CLASSIFICATION
Swallow ID:
1288
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:
Al Purdy at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 13 March 1970
Title Source:
Cataloguer
Title Note:
"AL PURDY Recorded March 13, 1970 3.75 ips, 1/2 tracl on 1 mil. tape" written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. "AL PURDY I006/SR37.1" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box.
Language:
English
Production Context:
Documentary recording
Genre:
Reading: Poetry
Identifiers:
[]
Rights
CREATORS
Name:
Purdy, Alfred Wellington
Dates:
1918-2000
Role:
"Performer",
"Author"
Notes:
Canadian poet Al Purdy was born on December 30, 1918, in Wooler, Ontario of United Empire Loyalists. Purdy attended Dufferin Public school in Trenton, Albert Collegiate in Belleville and Trenton Collegiate Institute, writing poems along the way. During the Second World War, Purdy enrolled in the RCAF, serving most at the remote base Woodcock, on the Skeena River in northern British Columbia. Purdy married Eurithe Mary Jane Parkurst in 1941, and they had a son, Alfred. His first collection of poems was The Enchanted Echo (Clarke & Stuart Company, 1944), but it was his second collection, Pressed on Sand (Ryerson Press, 1955) that showcased Purdy’s literary accomplishment. Despite this, he worked odd jobs across the country, and published poems and short stories in magazines like North and The Beaver. Purdy received his first Canada Council grant in 1960, and published Poems for all the Annettes (Contact Press, 1962) and The Cariboo horses (McClelland & Stewart, 1965) which won a Governor General’s Award. His next publication, North of summer: poems from Baffin Island (McClelland & Stewart, 1967) came out of a second Canada Council Grant, which he spent in the Baffin Islands, and was followed by Wild Grape Wine (McClelland & Stewart, 1968). That year, Purdy also became an editor for the Tamarack Review, an anthology, The New Romans, and Fifteen Winds. Purdy has published dozens more collections of poetry along with writing in other genres, including In search of Owen Roblin (McClelland & Stewart, 1974), autobiographical essays, No Other Country (McClelland & Stewart, 1977), Being alive: poems 1958-78 (McClelland & Stewart, 1978), a memoir, Morning and it’s summer (1983), a collection of letters, The Bukowski/Purdy letters 1964-1984 (Quadrant Editions, 1983), his only novel A Splinter in the Heart (McClelland & Stewart, 1990), a selection of prose recollections, Reaching for the Beaufort Sea: an autobiography (Harbour Publishing,1993), and Starting from Ameliasburgh: the collected prose of Al Purdy (Harbour Publishing, 1995). Purdy’s The Collected Poems of Al Purdy, 1956-1986 (McClelland & Stewart, 1986) won his second Governor General’s Award, and he was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1982 and the Order of Ontario in 1987. Dividing most of his time between North Saanich, B.C. and Roblin Lake, Ontario, Purdy supported himself through his poetry, guest lecturing, readings and editing. Al Purdy died in North Saanich, on April 21, 2000. His last collection of poetry, Beyond Remembering: The Collected Poems of Al Purdy (Harbour Publishing, 2000) was released posthumously. The Voice of the Land Award was created to honour Purdy’s contributions to Canadian poetry.
CONTRIBUTORS
Name:
Bowering, George
Dates:
1935-
Role:
"Series organizer",
"Presenter"
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
DIGITAL FILE DESCRIPTION
File Path:
files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3
Duration:
01:04:55
Size:
155.8 MB
Content:
George Bowering
00:00:00
As you know, the reader tonight is Al Purdy
, a man who's been described as, by Doug Featherling, as the most Canadian of all possible poets. And who has, as they say, paid his dues, and in that time, won all the prizes, like the President's Medal
, and the Governor General's Award
, and countless numbers of Canada Council
Grants and all those other things that come to you. [Laughter]. Currently, I don't know if whether or not I'm supposed to mention this or not, but currently making an excursion amongst the academics at...in other words, straightening people out at Simon Fraser University
. And a very welcome addition to our series. Al Purdy.
Unknown
00:00:55
[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Al Purdy
00:00:56
When I started to write poems about sixty-eight years ago, Bliss Carman
was the only one writing. So I imitated Bliss Carman, and this first poem is a sort of imitation of Bliss Carman. [Audience laughter]. And there are hardly any new poems in there because it takes me two years to revise them for two years and then conclude them in a reading, and then besides which as George
said, I've joined the academics because all the American members of the department at Simon Fraser have guilty consciences so they wanted a Canadian on staff [audience laughter]. "About being a member of our armed forces". This is, this is thirty years after I started to write poems. Remember--Oh, I should say, there are two, three phrases in this that would not ordinarily be understood by you people. "Zombies," who were conscripts in the last war, and well, the CWACs were women members, Canadian Women's Army Corp
. And during the early part of the last war, there were no rifles. So they used wooden rifles to drill with.
Al Purdy
00:02:09
Reads "About Being a Member of Our Armed Forces" [from Selected Poems; audience laughter throughout].
Al Purdy
00:03:29
As I said, I've become an academic lately, and one of the students in this class has asked for all my cigar tubes, little metal tubes that, you know, I get cigars in. He wants to put poems in them and float them down the North Saskatchewan River
[audience laughter]. And for some reason or other, this, that became the title of this particular poem. "Floating Down the North Saskatchewan River". [Audience laughter].
