by Charles Bukowski 00:05:28 01:01
["Quote: Are you a root or a tender mint tea?"] by Al Fowler 00:07:01 00:28
"Zoo" by Gerry Gilbert 00:07:39 00:19
"The Delinquent" by an unknown, seven year-old friend 00:08:33 04:10
["Inside the TTC's fence..."] 00:13:38 00:58
"Subway Station Why Not" 00:14:53 01:03
"Insomniac Report" 00:16:11 00:55
"Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?" 00:18:18 01:02
["No instant morality for us..."] 00:19:36 00:58
["The boy with the brilliant promises"] 00:21:01 00:50
"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way" 00:22:03 01:02
["A junk truck stopped beside my bus"] 00:23:56 02:40
["Grey by water..."] 00:27:38 00:45
"The Seven Birds" 00:29:01 01:13
"Of Tyranny in One Breath" by Gyula Illyes 00:32:27 04:58
"Bestialities" 00:40:19 00:54
"Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka." 00:41:33 00:57
"Be Absorbed" 00:43:09 02:40
"The Thaw" 00:45:50 01:40
"The grackle shining in long grass" 00:47:54 00:46
"Black-White Under Green," May 18th, 1965 00:50:06 02:47
I086-11-002.2=AC
00:00- Avison introduces “The Valiant Vacationist”. [INDEX: written more than thirty years before, writing when young; from Elsewhere.]
00:41- Reads “The Valiant Vacationist”. [INDEX: vacation, travel, walking, picnic, park, city, landing, steps, trees, bridge, tourist, stranger.]
04:00- Reads “To Professor X, Year Y”. [INDEX: November, waiting, uniformity, crowd, downtown, history, historian, death, snow; from The Winter Sun.]
07:04- Introduces “The Absolute, the Day”. [INDEX: introductory poem to “The Earth that Falls Away”.]
07:28- Reads “The Absolute, the Day”. [INDEX: power, rabbi, Judaism, good, morality, love.]
08:46- Introduces “The Earth that Falls Away”. [INDEX: epigraph from Beddoes’s Death’s Jest Book, human situations, present generation, city people, stop at the line-ends; from The Dumbfounding.]
09:38- Reads “The Earth that Falls Away”. [INDEX: long poem, Romans, history, Bible, silence, breaking, marriage, illness, winter, summer, city, Dawson City, gold rush, books, Canadiana, photographs, remembrance, scholar, value, cloth, fabric, textiles, production, operation, cancer, treasure, children, blind, snow, farm, emptiness, isolation, solitude, sight, sound.]
22:58- Reads first line “He chose a street where he wouldn’t be safe...” [INDEX: city, street, party, Bible, safety, saviour, Jesus; from unknown source; not indicated as separate poem on Howard Fink List.]
24:00- Reads first line “Sir, you have nothing...”. [INDEX emptiness, nothing, snow, heart, cup, fullness, joy; from unknown source. .]
25:01.03- END OF RECORDING.
Poems Time Stamped with Duration
SECOND CD: I086-11-002.2=AC Time Duration
"The Valiant Vacationist" 00:00:41 03:15
"To Professor X, Year Y" 00:04:10 02:55
"The Absolute, the Day" 00:07:28 01:15
"The Earth that Falls Away" 00:09:38 13:15
"He chose a street where he wouldn't be safe" 00:22:58 01:00
"Sir, you have nothing" 00:24:06 00:55
Howard Fink List:
“Marg Avison” reading her own poetry 21/1/67 reel information.
Content Type:
Sound Recording
File Path:
My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet
Title:
Margaret Avison 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:
Margaret Avison Tape Box - Spine
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:
Margaret Avison 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:
Margaret Avison Tape Box - Reel
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Dates
Date:
1967 1 27
Type:
Performance Date
Source:
Supplemental Material
Notes:
Date specified in The Georgian's "Op-Ed"
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 The Georgian's "Op-Ed"
CONTENT
Contents:
margaret_avison_i086-11-002.mp3
Roy Kiyooka
00:00:00
In view of the embarrassment of having made such a mess of introducing the last poet, I spent a considerable amount of time setting out what I should say this evening, so hopefully I'll be a little more successful. Well, this is our seventh poetry evening and we welcome you all here this cold and blustery evening. Now, this evening we're having Margaret Avison
read poems, and I wanted to say a few things about her. I first listened to Margaret read her poems at the poetry conference, University of British Columbia
, during the summer of 1963. Her reading, together with those of the other poets on hand, are among the most memorable occasions I've had in my love affair with poems and poets. Four years later, in early January, we spent an afternoon together. Now I don't want to attribute, what I felt with a thought, on Bloor Street, to our conversation, but the warmth of it was very real. Margaret Avison was born in Guelph
, Ontario
; some early years were spent in Alberta
; she graduated from Victoria College
, the University of Toronto
, in 1940, with a BA in English Language and Literature. She has been a secretary of all sorts for various firms, individuals, and organizations, and has also been a research assistant and librarian and presently teaches English at Scarborough College, Toronto
. 1956-57 she was a Guggenheim Fellow
in poetry, and during the forties her work appeared in various Canadian magazines, and in the fifties, mainly in American ones. She has published two books of poems; The Winter Sun in 1960 won the Governor General's Award
, and in 1966, W.W. Norton
in New York
issued The Dumbfounding
, her latest book. Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure in introducing to you Margaret Avison.
