[{"id":"1258","cataloger_name":["Mahtab,Banihashemi"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Henry Beissel and Mike Gnarowski at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 13 January 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"Henry Beissel Reading in The Poetry Series at Sir George Williams University, 1967-01-13\" handwritten on the back of the tape's box. Spelling mistakes and Mike Gnarwoski's name scratched over with pen. \n\n\"I086-11-003\" and \"RT 516\" also written. \n\n\"GNAROWSKI & BISSEL I006/SR122\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. Gnarowski refers to Michael Gnarowski. Bissel refers to Henry Beissel. Biessel is mispelled "],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[I086-11-003, I006-11-122]"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Gnarowski, Michael","Beissel, Henry"],"creator_names_search":["Gnarowski, Michael","Beissel, Henry"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/115582508\",\"name\":\"Gnarowski, Michael\",\"dates\":\"1934-\",\"notes\":\"Michael Gnarowski was born on September 27, 1934 in Shanghai, China. He attended several universities: McGill University, B.A. in 1956, Indiana University in 1959, University of Montreal, M.A. in 1960 and University of Ottawa, Ph.D. in 1967. While at McGill, he published his poetry in Yes, which he co-edited. Gnarowski was heavily involved in several presses and magazines throughout his career, which include Le Chien d’or/The Golden Dog, Delta, Golden Dog Press, the Tecumseh Press, Arc Poetry Magazine and McGraw-Hill Ryerson’s Critical Views on Canadian Writers Series (Ryerson Press, 1970), and Canadian Poetry. Along with Ron Everson, Raymond Souster and Louis Dudek, he founded the League of Canadian Poets in 1966. He taught English at the University of Sherbrooke from 1961-62; at Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay), Ontario from 1962-65; was an assistant professor of English at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) from 1966-72; Carleton University from 1972 onwards. He published a book of his own poetry, Postscript for St. James Street in 1965 (Delta Press), and has since edited and compiled over fifteen other books.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Performer\",\"Author\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/5489879\",\"name\":\"Beissel, Henry\",\"dates\":\"1929-\",\"notes\":\"Poet Henry Beissel was born in 1929 in Cologne, Germany. Beissel studied philosophy at universities in Cologne and in London before emigrating to Canada in 1951 where he graduated with an M.A. in English from the University of Toronto in 1960. He taught at the University of Edmonton, the University of Alberta as well as Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal. Beissel served as editor for the controversial literary and political journal Edge from 1963 (in Edmonton) until 1969 (in Montreal). He translated the poetry of German-Canadian Walter Bauer, called The Price of Morning in 1968 (Prism International Press). His first book, New Wings for Icarus was published in 1966 (Coach House Press), followed by Face on the Dark in 1970. Beissel later published The Salt I Taste (D.C. Books, 1975), The Cantos North (Penumbra Press, 1982), Season of Blood (Mosaic Press,1984), Poems new and selected (Grove Press, 1987), Across the Sun’s Warp (BuschekBooks, 2003). He later wrote and published several plays; Inook and the Sun was performed at the Stratford Festival in 1973. In 1980-1, Henry Beissel acted as President of the League of Canadian Poets.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Kiyooka, Roy","Dudek, Louis"],"contributors_names_search":["Kiyooka, Roy","Dudek, Louis"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/30784426\",\"name\":\"Kiyooka, Roy\",\"dates\":\"1926-1994\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Speaker\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/49240132\",\"name\":\"Dudek, Louis\",\"dates\":\"1918-2001\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Dudek, Louis"],"Series_organizer_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Speaker_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Performance_Date":[1967],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Kodak\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"Popped strands\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel","Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape","Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue","Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio","Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono","Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 1 13\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in The Georgian's \\\"Op-Ed\\\"\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in The Georgian's \\\"Op-Ed\\\"\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Henry Beissel reads largely from New Wings for Icarus (Coach House Press, 1966). Mike Gnarowski reads from Postscript for St. James Street (Delta, 1965) and from other unknown sources."],"contents":["Henry_beissel_i086-11-003.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:00:00\nLadies and Gentleman, um, let's see, what am I going to say? [Audience laughter and applause]...Well, glad to see y’all here. So, Professor Louis Dudek []https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3261787] from McGill University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201492] will introduce the two poets who’re reading this evening. \n\nAudience\n00:00:31\nApplause.\n\nLouis Dudek\n00:00:40\nI expected a longer introduction than that, it will be very fine. There are two kinds of readings that I like to attend very much, one kind is the sort that they're having tonight at McGill University, where a well-established poet who has been on the scene for forty or fifty years comes to read. Over there, it's A.J.M. Smith [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4647944] from Michigan State [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q270222], Canadian anthologist and well-known poet. With a poet like that, really makes no difference what he reads or how he reads it's just important to see him and even the tottering saint can perform miracles on occasions. The other kinds of poets I do like to hear very much are the sort that we'll hear tonight, Gnarowski and Beissel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1606507]. The McGill publicity department sent out a notice about A.J.M. Smith and described him as well-known Anthropologist of Canadian poetry. Actually, they corrected it in ink, they made the mistake twice though, probably a typist error. But they didn't know how correct they were, with the current scene in Canadian writing, there are primitive types around that are hard to classify and we need anthropologists...Well, Beissel and Gnarowski are not of this breed of poets who seem to have lost all sense of poetic organization or form, where you think that conventions, poetic conventions have been abolished and what is left are chaotic bits of internal monologue on the page. Of course, that kind of school may be very interesting to watch to see what comes out of it but at present, having watched it now for a few years I'm a little impatient often and tired of the magazines where this material occurs because it seems so easy to turn out and anyone has these bits of chaotic monologue going on. On the other hand, there are many poets still writing who are not following the conventional forms of English metrics and rhyme and so forth, who are turning out poems or at least watching what happens what happens with the words on the page and both the poets we're listening to tonight are of this kind. They are very careful craftsmen. Henry Beissel has the long list of achievements to his credits already, but two on that list strike me very much. One is, amongst many of the posts where he's taught, one is the University of Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q640694] is the kind of political stir that was created on the campus when his magazine Edge was brought into the classroom by one of the professors. That is, his poetry contains, content that can make one think, that is morally committed to certain issues in today's world. He's very strongly a moral poet on one side, and the other item in his biography is his new book which has just appeared New Wings for Icarus, which is extremely aesthetic at the same time that it is meaningful in this way. His poetry seems to combine two things, one is a moral urgency and on the other hand, at the same time, a romantic sense of language and of imagery and of emotion that goes with that, which are all very, very promising characteristics for a beginning poet, but I think that this New Wings for Icarus book is his first considerable book. So, without more ado, I introduce to you Henry Beissel. \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:05:30\nWhen I considered the kind of poems that I might read this evening and the order in which to read them, I was thinking of the condition of this hall, as it was the last time I was here and I therefore chose two poems which I wrote in the West Indies [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q669037]. [Audience laughter]. They celebrate the sun in an ambiguous sort of way, I'm going to read them all the same, despite the fact that the conditions have changed. I don't know how much you need to know about the West Indies, I'm hoping—oh.