Al Purdy
00:04:01
Reads "Floating Down the North Saskatchewan River" [audience laughter throughout].
Al Purdy
00:04:40
Funny, eh? [Audience laughter]. Something called "Jubilate", and I'm going to leave that out of there. "Flight 17 Eastbound". Ah...I keep revising some of these and I'm reading now from manuscript because I revised a lot of the poems here and I can't remember which ones I revised, so if they're in manuscript I'm sure they're either revised or that there's some reason for them being there.
Al Purdy
00:05:13
Reads "Flight 17 Eastbound".
Al Purdy
00:06:47
I don't know what that means but it must be profound. [Audience laughter]. I'm getting together a collection of love poems, or I have gotten a collection of love poems together. They are, I am told, fairly hard-boiled love poems. Because when Jack McClelland
, of McClelland and Stewart
, heard about them they thought it was a good idea that Harold Town
should do some illustrations. But when they saw the poems, and of course it wasn't because they were bad poems, I'm sure, he didn't want to do the illustrations anymore, they said they were hard-boiled. As I said, they can't be bad poems. This was one of them. It's got...no, I don't think I'll read that anyway. I don't like it. However, here's another one along the same lines. [Audience laughter]. It's called "With Words, Words".
Al Purdy
00:07:51
Reads "With Words, Words" [from Love in a burning building].
Al Purdy
00:10:49
I lived in Vancouver
for a while, and up till 1955 or 6. The first play I wrote for CBC
was accepted, and I thought I was a genius, and moved to Montreal
in order to reap the rewards of my genius. For a year in Montreal I think my...I sold a couple of adaptations to CBC. And eventually we moved to Roblin Lake
, near Ameliasburgh
in Ontario
, and built a house. And my wife having quit her job, she having decided that if I could get away without working she could too. So we sat down for a couple of years looking at each other, waiting for the other one, to see which one would break first. But this is a poem about that particular time, called "One Rural Winter".
Al Purdy
00:11:50
Reads "One Rural Winter" [from Selected Poems; audience laughter throughout].
Al Purdy
00:15:22
I was in the Arctic
in '65, but this is a poem written long after that about the Arctic. And I suppose...certainly about the Canadian Arctic. I called it "Arctic Romance", but I think it should be just "Arctic", or something like that.
Al Purdy
00:15:46
Reads "Arctic Romance".
Al Purdy
00:17:13
Screwed that up, I guess. You get tired of reading your own stuff, after a while. You forget what it sounded like the last time. This is a poem I kind of like but I keep revising it also, or have been several times in the last few years, called "Dark Landscape". It uses a couple of lines from an American poet who died thirty years ago called Vachel Lindsay
, whom probably nobody ever heard of. And it starts in a very prosy way, and is meant to sound that way, and then the rhythm quickens. "Dark Landscape".
Al Purdy
00:18:07
Reads "Dark Landscape".
Al Purdy
00:21:45
In case anybody is wondering about the particular Vachel Lindsay line, it was "The spring comes on forever, and the Chinese nightingale". And he also had "Aladdin to the jinn", except that Aladdin to the jinn, his jinn was J-I-N-N and mine was two J-I-N-N's, and one G-I-N. So that, always a little difficult to understand it without seeing it on the page. Kind of a sweet little poem, this was after we moved to Roblin Lake, and as I say, I sold a couple of plays and we bought a pile of used lumber with the proceeds and put the down payment on the lot and build this house.
Al Purdy
00:22:27
Reads "Winter at Roblin Lake" [from The Cariboo Horses].
Al Purdy
00:22:52
Also the same period, about building the house, or rather after the house was built. Trouble is, you can't, you can't smoke a cigar here, can you, something I...it always goes out. Anyway. "Interruption".
Al Purdy
00:23:13
Reads "Interruption" [from Selected Poems].
Al Purdy
00:24:49
When I...when we first moved down to Ameliasburg, or to Roblin Lake, I should say, because Roblin Lake where we are is about a mile or so from Ameliasburg...I, after Montreal, and after the job I'd had in Vancouver, I suddenly had to become my own disciplinary straw boss, and it was quite difficult, and in other words, you know, I'd try to get up at a certain hour of the day and start writing. Which I could always, you know, I can always write prose, whenever I feel like it, but poems, I write them, well, I should say, I write poems whenever I feel like it, but you can, I can regimen my own prose, which I don't do much of these days. Anyway, when we moved to Roblin Lake, I wasn't physically regimented myself, so that I was waking up all hours of the day. And this is a short poem about that, but I also screwed up the poem, because I put lines at the end of, or words at the end of each line so that I don't know where the emphasis should be placed, even though I've read it dozens of times. It's called "Late Rising at Roblin Lake".
Al Purdy
00:25:57
Reads "Late Rising at Roblin Lake" [from The Cariboo Horses].
Al Purdy
00:26:47
Another poem about the same particular period, called "Wilderness Gothic". Uh...don't think there's a thing to say about this particular poem at all.
Al Purdy
00:27:03
Reads "Wilderness Gothic" [from Selected Poems].