Unknown
00:02:59
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Margaret Avison
00:02:59
I don't know about the reading but I do know about the pleasure of meeting Roy
again here, and being introduced by him. If this were Monday, or up to a week from tonight, I would be able to join the Angry Art Week. I don't know if anybody else has received these letters, but in New York City initially they're trying this and anybody who gets a letter from them is asked to dedicate any reading or event to what they're trying to do. You can still send them money, too, I'll give you the address if you want it later. What they're going to do is play harps in railroad stations and have...lets see, Bach
cantatas in railroad stations, play-ins in various museums and the lobbies of concert halls, recital halls, business buildings--I like that one--dramatic presentations in laundromats and supermarkets, [audience laughter], a paint-in, and fences and billboards throughout Manhattan
with their work showing and so on. This is a series. "What we're trying to do is through art to reach the American people as human beings." So...[audience laughter]. If this were Monday I'd dedicate the reading [audience laughter and applause]...This is all very orderly, although it doesn't look it, and it starts with other people's poems of various kinds. A little section of C. Bukowski
, somebody said that's Charles, an American poet. It's a great long thing that was in a mimeograph magazine, and the description is of a woman with a bicycle and a baby carriage, high-heeled shoes, white socks, and all her belongings, on a hot day in the middle of a road in a city.
Margaret Avison
00:05:28
Reads unnamed poem by Charles Bukowski.
Margaret Avison
00:06:30.
That's sad, so on the same page I copied one of Al Fowler's, which was in a magazine called Lines, which is the all-time happiest little poem, and I don't know why. I'm going to stop where the lines stop, not where the sense stops, so you can see the shape of it. There's no capital letters. There's no title.
Margaret Avison
00:07:01
Reads “Are you a root or a tendermint” by Al Fowler [published in Lines 6].
Audience
00:07:20
Laughter.
Margaret Avison
00:07:30
This is one by Gerry Gilbert
, called "Zoo".
Margaret Avison
00:07:39
Reads "Zoo" by Gerry Gilbert.
Margaret Avison
00:08:00
I may bring in some more of other people's, but this is just a little, it's a friend of mine in Toronto who's made it to grade seven this year. He calls it "The Delinquent", and he has, in this copy he has said that it's his copyright so if you betray the fact that I read some of it, I'll be in trouble with him.
Margaret Avison
00:08:33
Reads "The Delinquent" by an unnamed author [audience laughter throughout].
Margaret Avison
00:10:20
It goes on, a bit, I want to go back to where it gets sad, though. I love "She twisted her pinkies behind her but all the knots held more".
Margaret Avison
00:10:30
Resumes reading "The Delinquent" [audience laughter throughout].
Margaret Avison
00:11:33
There's an awful line in the next verse. [Audience laughter].
Margaret Avison
00:11:41
Resumes reading "The Delinquent" [audience laughter throughout].
Margaret Avison
00:12:43
It ends up with knotting a burning matchstick into her old man's hair. [Audience laughter]. I think as he goes on he'll be somebody. If I'm not reading mine I'll warn of you. Some of these...the first one is a Toronto poem with footnotes, saying that TTC
means Toronto Transit Commission, and the Ditch is an open cut on the Yonge subway between Bloor and Rosedale.
Margaret Avison
00:13:38
Reads unnamed poem.
Margaret Avison
00:14:37
The second subway poem...a little child, it's called "Subway Station Why Not."
Margaret Avison
00:14:53
Reads "Subway Station Why Not".
Margaret Avison
00:15:56
This next one is St. Clair Avenue, where I live on the car tracks. It's called "Insomniac Report".
Margaret Avison
00:16:11
Reads "Insomniac Report".