\n\nAudience Member 1\n00:06:15\nAddresses Beissel [unintelligible].\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:06:17\nIs this any better? Is there someone in the hall who can attend please to all this? \n\nAudience Member 2\n00:06:28\nAddresses Beissel [unintelligible].\n\nAudience\n00:06:30\nLaughter.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:06:39\nWell I'll try to speak a little louder on my own, in spite of the microphone. I was saying that I don't know how much one needs to know of the West Indies to respond to this sort of poem, I'm hoping something of the West Indies might be in the poems, the first is called \"Pans at Carnival\". Pan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6610630] is the expression for a steel drum. The imagery in the poem is taken entirely from the steel drum and its use at Carnival [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4618], a feast that is about to be celebrated in Trinidad [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q754] in about a month. Rhythmically, the poem tries to catch something of the rhythm of the steel pan. \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:07:28\nReads \"Pans at Carnival\".\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:10:18\nThe second poem celebrates something of the violence that the sun, with which the sun blesses those parts of the world from which it never really disappears.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:10:34\nReads \"Where the Sun Only\".\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:12:49\nNext I want to read two parts from New Wings for Icarus. Time does not allow me to read the whole poem, because then I could read you nothing else. “Icarus” is a poem that is written in four parts, it is with some regret that I read only two, because to me it is like playing the second and fourth part of a symphony, but there is no alternative. \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:13:19\nReads \"New Wings for Icarus\", part 2 from New Wings for Icarus.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:13:51\nSorry, I'll start again. This is a hard one to read and this print is very small. I better hold it closer.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:13:59\nReads \"New Wings for Icarus\", part 2 from New Wings for Icarus.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:19:41\nReads \"New Wings for Icarus\", part 4 from New Wings for Icarus.\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:26:39\nNow for a little sort of relaxation in-between, I find unrelieved serious poetry hard to bear myself, I'll read—unfortunately I do not write occasional poems terribly often, they always seem to grow into something much bigger than I can handle, but the next two poems I want to read you are occasional poems, poetry can come out of anything of course, and this one came out of an encounter in a house of Inquisition in Cartagena [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q657461], in Colombia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q739], it is really self-explanatory. It's called \"En la Casa de Inquisición\". \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:27:40\nReads \"En la Casa de Inquisición\".\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:29:23\nThe next poem leads me on to the last set of poems, but you won't discover that until you hear the last two poems. This poem is dedicated to my daughter, when she was 1 and a half, the first stanza deals with the circumstances of her birth, which were somewhat elaborate, there were firemen. The second stanza deals with her present—this would be the past from the time of the poem, the second deals with her present, and the third with her future. \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:30:07\nReads \"To My Daughter at Age 1 1/2\".\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:33:25\nAnd now I come to the final two poems. They belong together and are part of a— we agreed not to torture you and not to read for more than 30 minutes this evening and I am trying to stick to that. This is rather the beginning of something that I may never live to finish, the entire thing is supposed to have some 26 poems, of which you will hear the first two, one is a prologue and the other one is called \"Adam Enter Eve\". In the prologue, a character introduces himself who is to play his part in the rest of the poem. It's not really a dramatic poem, although it's, well I don't think of it as a drama, although it has dramatic qualities. Anyway, I don't like to be my own critic. I prefer just to read you the poem. The whole cycle will be called \"The Dancer from the Dance\" that is as you no doubt know, a quotation from Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213]. \n\nHenry Beissel\n00:34:45\nReads \"Prologue\" from \"The Dancer from the Dance\".\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:37:04\nReads \"Adam Enter Eve\".\n\nEND\n00:49:40\n[Recording continues on mike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3].\n\nmike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\n\nLouis Dudek\n00:00:00\nStrongly I was impressed and moved by that reading by Henry Beissel. Really several times after the poems I wanted to applaud, only we don't do that. They were magnificently organized forms with powerful language and very well read, I felt, I think I'm speaking for most people here when I say that. Mike Gnarowski who reads next is different perhaps in the extent to which his poetry is oriented towards reality. Not by implication because Beissel's also is very real and very down to earth and very much committed to the real world, but Gnarowski's poetry has a lot to do with Canadian poetry and the way it has turned towards the real world since about 1925 since A.J.M. Smith and Scott [F.R. Scott; https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3081656] and A.M. Klein [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2778027] began writing. Gnarowski's been very active as a student of Canadian literature, a scholar and a bibliographer and so forth of our literature looking into the sources of this modern poetry and to letters and documents. In this he has done some very valuable work, indexing little magazines that would be otherwise, less well known, preparing bibliographies and he is now working on a larger anthology of criticism introducing the backgrounds of modern Canadian poetry. All this kind of study which is very valuable on the academic side is also important to his poetry I feel, that it places him within the line of modern Canadian poets who have tried to interpret the real, the visible, the actual, directly in poetry. Somewhat in the way I suppose that all modern poetry in English does, including T.S. Eliot's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37767] \"Waste Land\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q581458] and Ezra Pound's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q163366] \"Cantos\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2701465] and e. e. cumming's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q298703] comedies and satires and Auden's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178698] poetry also. That is the characteristic of twentieth-century poetry is that its extreme realism and the bringing of the romantic conceptions of the last century to bear upon the actual world and showing that the conflict, the intense conflict that exists in the poet between his conception of things and what he sees before him. That you find in Gnarowski very much. He as a writer he is a meticulous craftsman, I don't know if that's symbolic [audience laughter]... He's also a meticulous craftsman and his poems seem to grow by accretion, very gradually. He writes with a stubborn integrity and knows what he thinks and what he's trying to say in a poem, they aren't just momentary fusions. They're highly worked up pieces of writing. There's a strong element of rationality and reality in this poetry, less of the flight of the emotions and the fantasy that's in most other poets. There's a very strong formal organization in his poetry, a clean speech, straight as the Greeks as Ezra Pound used to say in the past. His first book is entitled Postscript for St. James Street which has to do with, in some part anyhow, with the business world in which we live and he has chosen that quite consciously as a subject that could be turned into poetry, to take the business man, the real in that sense, St. James Street [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1526237] and see what can be made out of that imaginatively. Most poets when they treat a subject like that turn it into satire, because what else can you make out of St. James Street, but Gnarowski wants to keep his vision clear and straight for the fact to see what it really is without elevating too much or perhaps without caricaturing the reality, and it's a very interesting experiment. I'm sure you'll all enjoy listening to his poetry.