Al Purdy
00:29:33
When you read a bunch of poems over several years, I think you pick out the ones that you think will read the best, which is certainly what I do, because there are many of my own poems that I rarely read, or never read at all. In fact I, I never read this one. It's called "Love Poem".
Al Purdy
00:29:58
Reads "Love Poem" [from Poems for all the Annettes].
Al Purdy
00:31:40
In...This poem dates, the actual time of the poem dates about fifteen years ago. The poem itself was written about five years ago. At the time, a friend of mine was there also, which, other than his particular presence I might have acted a little bit differently than I did. You'll see what I mean in a, when I read the poem. Because nobody would take this chance in placing themselves in such a vulnerable position with a woman. "Homemade Beer".
Al Purdy
00:32:12
Reads "Homemade Beer" [from The Cariboo Horses].
Audience
00:33:48
Laughter.
Unknown
00:33:51
[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Al Purdy
00:33:52
One called "The Drunk Tank". It's...Dates back two or three years ago when, after the time when I was in the Air Force
, a friend of mine got out of the Air Force much later, so we celebrated. And...it was after quite a turbulent evening with my friend in Belleville
, Ontario, we decided to get a couple of bottles of liquor and go out to the country where we wouldn't be disturbed, and drink it. But the farmer phoned the cops, and we were both thrown in jail. And this particular poem is about the first part of that experience, I mean the early part of being thrown in jail, more or less. But not the end of it, it turned into a sort of fantasy that means something other than I intended.
Al Purdy
00:34:43
Reads "The Drunk Tank" [from The Poems of Al Purdy].
Al Purdy
00:36:51
This is called "Poem for Rita", and about a couple of years ago in Toronto
, there was a couple of girls staying with myself, my wife and myself, and she kept asking me to write a poem. So after a while, I wrote this.
Al Purdy
00:37:10
Reads "Poem for Rita".
Audience
00:37:25
Laughter.
Al Purdy
00:37:28
That's all. [Audience laughter]. I think it was actually kind of unkind on my part, because I was never sure whether she understood that or not, and I didn't know whether I wanted her to understand it. [Audience laughter]. There...when we first moved to Ameliasburg, as I mentioned, I was broke as hell. And after having lived in Vancouver, I learned how to make wine of one kind or another, and there was no way to, I didn't have enough money to make beer, so there were a lot of wild grapes around there and we made, I made wild grape wine, and one time, one particular season, I had about five hundred bottles. [Audience laughter]. I attribute the effects of this wine to having made me what I am today [audience laughter], if I could figure that out. But the poem eventually came out of it, called "The Winemaker's Beatitude".
Al Purdy
00:38:39
Reads "The Winemaker's Beatitude" [from Selected Poems].
Al Purdy
00:41:16
In '65, I went up to Baffin Island
on some government money, public money, rode a commercial airline plane from Montreal to Frobisher Bay
, hitchhiked a ride on what I thought was a DOT plane, but was a construction plane, a construction company charter, and then at Pangnirtung
, which is on the Arctic Circle, the original administrator there arranged that I go along with an Eskimo family in their canoe to some islands in Cumberland Sound
. A year and a half after I got back from the Arctic, I got a bill for a hundred and ten dollars from the construction company that I thought I'd, whose plane I thought I'd hitchhiked on. Which I haven't paid. But anyway, all of these poems, except perhaps I think one or two, were written up there, written in the Arctic, except that after I got back from the Arctic I kept revising them. So you can make up your own mind whether they're written there or not. Among the poems here, there's one called "At the Movies".
Al Purdy
00:42:37
Reads "At the Movies" [from North of Summer].
Al Purdy
00:44:55
The business about the caribou draining in the bilge water was one of the reasons, I suppose, I found it so extraordinary that, perhaps, that Eskimos should enjoy these shoot-em-up movies, was that they had just come a hundred miles or so after shooting caribou, bringing them back to Pang, Pangnirtung on the, on the Sound, on the...jeez, my memory's failing, I can't even remember the fjord it was. But anyway, they had just shot them and come a hundred miles back with them, and yet...and they were draining in their Peterhead boats, and yet they found these movies so exciting--I suppose I shouldn't find that so unusual, but I do. A crappy Hollywood
movie. And here's one called "The Sculptors".
Al Purdy
00:45:50
Reads "The Sculptors" [from North of Summer].
Al Purdy
00:48:17
I think I'm going to have about time for two more, so that I'd better...I could probably go on, oh I'd better make it three more I'll give ya...this is, the trees in the Arctic are about, are very low, and well, this is treeless country on Baffin Island, where there, where practically nothing grows except moss and that, and the like of that, but I wrote a poem about trees at the Arctic Circle, and this is it....I see I'm getting, I'm only talking about the physical things about the Arctic, and I have some poems about the people, too, which, which I should read. Anyway, "Trees at the Arctic Circle".
Al Purdy
00:49:05
Reads "Trees at the Arctic Circle" [from North of Summer].
Al Purdy
00:51:07
I want to read at least one about, about, about people there, because I used to, when I was on these islands, [inaudible] Islands in Cumberland Sound, the Eskimo women used to come over every day and drink tea. They could not speak any English and I could speak no Eskimo, and I would feed them tea and we would sit there, myself feeling about as silly as I could, so eventually I grew a bit desperate and I would read them poems and I would sing songs or I'd do any damn thing. However, eventually there was some kind of, I think, positive liking on my part. But this poem may express it as well as anything. "Wash Day".