Margaret Avison
00:17:07
Feels as if I should be doing something different, but I don't know what. I did a poem to people writing examinations I'm hunting for, but I think I've forgotten it. There's three about this odd experience of teaching and students. This one was written before I had had the experience, but was looking forward to it. And it had the title "Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?" And it's very full of fine theory and idealism.
Margaret Avison
00:18:18
Reads "Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?".
Margaret Avison
00:19:21
And I've got two other incomplete ones that should be read with that. I'll just read two stanzas of the first one, it's got one four-line stanza for the students...
Margaret Avison
00:19:36
Reads unnamed poem.
Margaret Avison
00:20:36
The teacher's answer hasn't got written yet. Here's another bit, two stanzas, the student and the teacher, that isn't finished. The student is talking although it doesn't sound like it.
Margaret Avison
00:21:01
Reads unnamed poem.
Margaret Avison
00:21:51
There's a daybreak bus I have to catch and this one is called "October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way".
Margaret Avison
00:22:03
Reads "October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way".
Margaret Avison
00:23:07
I had planned to get all this organized on the plane, but I was in the middle of the three seats and I kept getting the briefcase out and everything would fall to the floor, and this one would dive for it, or this one, and I finally gave up, so it's upside down. This is dedicated to Jacques Ellul
, The Technological Society
, a book he wrote that's a little mad but very stirring.
Margaret Avison
00:23:56
Reads [“Making Senses”, published later in No Time].
Margaret Avison
00:26:39
There's one here that is just the equivalent to sketching, I guess. I know a poet in Chicago
who used to go and sit around in the Art Institute
, when it was a fairly quiet room, and stare all morning, and if any words occurred to him, he dashed them down. And sometime he worked up his sketches and sometime he didn't, which is a technique that's lots of fun to practice, and occasionally something grows out of it. In this case I don't think I'll ever do anything but it'll show you the kind of thing that I mean, if, as I assume, most of you are writers.
Margaret Avison
00:27:38
Reads unnamed poem.
Margaret Avison
00:28:25
Now a poem with syntax and stuff called "The Seven Birds". A corner of Bathurst and College Street in Toronto which is the kind of buildings that have been there since the first world war, where there's often stores on the street level and an apartment or two above.
Margaret Avison
00:29:01
Reads "The Seven Birds" [published later in sunblue].
Margaret Avison
00:30:15
I think I should read a long, fierce poem. This is not by me except translated. It's the poem of Gyula Illyes
, called "Of Tyranny, In One Breath". Ilona Duczynska
did a literal translation for me and then read it to me for sound and we worked through it that way. Apparently the poem started, or happened, in 1956 in Budapest
. Illyes had written it some years before but hadn't been angry enough at the time to risk what it was to bring it out. But he grew angry enough and somebody said the one thing that nobody censors is the magazine which tells you what lectures are going on where and what movies are running where and is just a news sheet, and the middle spread was for advertising, so they printed this in the middle sheet and it was, they tried to stop it as soon as the authorities found it but by then they were storming the radio station or however it started. I can't do it in one breath because it goes on for several pages. In the first part of it, "it," meaning "tyranny" is small "i" and towards the end it's a capital "I."
Margaret Avison
00:32:27
Reads English translation of "Of Tyranny, In One Breath" by Gyula Illyes [published later in Always Now, Vol. 1].
Margaret Avison
00:39:26
So, after the revolution he was much too well-known to disappear but they said he was insane and he was in an asylum for a while, but he wrote a lot of lovely things there, so I don't think he was, and he's not there now. It's much better, I think. A group of silly things it's embarrassing to read but I will, called "Bestialities".
Margaret Avison
00:40:19
Reads "Bestialities", parts 1-5 [from The Dumbfounding; audience laughter throughout].
Margaret Avison
00:41:14
The last one I think is just beautiful, but nobody gets it unless I explain, so I'll explain, it's like you take a piece of 8 by 11 typing paper...
Audience Member 1
00:41:26
Don't explain, just say it.
Margaret Avison
00:41:28
Alright, you can tell me then, eh?
Margaret Avison
00:41:33
Reads "Bestialities", part 6 [from The Dumbfounding].
Margaret Avison
00:41:40
Now, come on...[Audience laughter]. Hmm? Does anybody want the explanation? Well I've read it. It's just a crumpled-up letter, you know, you get it and you read it and you cry and you crumble it up and you throw it down and the mite goes up...Now I'll read it again.
Margaret Avison
00:42:17
Reads "Bestialities", part 6 [from The Dumbfounding].
Margaret Avison
00:42:35
“The Absorbed". This is one of the very cold days, I guess about ten below, enough. It's inside the pane of glass separating inside from outside comes into it, a certain kind of sky that goes with that which is like glass again.