\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:05:09\nA couple of years ago I had the occasion to go up into North Western Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904], and I lived there for three or four years and more specifically on Port Arthur [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7230482] which is on the very shores of Lake Superior [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1066], and I kept looking at this magnificent and fantastic lake and it kept bothering me. It was too big and too vast and too meaningful and too ominous in many ways to be let off too easily. I also had a friend up there who was an anthropologist and archaeologist and a very good one, and he spent a lot of time going up into that country up around Lake Superior and he kept coming back with all sorts of wonderful thing, all sorts of relics of the past as it were. Gaffs and skulls and this and that which he kept finding and he told me that that part of the world had at one time had supported a pretty fantastic civilization of its own, a very peculiar civilization. And I looked at the lake, Lake Superior, and I decided I would try to write something about it, about the feelings that I think that this ominous body of water might have. A little poem I did for it is entitled \"Great Sea\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:06:30\nReads \"Great Sea\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:10:40\nAnd following along the same themes, a little poem entitled \"Amethyst Harbour\" which was occasioned by a visit of A.Y. Jackson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3499926] and several friends who gathered in this quite magnificent place on the lake, just about this time of the year and you could look out across Thunder Bay [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9298873] and you saw nothing but ice-locked island and of course snow and ice continuing forever and ever. I always felt the nature, of course, there had not been overcome by man and that nature always threatened man and that there was a struggle, a conflict, a tension going on. So here is \"Amethyst Harbour\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:11:31\nReads \"Amethyst Harbour\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:13:20\nAs Louis Dudek pointed out, I've always been fascinated by those men who wheel and deal and who are responsible for much of the life of the nation, I suppose, of North America [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49], the so-called businessman, much maligned most of the time. I normally try to deal as properly as I can and in this instance I think I'm probably being unkind. This is a poem entitled \"Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:13:55\nReads \"Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell\".\n\nAudience\n00:15:26\nApplause [one person].\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:15:30\nUhh--Thank you. A little while ago, or a few years ago I should say, I had the occasion to go to a town south-east of here called Victoriaville [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q141731], I was there on business and I went through an old-age or an old-people's home and some of you may know what those places are like, I was profoundly affected by this experience and I tried to write something about it and I've called this little thing \"Provincia Nostra\".\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:15:56\nReads \"Provincia Nostra”.\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:16:50\nThis is for a friend who was lost in an automobile accident.\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:16:54\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:17:31\nA very short thing, which I think fills the purpose of keeping me from becoming too serious.\n \nMike Gnarowski\n00:17:46\nReads unnamed poem. \n\nMike Gnarowski\n00:17:59\nThank you.\n \nAudience\n00:18:00\nLaughter and applause [cut off].\n\nIntroducer\n00:18:03\nWe'd like to express our thanks to Mike Gnarowski, Henry Beissel, and our special appreciation to Louis Dudek who made the supreme sacrifice of tearing himself away from McGill to come here and introduce them. [Audience applause]. Our next reading will be in two weeks, on Friday, January 27 Margaret Avison [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6759152] will be coming from Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172] to read her poetry and the following reading on Sat. Feb. 11, Paul Blackburn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7149388] who is the Poet in Residence at the City College in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1093910] and the author of, among other things, Brooklyn, Manhattan Transit will be coming here to read his poetry. Thank you.\n \nEND\n00:19:00\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-specific Information:\\n\\nHenry Beissel was teaching at Sir George Williams University in 1966. He also edited Edge: An Independent Periodical, no. 6, Spring 1967.\\n\\nMike Gnarowski received his Ph.D. from University of Ottawa in 1967, and was working as an associate professor at Sir George Williams University. He co-edited The Making of Modern Poetry in Canada with Louis Dudek, which was published by Ryerson Press in 1967. He was the editor of Yes magazine from 1956-69.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local connections:\\n\\nBeissel retired as Distinguished Emeritus Professor of English from Concordia University in 1996. Henry Beissel, Mike Gnarowski and Louis Dudek (also in this reading) organized the Montreal Committee, and organized The Emergency Symposium on the Americanization of Canadian Universities in May of 1969.\\n\\nMike Gnarowski is very involved in the effort to promote Canadian authors and writers, editing and publishing criticism and anthologies of Canadian poetry, specifically those of Leonard Cohen, Archibald Lampman and Raymond Knister as well as little known writers.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Faith Paré (2020) and Ali Barillaro (2021)\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"2 reel-to-reel tapes>2 CDs>2 digital files\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/new-wings-for-icarus-a-poem-in-four-parts/oclc/1127807997&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Beissel, Henry. New Wings for Icarus. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/canadianization-movement-emergence-survival-and-success/oclc/1165482183&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Cormier, Jeffrey. The Canadianization movement: emergence, survival and success. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. \"},{\"url\":\"http://www.lac-bac.gc.ca/archiveslitteraires/027011-200.058-e.html\",\"citation\":\"“Gnarowski, Michael 1934-”. Michael Gnarowski fonds 1956-1985. Library and Archives       \\t\\nCanada\\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/postscript-for-st-james-street/oclc/2566553&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Gnarowski, Michael. Postscript for St. James Street. Montreal: Delta, 1965. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/mike-gnarowski-at-sgwu-1967-louis-dudek/\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings Resume Tonight with Beissel and Gnarowski”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 13 January 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=O5UtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4p8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3951,6182119&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Series Coming Up At University”. Montreal: The Gazette. 31 December 1966, page 39. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/mike-gnarowski-at-sgwu-1967-louis-dudek/\",\"citation\":\"Simco, Bob. “Georgiantics”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 9 January 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/865265719&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Stevens, Peter. \\\"Beissel, Henry\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, 2nd edition. \\nEugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2006. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/mike-gnarowski-at-sgwu-1967-louis-dudek/\",\"citation\":\"Thoms, Kathleen. “Professor Poets With Urgency and Imagery”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, January 1967.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/86526\",\"citation\":\"Toye, William. \\\"League of Canadian Poets, The\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian \\nLiterature, 2nd edition. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, \\n2006. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"\\\"Michael Gnarowski.\\\" Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2009. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548668678144,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.264Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0122_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0122_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Mike Gnarowski Tape Box 1 - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0122_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0122_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Mike Gnarowski Tape Box 1 - 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Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/mike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"mike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:19:00\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"45.6 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"mike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3 [File 2 of 2]\\n\\nLouis Dudek\\n00:00:00\\nStrongly I was impressed and moved by that reading by Henry Beissel. Really several times after the poems I wanted to applaud, only we don't do that. They were magnificently organized forms with powerful language and very well read, I felt, I think I'm speaking for most people here when I say that. Mike Gnarowski who reads next is different perhaps in the extent to which his poetry is oriented towards reality. Not by implication because Beissel's also is very real and very down to earth and very much committed to the real world, but Gnarowski's poetry has a lot to do with Canadian poetry and the way it has turned towards the real world since about 1925 since A.J.M. Smith and Scott [F.R. Scott; https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3081656] and A.M. Klein [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2778027] began writing. Gnarowski's been very active as a student of Canadian literature, a scholar and a bibliographer and so forth of our literature looking into the sources of this modern poetry and to letters and documents. In this he has done some very valuable work, indexing little magazines that would be otherwise, less well known, preparing bibliographies and he is now working on a larger anthology of criticism introducing the backgrounds of modern Canadian poetry. All this kind of study which is very valuable on the academic side is also important to his poetry I feel, that it places him within the line of modern Canadian poets who have tried to interpret the real, the visible, the actual, directly in poetry. Somewhat in the way I suppose that all modern poetry in English does, including T.S. Eliot's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37767] \\\"Waste Land\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q581458] and Ezra Pound's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q163366] \\\"Cantos\\\" [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2701465] and e. e. cumming's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q298703] comedies and satires and Auden's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178698] poetry also. That is the characteristic of twentieth-century poetry is that its extreme realism and the bringing of the romantic conceptions of the last century to bear upon the actual world and showing that the conflict, the intense conflict that exists in the poet between his conception of things and what he sees before him. That you find in Gnarowski very much. He as a writer he is a meticulous craftsman, I don't know if that's symbolic [audience laughter]... He's also a meticulous craftsman and his poems seem to grow by accretion, very gradually. He writes with a stubborn integrity and knows what he thinks and what he's trying to say in a poem, they aren't just momentary fusions. They're highly worked up pieces of writing. There's a strong element of rationality and reality in this poetry, less of the flight of the emotions and the fantasy that's in most other poets. There's a very strong formal organization in his poetry, a clean speech, straight as the Greeks as Ezra Pound used to say in the past. His first book is entitled Postscript for St. James Street which has to do with, in some part anyhow, with the business world in which we live and he has chosen that quite consciously as a subject that could be turned into poetry, to take the business man, the real in that sense, St. James Street [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1526237] and see what can be made out of that imaginatively. Most poets when they treat a subject like that turn it into satire, because what else can you make out of St. James Street, but Gnarowski wants to keep his vision clear and straight for the fact to see what it really is without elevating too much or perhaps without caricaturing the reality, and it's a very interesting experiment. I'm sure you'll all enjoy listening to his poetry.\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:05:09\\nA couple of years ago I had the occasion to go up into North Western Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904], and I lived there for three or four years and more specifically on Port Arthur [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7230482] which is on the very shores of Lake Superior [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1066], and I kept looking at this magnificent and fantastic lake and it kept bothering me. It was too big and too vast and too meaningful and too ominous in many ways to be let off too easily. I also had a friend up there who was an anthropologist and archaeologist and a very good one, and he spent a lot of time going up into that country up around Lake Superior and he kept coming back with all sorts of wonderful thing, all sorts of relics of the past as it were. Gaffs and skulls and this and that which he kept finding and he told me that that part of the world had at one time had supported a pretty fantastic civilization of its own, a very peculiar civilization. And I looked at the lake, Lake Superior, and I decided I would try to write something about it, about the feelings that I think that this ominous body of water might have. A little poem I did for it is entitled \\\"Great Sea\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:06:30\\nReads \\\"Great Sea\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:10:40\\nAnd following along the same themes, a little poem entitled \\\"Amethyst Harbour\\\" which was occasioned by a visit of A.Y. Jackson [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3499926] and several friends who gathered in this quite magnificent place on the lake, just about this time of the year and you could look out across Thunder Bay [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9298873] and you saw nothing but ice-locked island and of course snow and ice continuing forever and ever. I always felt the nature, of course, there had not been overcome by man and that nature always threatened man and that there was a struggle, a conflict, a tension going on. So here is \\\"Amethyst Harbour\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:11:31\\nReads \\\"Amethyst Harbour\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:13:20\\nAs Louis Dudek pointed out, I've always been fascinated by those men who wheel and deal and who are responsible for much of the life of the nation, I suppose, of North America [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49], the so-called businessman, much maligned most of the time. I normally try to deal as properly as I can and in this instance I think I'm probably being unkind. This is a poem entitled \\\"Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:13:55\\nReads \\\"Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell\\\".\\n\\nAudience\\n00:15:26\\nApplause [one person].\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:15:30\\nUhh--Thank you. A little while ago, or a few years ago I should say, I had the occasion to go to a town south-east of here called Victoriaville [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q141731], I was there on business and I went through an old-age or an old-people's home and some of you may know what those places are like, I was profoundly affected by this experience and I tried to write something about it and I've called this little thing \\\"Provincia Nostra\\\".\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:15:56\\nReads \\\"Provincia Nostra”.\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:16:50\\nThis is for a friend who was lost in an automobile accident.\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:16:54\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:17:31\\nA very short thing, which I think fills the purpose of keeping me from becoming too serious.\\n \\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:17:46\\nReads unnamed poem. \\n\\nMike Gnarowski\\n00:17:59\\nThank you.