Al Purdy
00:51:54
Reads "Wash Day" [from North of Summer].
Al Purdy
00:54:03
Talking about shit, there's actually a poem that has a little bit to do with it here. The Arctic dogs have some qualities that are more pronounced and magnified in Arctic dogs than in southern dogs, that is, they like to eat the stuff. So that when you go, as all, everybody must go at some time or other in their lives, possibly once a day or not, one takes an Eskimo kid along to throw stones and keep the dogs off. When I came back from the Arctic I saw an hour-long film about the George River
Eskimos, and one scene in it showed about fifty Eskimos trying to get into a tent, and the Eskimos beating them into the tent, and the next thing you showed the same dogs trying to get out of the tent and the Eskimos beating them out of the tent. And the announcer said not one single word. And then I remembered that whenever the Eskimos leave a campsite, they use it for a privy, and then send the dogs in to clean up. So, actually, this is a poem about that. "When I Sat Down to Play the Piano". [Audience laughter].
Al Purdy
00:55:10
Reads "When I Sat Down to Play the Piano" [from North of Summer; audience laughter throughout].
Al Purdy
00:58:23
I've got one more poem if my voice can hold out. When Robert Kennedy
was shot...I always think about anything that I'm interested and emotionally moved by, always, at least I have in the past, till I got to Simon Fraser, think about writing a poem about it. So the same thing was happening after Kennedy was shot and died, and I was thinking about writing a poem about it, and then the Star Weekly
phoned up and asked me to write a poem about it. So this poem eventually got written. "A Lament for Robert Kennedy".
Al Purdy
00:59:06
Reads "A Lament for Robert Kennedy".
Audience
01:04:39
Applause.
END
01:04:55
Notes:
Al Purdy reads from a wide variety of his books, including Selected Poems (McClelland and Stewart, 1972), Love in a Burning Building (McClelland and Stewart, 1970), The Cariboo Horses (McClelland and Stewart, 1965), Poems for all the Annettes (Contact Press, 1962), and North of Summer (McClelland and Stewart, 1967).
00:00- George Bowering introduces Al Purdy. [INDEX: Doug Featherling describes Purdy as“the most Canadian of all possible poets”, won the President’s Medal, Governor General’s award, Canada Council Grants, Simon Fraser University]
00:56- Al Purdy introduces the reading, and “About Being a Member of Our Armed Forces”. [INDEX: Bliss Carman as influence, Simon Fraser University, joining ‘academia’, conscripts in the war, CWAC: women members of the Canadian Women’s Army Corps, wooden drill rifles; from Selected Poems (McClelland and Stewart, 1972)].
02:09- Reads “About Being a Member of Our Armed Forces”.
03:29- Introduces “Floating Down the North Saskatchewan River”. [INDEX: student in his class, student’s poems in Purdy’s cigar tubes floating down the North Saskatchewan
River; read from unknown source].
04:01- Reads “Floating Down the North Saskatchewan River”.
04:40- Introduces “Flight 17 Eastbound”. [INDEX: revising his manuscript; from unknown source, could be known as “Jubilate on Flight 17, Eastbound”].
05:13- Reads “Flight 17 Eastbound”.
06:47- Introduces “With Words, Words”. [INDEX: collection of love poems, Jack McClelland and Stewart, Harold Town (illustrator); from Love in a burning building (McClelland and Stewart, 1970)].
07:51- Reads “With Words, Words”.
10:49- Introduces “One Rural Winter”. [INDEX: Vancouver, 1955-6, play for CBC accepted, moved to Montreal, Roblin Lake near Ameliasburg in Ontario, built house, *note that explanation is almost word-for-word identical as his explanation for the same poem, in the reading at the Vancouver Art Gallery (I086-11-042)*; from Selected Poems (1972)].
11:50- Reads “One Rural Winter”.
15:22- Introduces “Arctic Romance”. [INDEX: Arctic trip in 1965, naming of the poem; from unknown source; Howard Fink List “Arctic”].
15:46- Reads “Arctic Romance”.
17:13- Introduces “Dark Landscape”. [INDEX: reading, revising, lines from American pet
Vachel Lindsay; from unknown source].
18:07- Reads “Dark Landscape”.
21:45- Explains Vachel Lindsay line, Introduces “Winter at Roblin Lake”. [INDEX: Vachel
Lindsay line “The spring comes on forever, and the Chinese nightingale”, “Aladdin to the
jinn”, changes Purdy made to the poem, Roblin lake, sold plays, building house of used
lumber; from The Cariboo Horses (McClelland and Stewart, 1965)].
22:27- Reads “Winter at Roblin Lake”.
22:52- Introduces “Interruption”. [INDEX: building house, smoking a cigar; from Selected
Poems (1972); not in Howard Fink List of poems].
23:13- Reads “Interruption”.
24:49- Introduces “Late Rising at Roblin Lake”. [INDEX: Ameliasburg, Montreal, Vancouver, discipline of writing, writing prose vs. writing poetry, process of reading many times; from The Cariboo Horses (1965)]
25:57- Reads “Late Rising at Roblin Lake”.