Margaret Avison
00:43:09
Reads "The Absorbed" [from The Dumbfounding].
Margaret Avison
00:45:50
Reads ["Thaw" from Winter Sun].
Margaret Avison
00:47:37
I would like to read two other weather ones and then I'll give you a break. This is “Two Mayday Selves”.
Margaret Avison
00:47:54
Reads "Two Mayday Selves" [from The Dumbfounding].
Margaret Avison
00:49:42
And the last one is late spring, early summer. Jet-plane and terminuses, called "Black-White Under Green, May 18th 1965”.
Margaret Avison
00:50:06
Reads "Black-White Under Green, May 18th 1965” [published as “May 18 1965” in The Dumbfounding].
Unknown
00:52:53
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Margaret Avison
00:52:54
I've been asked to read "The Valiant Vacationist". It was written so many years ago...I think I would be quite right in saying thirty years ago, and probably a little more. And I couldn't write this well now but in a way when you're very young you've got the whole world in one lump without any lump, and you only get bits later on.
Margaret Avison
00:53:34
Reads "The Valiant Vacationist" [published later in Always Now: Vol. 1].
Margaret Avison
00:56:54
Then the one "To Professor X, Year Y".
Margaret Avison
00:57:03
Reads "To Professor X, Year Y" [from Winter Sun].
Margaret Avison
00:59:57
I'd like to read one introductory poem to the long one, "The Earth that Falls Away", and that one, and two short ones, if you'll bear with me that long. This is called "The Absolute, the Day".
Margaret Avison
01:00:22
Reads "The Absolute, the Day" [published later as “Absolute” in sunblue and in Always Now Vol. 2].
Margaret Avison
01:01:39
This one is "The Earth that Falls Away". There's an epigraph from Beddoes’
Death's Jest-Book
: "Can a man die? Aye, as the sun doth set, it is the earth that falls away from light". There are a number of human situations, some into the past, through the present generation, the rest various city people, myself, and the stories come interleaving so that as I name a new section it'll be a new group of people, and by request I'm going to stop at the line-ends here.
Margaret Avison
01:02:32
Reads "The Earth that Falls Away" [from The Dumbfounding].
Margaret Avison
01:15:52
Reads ["He Couldn’t Be Safe (Isaiah 53:5)”, published later in sunblue].
Margaret Avison
01:16:54
There's one more and I'll stop with this one.
Margaret Avison
01:17:00
Reads [section from “The Jo Poems”, part 6. Published later in No Time. Subtitled “Having” in Always Now: Vol. 2].
END
01:17:54
[Cut off abruptly].
NOTES
Type:
General
Note:
Year-Specific Information:
In 1967, Margaret Avison was teaching English at Scarborough College. The Dumbfounding had been published the previous year.
Type:
General
Note:
Local Connections:
Margaret Avison met Roy Kiyooka, who was teaching at Sir George Williams University at a reading in 1963 at the University of British Columbia.
Type:
Cataloguer
Note:
Original transcript and print catalogue by Rachel Kyne
Original print catalogue, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones
Additional research and edits by Ali Barillaro
Type:
Preservation
Note:
Reel-to-reel tape>2 CDs>digital file
RELATED WORKS
Citation:
Anderson, Mia. “Avison, Margaret (1918-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Benson, Eugene; Connoly, L.W. (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 vols.
Citation:
Avison, Margaret. Always Now: The Collected Poems, Vols 1-3. Erin, Ontario: The Porcupine’s Quill, 2003.
Citation:
Avison, Margaret. The Dumbfounding. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1966.
Citation:
Avison, Margaret. No Time. Hantsport: Lancelot Press; London: Brick Books, 1989.
Citation:
Avison, Margaret. sunblue. Hantsport: Lancelot Press; London: Brick Books, 1978.
Citation:
Avison, Margaret. Winter Sun. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1960.
Citation:
“Avison: Next Poet to Read”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 27 January 1967.
Citation:
Davey, Frank. From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature Since 1960. Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1974.
Citation:
Geddes, Gary (ed). Fifteen Canadian Poets Times Two. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Citation:
“Poetry Series Coming Up At University”. The Gazette. Saturday, December 31, 1966: page 39.
Citation:
Redekop, Ernest. Margaret Avison: Studies in Canadian Literature. Toronto: The Copp Clark Publishing Company, 1970.
Citation:
Simco, Bob. “Georgiantics”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 27 January 1967.
Citation:
Thoms, Kathleen. “Margaret Avison’s Poetry”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 3 February 1967.