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:18:00\\nLaughter and applause [cut off].\\n\\nIntroducer\\n00:18:03\\nWe'd like to express our thanks to Mike Gnarowski, Henry Beissel, and our special appreciation to Louis Dudek who made the supreme sacrifice of tearing himself away from McGill to come here and introduce them. [Audience applause]. Our next reading will be in two weeks, on Friday, January 27 Margaret Avison [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6759152] will be coming from Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172] to read her poetry and the following reading on Sat. Feb. 11, Paul Blackburn [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7149388] who is the Poet in Residence at the City College in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1093910] and the author of, among other things, Brooklyn, Manhattan Transit will be coming here to read his poetry. Thank you.\\n \\nEND\\n00:19:00\\n\",\"notes\":\" Mike Gnarowski reads from Postscript for St. James Street (Delta, 1965) and from other unknown sources.\\n\\n00:00 - Introduction by Louis Dudek [INDEX: Henry Beissel’s reading, realism in poetry, Canadian poetry since 1925, A.J.M. Smith, F.R. Scott, A.M. Klein, bibliographer, indexing smaller magazines, T.S. Eliot’s “Wastel Land”, Ezra Pound’s “Cantos”, e e cumming’s satires and comedies, W.H. Auden, romantic conceptions of 19th century vs. extreme realism of 20th century, Postscript for St. James Street by Gnarowski]\\n05:09 - Mike Gnarowski introduces “Great Sea” [INDEX: North Western Ontario, Port Arthur, Lake Superior, archaeological artifacts]\\n06:30 - Reads “Great Sea”\\n10:40 - Introduces “Amethyst Harbour” [INDEX: A.Y. Jackson, Thunder Bay, man vs. nature]\\n11:31 - Reads “Amethyst Harbour”\\n13:20 - Introduces “Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell” \\n13:55 - Reads “Portrait of a Man Come to Say Farewell”\\n15:30 - Introduces “Provincia Nostra” [INDEX: Victoriaville]\\n15:56 - Reads “Provincia Nostra”\\n16:50 - Introduces first line “For some inimitable action...”\\n16:54 - Reads first line “For some inimitable action...”\\n17:31 - Introduces first line “If I had legs like yours...”\\n17:46 - Reads first line “If I had legs like yours...”\\n18:03 - Introducer (unknown) says thank-you’s. [INDEX: Mike Gnarowski, Henry Beissel, Louis Dudek, McGill, Margaret Avison, Paul Blackburn]\\n19:00 - END OF EVENT.\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/henry-beissel-reads-with-introduction-by-louis-dudek-michael-gnarowski-in-same-reading/\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/henry_beissel_i086-11-003.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"henry_beissel_i086-11-003.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:49:40\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"119.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Henry_beissel_i086-11-003.mp3 [File 1 of 2]\\n\\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:00:00\\nLadies and Gentleman, um, let's see, what am I going to say? [Audience laughter and applause]...Well, glad to see y’all here. So, Professor Louis Dudek []https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3261787] from McGill University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201492] will introduce the two poets who’re reading this evening. \\n\\nAudience\\n00:00:31\\nApplause.\\n\\nLouis Dudek\\n00:00:40\\nI expected a longer introduction than that, it will be very fine. There are two kinds of readings that I like to attend very much, one kind is the sort that they're having tonight at McGill University, where a well-established poet who has been on the scene for forty or fifty years comes to read. Over there, it's A.J.M. Smith [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4647944] from Michigan State [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q270222], Canadian anthologist and well-known poet. With a poet like that, really makes no difference what he reads or how he reads it's just important to see him and even the tottering saint can perform miracles on occasions. The other kinds of poets I do like to hear very much are the sort that we'll hear tonight, Gnarowski and Beissel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1606507]. The McGill publicity department sent out a notice about A.J.M. Smith and described him as well-known Anthropologist of Canadian poetry. Actually, they corrected it in ink, they made the mistake twice though, probably a typist error. But they didn't know how correct they were, with the current scene in Canadian writing, there are primitive types around that are hard to classify and we need anthropologists...Well, Beissel and Gnarowski are not of this breed of poets who seem to have lost all sense of poetic organization or form, where you think that conventions, poetic conventions have been abolished and what is left are chaotic bits of internal monologue on the page. Of course, that kind of school may be very interesting to watch to see what comes out of it but at present, having watched it now for a few years I'm a little impatient often and tired of the magazines where this material occurs because it seems so easy to turn out and anyone has these bits of chaotic monologue going on. On the other hand, there are many poets still writing who are not following the conventional forms of English metrics and rhyme and so forth, who are turning out poems or at least watching what happens what happens with the words on the page and both the poets we're listening to tonight are of this kind. They are very careful craftsmen. Henry Beissel has the long list of achievements to his credits already, but two on that list strike me very much. One is, amongst many of the posts where he's taught, one is the University of Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q640694] is the kind of political stir that was created on the campus when his magazine Edge was brought into the classroom by one of the professors. That is, his poetry contains, content that can make one think, that is morally committed to certain issues in today's world. He's very strongly a moral poet on one side, and the other item in his biography is his new book which has just appeared New Wings for Icarus, which is extremely aesthetic at the same time that it is meaningful in this way. His poetry seems to combine two things, one is a moral urgency and on the other hand, at the same time, a romantic sense of language and of imagery and of emotion that goes with that, which are all very, very promising characteristics for a beginning poet, but I think that this New Wings for Icarus book is his first considerable book. So, without more ado, I introduce to you Henry Beissel. \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:05:30\\nWhen I considered the kind of poems that I might read this evening and the order in which to read them, I was thinking of the condition of this hall, as it was the last time I was here and I therefore chose two poems which I wrote in the West Indies [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q669037]. [Audience laughter]. They celebrate the sun in an ambiguous sort of way, I'm going to read them all the same, despite the fact that the conditions have changed. I don't know how much you need to know about the West Indies, I'm hoping—oh.\\n\\nAudience Member 1\\n00:06:15\\nAddresses Beissel [unintelligible].\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:06:17\\nIs this any better? Is there someone in the hall who can attend please to all this? \\n\\nAudience Member 2\\n00:06:28\\nAddresses Beissel [unintelligible].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:06:30\\nLaughter.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:06:39\\nWell I'll try to speak a little louder on my own, in spite of the microphone. I was saying that I don't know how much one needs to know of the West Indies to respond to this sort of poem, I'm hoping something of the West Indies might be in the poems, the first is called \\\"Pans at Carnival\\\". Pan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6610630] is the expression for a steel drum. The imagery in the poem is taken entirely from the steel drum and its use at Carnival [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4618], a feast that is about to be celebrated in Trinidad [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q754] in about a month. Rhythmically, the poem tries to catch something of the rhythm of the steel pan. \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:07:28\\nReads \\\"Pans at Carnival\\\".\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:10:18\\nThe second poem celebrates something of the violence that the sun, with which the sun blesses those parts of the world from which it never really disappears.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:10:34\\nReads \\\"Where the Sun Only\\\".