26:47- Introduces “Wilderness Gothic”. [INDEX: from Selected Poems (1972); Howard Fink List “One Ernest Gothic”].
27:03- Reads “Wilderness Gothic”.
29:33- Introduces “Love Poem”. [INDEX: preparing poems to be read, poems Purdy’s never read; from Poems for all the Annettes (Contact Press, 1962)].
29:58- Reads “Love Poem”.
31:40- Introduces “Homemade Beer”. [INDEX: poem dates five years prior; from The Cariboo Horses (1965)].
32:12- Reads “Homemade Beer”.
33:52- Introduces “The Drunk Tank”. [INDEX: Air Force, Belleville, Ontario, drinking with
friend, cops called, thrown in jail, ending meaning something other than what was
intended; from The Poems of Al Purdy (McClelland and Stewart, 1976)].
34:43- Reads “The Drunk Tank”.
36:51- Introduces “Poem for Rita”. [INDEX: Toronto, girls staying with Purdy and his wife, girl asked him to write a poem; from unknown source, Howard Fink List “Poem for
Eda”].
37:10- Reads “Poem for Rita”.
37:25- Introduces “The Winemaker’s Beat Etude”, and explains more about “Poem for Rita”. [INDEX: Ameliasburg, Vancouver, making homemade wine; from Selected Poems
(1972)].
38:39- Reads “The Winemaker’s Beat Etude”.
41:16- Introduces “At the Movies”. [INDEX: 1965, trip to Baffin Island on government money, plane from Montreal to Frobisher Bay, hitchhiked on DOT plane, construction company charter, Pangnirtung on Arctic Circle, “Eskimo” family’s canoe, bill for plane, Arctic poems; from North of Summer (McClelland and Stewart, 1967)].
42:36- Reads “At the Movies”.
44:55- Introduces “The Sculptors”. [INDEX: caribou draining, “Eskimos” shooting caribou then watching movies, Pangnirtung Sound, Peterhead boats, Hollywood movie; from North of Summer]
45:50- Reads “The Sculptors”.
48:17- Introduces “Trees at the Arctic Circle”. [INDEX: Trees on Baffin Island; from North of Summer].
49:05- Reads “Trees at the Arctic Circle”.
51:07- Introduces “Wash Day”. [INDEX: Cumberland Sound, Eskimo women, language
barriers, tea, sing songs; from North of Summer].
51:54- Reads “Wash Day”.
54:03- Introduces “When I Sat Down to Play the Piano”. [INDEX: Arctic dogs, film about the George River Eskimos; from North of Summer].
55:10- Reads “When I Sat Down to Play the Piano”.
58:23- Introduces unknown poem “A Lament for Robert Kennedy”, perhaps actually “Death of John F. Kennedy”. [INDEX: Shooting of Robert Kennedy (John F?), Simon Fraser, writing poem about shooting, Star Weekly asked Purdy for a poem about it].
59:06- Reads “A Lament for Robert Kennedy”. [INDEX: perhaps “Death of John F.
Kennedy”, found in The Cariboo Horses].
1:04:55- END OF RECORDING.
Content Type:
Sound Recording
Featured:
Yes
Title:
Al Purdy Tape Box - Back
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Al Purdy Tape Box - Front
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Al Purdy Tape Box - Spine
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Al Purdy Tape Box - Reel
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Dates
Date:
1970 3 13
Type:
Performance Date
Source:
Accompanying Material
Notes:
Date written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. Date also specified in written announcement "Poetry Four: Sir George Williams Poetry Series"
LOCATION
Address:
1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Venue:
Hall Building Room H-651
Latitude:
45.4972758
Longitude:
-73.57893043
Notes:
Location specified in written announcement "Poetry Four: Sir George Williams Poetry Series"
CONTENT
Contents:
al_purdy_i006-11-037-1.mp3
George Bowering
00:00:00
As you know, the reader tonight is Al Purdy
, a man who's been described as, by Doug Featherling, as the most Canadian of all possible poets. And who has, as they say, paid his dues, and in that time, won all the prizes, like the President's Medal
, and the Governor General's Award
, and countless numbers of Canada Council
Grants and all those other things that come to you. [Laughter]. Currently, I don't know if whether or not I'm supposed to mention this or not, but currently making an excursion amongst the academics at...in other words, straightening people out at Simon Fraser University
. And a very welcome addition to our series. Al Purdy.
Unknown
00:00:55
[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Al Purdy
00:00:56
When I started to write poems about sixty-eight years ago, Bliss Carman
was the only one writing. So I imitated Bliss Carman, and this first poem is a sort of imitation of Bliss Carman. [Audience laughter]. And there are hardly any new poems in there because it takes me two years to revise them for two years and then conclude them in a reading, and then besides which as George
said, I've joined the academics because all the American members of the department at Simon Fraser have guilty consciences so they wanted a Canadian on staff [audience laughter]. "About being a member of our armed forces". This is, this is thirty years after I started to write poems. Remember--Oh, I should say, there are two, three phrases in this that would not ordinarily be understood by you people. "Zombies," who were conscripts in the last war, and well, the CWACs were women members, Canadian Women's Army Corp
. And during the early part of the last war, there were no rifles. So they used wooden rifles to drill with.