\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:12:49\\nNext I want to read two parts from New Wings for Icarus. Time does not allow me to read the whole poem, because then I could read you nothing else. “Icarus” is a poem that is written in four parts, it is with some regret that I read only two, because to me it is like playing the second and fourth part of a symphony, but there is no alternative. \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:13:19\\nReads \\\"New Wings for Icarus\\\", part 2 from New Wings for Icarus.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:13:51\\nSorry, I'll start again. This is a hard one to read and this print is very small. I better hold it closer.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:13:59\\nReads \\\"New Wings for Icarus\\\", part 2 from New Wings for Icarus.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:19:41\\nReads \\\"New Wings for Icarus\\\", part 4 from New Wings for Icarus.\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:26:39\\nNow for a little sort of relaxation in-between, I find unrelieved serious poetry hard to bear myself, I'll read—unfortunately I do not write occasional poems terribly often, they always seem to grow into something much bigger than I can handle, but the next two poems I want to read you are occasional poems, poetry can come out of anything of course, and this one came out of an encounter in a house of Inquisition in Cartagena [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q657461], in Colombia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q739], it is really self-explanatory. It's called \\\"En la Casa de Inquisición\\\". \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:27:40\\nReads \\\"En la Casa de Inquisición\\\".\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:29:23\\nThe next poem leads me on to the last set of poems, but you won't discover that until you hear the last two poems. This poem is dedicated to my daughter, when she was 1 and a half, the first stanza deals with the circumstances of her birth, which were somewhat elaborate, there were firemen. The second stanza deals with her present—this would be the past from the time of the poem, the second deals with her present, and the third with her future. \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:30:07\\nReads \\\"To My Daughter at Age 1 1/2\\\".\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:33:25\\nAnd now I come to the final two poems. They belong together and are part of a— we agreed not to torture you and not to read for more than 30 minutes this evening and I am trying to stick to that. This is rather the beginning of something that I may never live to finish, the entire thing is supposed to have some 26 poems, of which you will hear the first two, one is a prologue and the other one is called \\\"Adam Enter Eve\\\". In the prologue, a character introduces himself who is to play his part in the rest of the poem. It's not really a dramatic poem, although it's, well I don't think of it as a drama, although it has dramatic qualities. Anyway, I don't like to be my own critic. I prefer just to read you the poem. The whole cycle will be called \\\"The Dancer from the Dance\\\" that is as you no doubt know, a quotation from Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213]. \\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:34:45\\nReads \\\"Prologue\\\" from \\\"The Dancer from the Dance\\\".\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:37:04\\nReads \\\"Adam Enter Eve\\\".\\n\\nEND\\n00:49:40\\n[Recording continues on mike_gnarowski_i006-11-122.mp3].\\n\",\"notes\":\"Henry Beissel reads largely from New Wings for Icarus (Coach House Press, 1966).\\n\\n00:00 - Unknown speaker introduces Louis Dudek [INDEX: McGill University, Louis Dudek]\\n00:40 - Louis Dudek introduces Henry Beissel [INDEX: A.J.M. Smith from Michigan State as Canadian Anthropologist of poetry, Mike Gnarowski, poetic organization and conventions, new schools of poetry, ‘chaotic monologue’, English metrics and rhyme, University of Alberta, Edge Magazine, New Wings for Icarus]\\n05:30 - Henry Beissel speaks [INDEX: West Indies]\\n06:39 - Henry Beissel introduces “Pans at Carnival” [INDEX: imagery of a steel drum, Trinidad]\\n07:28 - Reads “Pans at Carnival”\\n10:18 - Introduces “Where the Sun Only” [INDEX: imagery of the sun]\\n10:34 - Reads “Where the Sun Only”\\n12:49 - Introduces “New Wings for Icarus”, part 2 [INDEX: Icarus]\\n13:51 - Re-starts poem\\n19:41 - Reads “New Wings for Icarus”, part 4\\n26:39 - Introduces “En la Casa de Inquisition” [INDEX: occasional poetry, Cartagena, Columbia]\\n27:40 - Reads “En la Casa de Inquisition”\\n29:23 - Introduces “To my Daughter at Age 1 1/2” [INDEX: poem for his daughter]\\n30:07 - Reads “To my Daughter at Age 1 1/2”\\n33:25 - Introduces “Prologue” and “Adam Enter Eve” from “The Dancer from the Dance” [INDEX: Yeats]\\n34:45 - Reads “Prologue”\\n37:04 - Reads “Adam Enter Eve”\\n49:40 - END OF RECORDING.\\n\\nHoward Fink List of Poems:\\n“Henry Beissel”\\nJanuary 13, 1967\\nwith reel information\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/henry-beissel-reads-with-introduction-by-louis-dudek-michael-gnarowski-in-same-reading/\"}]"],"score":4.012125},{"id":"1259","cataloger_name":["Mahtab,Banihashemi"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Margaret Avison at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 27 January 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_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."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Avison, Margaret"],"creator_names_search":["Avison, Margaret"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\" http://viaf.org/viaf/79128508\",\"name\":\"Avison, Margaret\",\"dates\":\"1918-2007\",\"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.\\n\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Performer\",\"Author\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"contributors_names_search":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/30784426\",\"name\":\"Kiyooka, Roy\",\"dates\":\"1926-1994\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Series_organizer_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Performance_Date":[1967],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"BASF\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"01:20:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 1 27\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date specified in The Georgian's \\\"Op-Ed\\\"\",\"source\":\"Supplemental Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in The Georgian's \\\"Op-Ed\\\"\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"contents":["margaret_avison_i086-11-002.mp3\n\nRoy Kiyooka\n00:00:00\nIn 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6759152] 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q391028], 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q504114], Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904]; some early years were spent in Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1951]; she graduated from Victoria College [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3551503], the University of Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q180865], 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172]. 1956-57 she was a Guggenheim Fellow [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P6594] 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q283256], and in 1966, W.W. Norton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1282208] in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] issued The Dumbfounding [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42189162], her latest book. Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure in introducing to you Margaret Avison.\n \nUnknown\n00:02:59\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:02:59\nI don't know about the reading but I do know about the pleasure of meeting Roy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789] 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1339] 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11299] 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76409], 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. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:05:28\nReads unnamed poem by Charles Bukowski.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:06:30.\nThat'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.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:07:01\nReads “Are you a root or a tendermint” by Al Fowler [published in Lines 6].\n\nAudience \n00:07:20\nLaughter.\n\nMargaret Avison\n00:07:30\nThis is one by Gerry Gilbert [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5552756], called \"Zoo\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:07:39\nReads \"Zoo\" by Gerry Gilbert.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:08:00\nI 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.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:08:33\nReads \"The Delinquent\" by an unnamed author [audience laughter throughout].