Al Purdy
00:02:09
Reads "About Being a Member of Our Armed Forces" [from Selected Poems; audience laughter throughout].
Al Purdy
00:03:29
As I said, I've become an academic lately, and one of the students in this class has asked for all my cigar tubes, little metal tubes that, you know, I get cigars in. He wants to put poems in them and float them down the North Saskatchewan River
[audience laughter]. And for some reason or other, this, that became the title of this particular poem. "Floating Down the North Saskatchewan River". [Audience laughter].
Al Purdy
00:04:01
Reads "Floating Down the North Saskatchewan River" [audience laughter throughout].
Al Purdy
00:04:40
Funny, eh? [Audience laughter]. Something called "Jubilate", and I'm going to leave that out of there. "Flight 17 Eastbound". Ah...I keep revising some of these and I'm reading now from manuscript because I revised a lot of the poems here and I can't remember which ones I revised, so if they're in manuscript I'm sure they're either revised or that there's some reason for them being there.
Al Purdy
00:05:13
Reads "Flight 17 Eastbound".
Al Purdy
00:06:47
I don't know what that means but it must be profound. [Audience laughter]. I'm getting together a collection of love poems, or I have gotten a collection of love poems together. They are, I am told, fairly hard-boiled love poems. Because when Jack McClelland
, of McClelland and Stewart
, heard about them they thought it was a good idea that Harold Town
should do some illustrations. But when they saw the poems, and of course it wasn't because they were bad poems, I'm sure, he didn't want to do the illustrations anymore, they said they were hard-boiled. As I said, they can't be bad poems. This was one of them. It's got...no, I don't think I'll read that anyway. I don't like it. However, here's another one along the same lines. [Audience laughter]. It's called "With Words, Words".
Al Purdy
00:07:51
Reads "With Words, Words" [from Love in a burning building].
Al Purdy
00:10:49
I lived in Vancouver
for a while, and up till 1955 or 6. The first play I wrote for CBC
was accepted, and I thought I was a genius, and moved to Montreal
in order to reap the rewards of my genius. For a year in Montreal I think my...I sold a couple of adaptations to CBC. And eventually we moved to Roblin Lake
, near Ameliasburgh
in Ontario
, and built a house. And my wife having quit her job, she having decided that if I could get away without working she could too. So we sat down for a couple of years looking at each other, waiting for the other one, to see which one would break first. But this is a poem about that particular time, called "One Rural Winter".
Al Purdy
00:11:50
Reads "One Rural Winter" [from Selected Poems; audience laughter throughout].
Al Purdy
00:15:22
I was in the Arctic
in '65, but this is a poem written long after that about the Arctic. And I suppose...certainly about the Canadian Arctic. I called it "Arctic Romance", but I think it should be just "Arctic", or something like that.
Al Purdy
00:15:46
Reads "Arctic Romance".
Al Purdy
00:17:13
Screwed that up, I guess. You get tired of reading your own stuff, after a while. You forget what it sounded like the last time. This is a poem I kind of like but I keep revising it also, or have been several times in the last few years, called "Dark Landscape". It uses a couple of lines from an American poet who died thirty years ago called Vachel Lindsay
, whom probably nobody ever heard of. And it starts in a very prosy way, and is meant to sound that way, and then the rhythm quickens. "Dark Landscape".
Al Purdy
00:18:07
Reads "Dark Landscape".
Al Purdy
00:21:45
In case anybody is wondering about the particular Vachel Lindsay line, it was "The spring comes on forever, and the Chinese nightingale". And he also had "Aladdin to the jinn", except that Aladdin to the jinn, his jinn was J-I-N-N and mine was two J-I-N-N's, and one G-I-N. So that, always a little difficult to understand it without seeing it on the page. Kind of a sweet little poem, this was after we moved to Roblin Lake, and as I say, I sold a couple of plays and we bought a pile of used lumber with the proceeds and put the down payment on the lot and build this house.
Al Purdy
00:22:27
Reads "Winter at Roblin Lake" [from The Cariboo Horses].
Al Purdy
00:22:52
Also the same period, about building the house, or rather after the house was built. Trouble is, you can't, you can't smoke a cigar here, can you, something I...it always goes out. Anyway. "Interruption".
Al Purdy
00:23:13
Reads "Interruption" [from Selected Poems].
Al Purdy
00:24:49
When I...when we first moved down to Ameliasburg, or to Roblin Lake, I should say, because Roblin Lake where we are is about a mile or so from Ameliasburg...I, after Montreal, and after the job I'd had in Vancouver, I suddenly had to become my own disciplinary straw boss, and it was quite difficult, and in other words, you know, I'd try to get up at a certain hour of the day and start writing. Which I could always, you know, I can always write prose, whenever I feel like it, but poems, I write them, well, I should say, I write poems whenever I feel like it, but you can, I can regimen my own prose, which I don't do much of these days. Anyway, when we moved to Roblin Lake, I wasn't physically regimented myself, so that I was waking up all hours of the day. And this is a short poem about that, but I also screwed up the poem, because I put lines at the end of, or words at the end of each line so that I don't know where the emphasis should be placed, even though I've read it dozens of times. It's called "Late Rising at Roblin Lake".
Al Purdy
00:25:57
Reads "Late Rising at Roblin Lake" [from The Cariboo Horses].
Al Purdy
00:26:47
Another poem about the same particular period, called "Wilderness Gothic". Uh...don't think there's a thing to say about this particular poem at all.
Al Purdy
00:27:03
Reads "Wilderness Gothic" [from Selected Poems].
Al Purdy
00:29:33
When you read a bunch of poems over several years, I think you pick out the ones that you think will read the best, which is certainly what I do, because there are many of my own poems that I rarely read, or never read at all. In fact I, I never read this one. It's called "Love Poem".
Al Purdy
00:29:58
Reads "Love Poem" [from Poems for all the Annettes].
Al Purdy
00:31:40
In...This poem dates, the actual time of the poem dates about fifteen years ago. The poem itself was written about five years ago. At the time, a friend of mine was there also, which, other than his particular presence I might have acted a little bit differently than I did. You'll see what I mean in a, when I read the poem. Because nobody would take this chance in placing themselves in such a vulnerable position with a woman. "Homemade Beer".
Al Purdy
00:32:12
Reads "Homemade Beer" [from The Cariboo Horses].
Audience
00:33:48
Laughter.
Unknown
00:33:51
[Cut or edit in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Al Purdy
00:33:52
One called "The Drunk Tank". It's...Dates back two or three years ago when, after the time when I was in the Air Force
, a friend of mine got out of the Air Force much later, so we celebrated. And...it was after quite a turbulent evening with my friend in Belleville
, Ontario, we decided to get a couple of bottles of liquor and go out to the country where we wouldn't be disturbed, and drink it. But the farmer phoned the cops, and we were both thrown in jail. And this particular poem is about the first part of that experience, I mean the early part of being thrown in jail, more or less. But not the end of it, it turned into a sort of fantasy that means something other than I intended.
Al Purdy
00:34:43
Reads "The Drunk Tank" [from The Poems of Al Purdy].
Al Purdy
00:36:51
This is called "Poem for Rita", and about a couple of years ago in Toronto
, there was a couple of girls staying with myself, my wife and myself, and she kept asking me to write a poem. So after a while, I wrote this.
Al Purdy
00:37:10
Reads "Poem for Rita".
Audience
00:37:25
Laughter.
Al Purdy
00:37:28
That's all. [Audience laughter]. I think it was actually kind of unkind on my part, because I was never sure whether she understood that or not, and I didn't know whether I wanted her to understand it. [Audience laughter]. There...when we first moved to Ameliasburg, as I mentioned, I was broke as hell. And after having lived in Vancouver, I learned how to make wine of one kind or another, and there was no way to, I didn't have enough money to make beer, so there were a lot of wild grapes around there and we made, I made wild grape wine, and one time, one particular season, I had about five hundred bottles. [Audience laughter]. I attribute the effects of this wine to having made me what I am today [audience laughter], if I could figure that out. But the poem eventually came out of it, called "The Winemaker's Beatitude".
Al Purdy
00:38:39
Reads "The Winemaker's Beatitude" [from Selected Poems].
Al Purdy
00:41:16
In '65, I went up to Baffin Island
on some government money, public money, rode a commercial airline plane from Montreal to Frobisher Bay
, hitchhiked a ride on what I thought was a DOT plane, but was a construction plane, a construction company charter, and then at Pangnirtung
, which is on the Arctic Circle, the original administrator there arranged that I go along with an Eskimo family in their canoe to some islands in Cumberland Sound
. A year and a half after I got back from the Arctic, I got a bill for a hundred and ten dollars from the construction company that I thought I'd, whose plane I thought I'd hitchhiked on. Which I haven't paid. But anyway, all of these poems, except perhaps I think one or two, were written up there, written in the Arctic, except that after I got back from the Arctic I kept revising them. So you can make up your own mind whether they're written there or not. Among the poems here, there's one called "At the Movies".
Al Purdy
00:42:37
Reads "At the Movies" [from North of Summer].
Al Purdy
00:44:55
The business about the caribou draining in the bilge water was one of the reasons, I suppose, I found it so extraordinary that, perhaps, that Eskimos should enjoy these shoot-em-up movies, was that they had just come a hundred miles or so after shooting caribou, bringing them back to Pang, Pangnirtung on the, on the Sound, on the...jeez, my memory's failing, I can't even remember the fjord it was. But anyway, they had just shot them and come a hundred miles back with them, and yet...and they were draining in their Peterhead boats, and yet they found these movies so exciting--I suppose I shouldn't find that so unusual, but I do. A crappy Hollywood
movie. And here's one called "The Sculptors".
Al Purdy
00:45:50
Reads "The Sculptors" [from North of Summer].
Al Purdy
00:48:17
I think I'm going to have about time for two more, so that I'd better...I could probably go on, oh I'd better make it three more I'll give ya...this is, the trees in the Arctic are about, are very low, and well, this is treeless country on Baffin Island, where there, where practically nothing grows except moss and that, and the like of that, but I wrote a poem about trees at the Arctic Circle, and this is it....I see I'm getting, I'm only talking about the physical things about the Arctic, and I have some poems about the people, too, which, which I should read. Anyway, "Trees at the Arctic Circle".
Al Purdy
00:49:05
Reads "Trees at the Arctic Circle" [from North of Summer].
Al Purdy
00:51:07
I want to read at least one about, about, about people there, because I used to, when I was on these islands, [inaudible] Islands in Cumberland Sound, the Eskimo women used to come over every day and drink tea. They could not speak any English and I could speak no Eskimo, and I would feed them tea and we would sit there, myself feeling about as silly as I could, so eventually I grew a bit desperate and I would read them poems and I would sing songs or I'd do any damn thing. However, eventually there was some kind of, I think, positive liking on my part. But this poem may express it as well as anything. "Wash Day".
Al Purdy
00:51:54
Reads "Wash Day" [from North of Summer].
Al Purdy
00:54:03
Talking about shit, there's actually a poem that has a little bit to do with it here. The Arctic dogs have some qualities that are more pronounced and magnified in Arctic dogs than in southern dogs, that is, they like to eat the stuff. So that when you go, as all, everybody must go at some time or other in their lives, possibly once a day or not, one takes an Eskimo kid along to throw stones and keep the dogs off. When I came back from the Arctic I saw an hour-long film about the George River
Eskimos, and one scene in it showed about fifty Eskimos trying to get into a tent, and the Eskimos beating them into the tent, and the next thing you showed the same dogs trying to get out of the tent and the Eskimos beating them out of the tent. And the announcer said not one single word. And then I remembered that whenever the Eskimos leave a campsite, they use it for a privy, and then send the dogs in to clean up. So, actually, this is a poem about that. "When I Sat Down to Play the Piano". [Audience laughter].
Al Purdy
00:55:10
Reads "When I Sat Down to Play the Piano" [from North of Summer; audience laughter throughout].
Al Purdy
00:58:23
I've got one more poem if my voice can hold out. When Robert Kennedy
was shot...I always think about anything that I'm interested and emotionally moved by, always, at least I have in the past, till I got to Simon Fraser, think about writing a poem about it. So the same thing was happening after Kennedy was shot and died, and I was thinking about writing a poem about it, and then the Star Weekly
phoned up and asked me to write a poem about it. So this poem eventually got written. "A Lament for Robert Kennedy".
Al Purdy
00:59:06
Reads "A Lament for Robert Kennedy".
Audience
01:04:39
Applause.
END
01:04:55
Notes:
Al Purdy reads from a wide variety of his books, including Selected Poems (McClelland and Stewart, 1972), Love in a Burning Building (McClelland and Stewart, 1970), The Cariboo Horses (McClelland and Stewart, 1965), Poems for all the Annettes (Contact Press, 1962), and North of Summer (McClelland and Stewart, 1967).
NOTES
Type:
Cataloguer
Note:
Original transcript and print catalogue by Rachel Kyne
Original print catalogue, introduction, research and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones
Additional research and edits by Ali Barillaro
Type:
General
Note:
Year-Specific Information:
In 1970, Al Purdy published Love in a Burning Building (McClelland and Stewart). George Bowering’s study on Al Purdy came out that year, Al Purdy (Copp Clarke Co).
Type:
General
Note:
Local Connections:
Al Purdy became an important figure in Canadian poetry, and was known as a “people’s poet”. He published over thirty books of poetry, but also published in dozens of other genres. Purdy was known as a generous mentor, and his work received several Governor General's Awards as well as other high Canadian honours. He lived in Vancouver, Montreal, and several locations in Ontario, and his poetry reflected Canadian landscape themes. Over the years he has been called the ‘most’ Canadian poet, the ‘first’ Canadian poet and the ‘last’ Canadian poet. In 1963, George Bowering convinced the University of British Columbia to invite Al Purdy to give a reading, where the two poets first met. Later on, Purdy was in contact with George Bowering, as he was completing a book about Purdy.
Type:
Preservation
Note:
Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file
RELATED WORKS
Citation:
“Al Purdy, An Uncommon Poet”. CBC Digital Archives. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2008.
Citation:
“Al Purdy- The Voice of the Land”. Save Al Purdy’s Home. Harbour Publishing, 2009.
Bowering, George. Al Purdy. Studies in Canadian Literature. Hugo McPherson and Gary Geddes (eds). Toronto: Copp Clarke Publishing Company, 1970.
Citation:
Brown, Russel and George Woodcock. "Purdy, Al". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2001.
Citation:
Geddes, Gary. “Al Purdy”. Fifteen Canadian Poets Times Two. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Citation:
“Poetry Four: Sir George Williams Poetry Series, Ninth Reading, Al Purdy”. Montreal, Quebec: Sir George Williams University, 1970. Found in “The Stephen Morrissey Papers, 1963 - 1998”, McGill McLennan Library, Special Collections and Rare Books, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Citation:
Purdy, Al. A Splinter in the Heart. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2000.
Citation:
Purdy, Al. In Search of Owen Roblin. McClelland and Stewart, 1974.
Citation:
Purdy, Al. North of Summer. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1967.
Citation:
Purdy, Al. Poems for all the Annettes. Toronto: Contact Press, 1962.
Citation:
Purdy, Al. Selected Poems. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972.
Citation:
Purdy, Al. The Cariboo Horses. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1965.
Citation:
Purdy, Al. The Poems of Al Purdy. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976.
Citation:
Steele, James. "Purdy, Al(fred) (Wellington)". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996.