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:10:20\nIt 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\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:10:30\nResumes reading \"The Delinquent\" [audience laughter throughout].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:11:33\nThere's an awful line in the next verse. [Audience laughter].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:11:41\nResumes reading \"The Delinquent\" [audience laughter throughout].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:12:43\nIt 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17978] means Toronto Transit Commission, and the Ditch is an open cut on the Yonge subway between Bloor and Rosedale. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:13:38\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:14:37\nThe second subway poem...a little child, it's called \"Subway Station Why Not.\"\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:14:53\nReads \"Subway Station Why Not\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:15:56\nThis next one is St. Clair Avenue, where I live on the car tracks. It's called \"Insomniac Report\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:16:11\nReads \"Insomniac Report\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:17:07\nFeels 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.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:18:18\nReads \"Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:19:21\nAnd 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...\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:19:36\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:20:36\nThe 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. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:21:01\nReads unnamed poem.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:21:51\nThere's a daybreak bus I have to catch and this one is called \"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:22:03\nReads \"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:23:07\nI 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q322922], The Technological Society [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1607727], a book he wrote that's a little mad but very stirring.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:23:56\nReads [“Making Senses”, published later in No Time]. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:26:39\nThere's one here that is just the equivalent to sketching, I guess. I know a poet in Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297] who used to go and sit around in the Art Institute [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q239303], 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.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:27:38\nReads unnamed poem. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:28:25\nNow 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. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:29:01\nReads \"The Seven Birds\" [published later in sunblue].\n\nMargaret Avison\n00:30:15\nI think I should read a long, fierce poem. This is not by me except translated. It's the poem of Gyula Illyes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q381107], called \"Of Tyranny, In One Breath\". Ilona Duczynska [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q967353] 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1781]. 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.\"\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:32:27\nReads English translation of \"Of Tyranny, In One Breath\" by Gyula Illyes [published later in Always Now, Vol. 1].\n\nMargaret Avison\n00:39:26\nSo, 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\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:40:19\nReads \"Bestialities\", parts 1-5 [from The Dumbfounding; audience laughter throughout].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:41:14\nThe 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...\n \nAudience Member 1\n00:41:26\nDon't explain, just say it.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:41:28\nAlright, you can tell me then, eh? \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:41:33\nReads \"Bestialities\", part 6 [from The Dumbfounding].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:41:40\nNow, 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.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:42:17\nReads \"Bestialities\", part 6 [from The Dumbfounding].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:42:35\n“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. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:43:09\nReads \"The Absorbed\" [from The Dumbfounding].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:45:50\nReads [\"Thaw\" from Winter Sun].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:47:37\nI would like to read two other weather ones and then I'll give you a break. This is “Two Mayday Selves”.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:47:54\nReads \"Two Mayday Selves\" [from The Dumbfounding].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:49:42\nAnd the last one is late spring, early summer. Jet-plane and terminuses, called \"Black-White Under Green, May 18th 1965”.\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:50:06\nReads \"Black-White Under Green, May 18th 1965” [published as “May 18 1965” in The Dumbfounding].\n\nUnknown\n00:52:53\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nMargaret Avison\n00:52:54\nI'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. \n \nMargaret Avison\n00:53:34\nReads \"The Valiant Vacationist\" [published later in Always Now: Vol. 1].\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:56:54\nThen the one \"To Professor X, Year Y\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n00:57:03\nReads \"To Professor X, Year Y\" [from Winter Sun].\n\nMargaret Avison\n00:59:57\nI'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\".\n \nMargaret Avison\n01:00:22\nReads \"The Absolute, the Day\" [published later as “Absolute” in sunblue and in Always Now Vol. 2].\n\nMargaret Avison\n01:01:39\nThis one is \"The Earth that Falls Away\". There's an epigraph from Beddoes’ [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2165597] Death's Jest-Book [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42188673]: \"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. \n \nMargaret Avison\n01:02:32\nReads \"The Earth that Falls Away\" [from The Dumbfounding].\n \nMargaret Avison\n01:15:52\nReads [\"He Couldn’t Be Safe (Isaiah 53:5)”, published later in sunblue].\n \nMargaret Avison\n01:16:54\nThere's one more and I'll stop with this one. \n \nMargaret Avison\n01:17:00\nReads [section from “The Jo Poems”, part 6. Published later in No Time. Subtitled “Having” in Always Now: Vol. 2].\n \nEND\n01:17:54\n[Cut off abruptly].\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1967, Margaret Avison was teaching English at Scarborough College. The Dumbfounding had been published the previous year.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nMargaret Avison met Roy Kiyooka, who was teaching at Sir George Williams University at a reading in 1963 at the University of British Columbia.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript and print catalogue by Rachel Kyne\\n\\nOriginal print catalogue, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\\n\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>2 CDs>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol-1/oclc/32566813&referer=brief_results\",\"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.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/always-now-the-collected-poems-vol-1/oclc/834732786&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Avison, Margaret. Always Now: The Collected Poems, Vols 1-3. Erin, Ontario: The Porcupine’s Quill, 2003. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/dumbfounding-poems/oclc/635930&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Avison, Margaret. The Dumbfounding. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/no-time/oclc/751204318&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Avison, Margaret. No Time. Hantsport: Lancelot Press; London: Brick Books, 1989. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/sunblue/oclc/867940471&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Avison, Margaret. sunblue. Hantsport: Lancelot Press; London: Brick Books, 1978.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/winter-sun/oclc/320960000&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Avison, Margaret. Winter Sun. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1960. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-avison-at-sgwu-1967/#reading1-1\",\"citation\":\"“Avison: Next Poet to Read”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 27 January 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/from-there-to-here-a-guide-to-english-canadian-literature-since-1960/oclc/441669839&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature Since 1960. Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1974. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/15-canadian-poets-times-2/oclc/622296707&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Geddes, Gary (ed). Fifteen Canadian Poets Times Two. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=O5UtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4p8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3951,6182119&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Series Coming Up At University”. The Gazette. Saturday, December 31, 1966: page 39.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/margaret-avison/oclc/556890573&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Redekop, Ernest. Margaret Avison: Studies in Canadian Literature. Toronto: The Copp Clark Publishing Company, 1970. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-avison-at-sgwu-1967/#reading1-1\",\"citation\":\"Simco, Bob. “Georgiantics”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 27 January 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-avison-at-sgwu-1967/#reading1-1\",\"citation\":\"Thoms, Kathleen. “Margaret Avison’s Poetry”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 3 February 1967. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548673921024,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.264Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0002_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0002_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Margaret Avison Tape Box - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0002_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0002_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Margaret Avison Tape Box - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0002_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0002_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Margaret Avison Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0002_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0002_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Margaret Avison Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/margaret_avison_i086-11-002.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"margaret_avison_i086-11-002.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:17:54\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"187 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Roy Kiyooka\\n00:00:00\\nIn 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6759152] 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q391028], 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q504114], Ontario [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1904]; some early years were spent in Alberta [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1951]; she graduated from Victoria College [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3551503], the University of Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q180865], 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172]. 1956-57 she was a Guggenheim Fellow [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P6594] 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q283256], and in 1966, W.W. Norton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1282208] in New York [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60] issued The Dumbfounding [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42189162], her latest book. Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure in introducing to you Margaret Avison.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:02:59\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:02:59\\nI don't know about the reading but I do know about the pleasure of meeting Roy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789] 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1339] 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11299] 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76409], 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. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:05:28\\nReads unnamed poem by Charles Bukowski.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:06:30.\\nThat'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.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:07:01\\nReads “Are you a root or a tendermint” by Al Fowler [published in Lines 6].\\n\\nAudience \\n00:07:20\\nLaughter.\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n00:07:30\\nThis is one by Gerry Gilbert [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5552756], called \\\"Zoo\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:07:39\\nReads \\\"Zoo\\\" by Gerry Gilbert.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:08:00\\nI 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.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:08:33\\nReads \\\"The Delinquent\\\" by an unnamed author [audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:10:20\\nIt 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\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:10:30\\nResumes reading \\\"The Delinquent\\\" [audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:11:33\\nThere's an awful line in the next verse. [Audience laughter].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:11:41\\nResumes reading \\\"The Delinquent\\\" [audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:12:43\\nIt 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17978] means Toronto Transit Commission, and the Ditch is an open cut on the Yonge subway between Bloor and Rosedale. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:13:38\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:14:37\\nThe second subway poem...a little child, it's called \\\"Subway Station Why Not.\\\"\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:14:53\\nReads \\\"Subway Station Why Not\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:15:56\\nThis next one is St. Clair Avenue, where I live on the car tracks. It's called \\\"Insomniac Report\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:16:11\\nReads \\\"Insomniac Report\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:17:07\\nFeels 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.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:18:18\\nReads \\\"Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:19:21\\nAnd 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...\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:19:36\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:20:36\\nThe 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. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:21:01\\nReads unnamed poem.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:21:51\\nThere's a daybreak bus I have to catch and this one is called \\\"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:22:03\\nReads \\\"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:23:07\\nI 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q322922], The Technological Society [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1607727], a book he wrote that's a little mad but very stirring.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:23:56\\nReads [“Making Senses”, published later in No Time]. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:26:39\\nThere's one here that is just the equivalent to sketching, I guess. I know a poet in Chicago [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1297] who used to go and sit around in the Art Institute [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q239303], 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.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:27:38\\nReads unnamed poem. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:28:25\\nNow 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. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:29:01\\nReads \\\"The Seven Birds\\\" [published later in sunblue].\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n00:30:15\\nI think I should read a long, fierce poem. This is not by me except translated. It's the poem of Gyula Illyes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q381107], called \\\"Of Tyranny, In One Breath\\\". Ilona Duczynska [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q967353] 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 [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1781]. 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.\\\"\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:32:27\\nReads English translation of \\\"Of Tyranny, In One Breath\\\" by Gyula Illyes [published later in Always Now, Vol. 1].\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n00:39:26\\nSo, 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\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:40:19\\nReads \\\"Bestialities\\\", parts 1-5 [from The Dumbfounding; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:41:14\\nThe 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...\\n \\nAudience Member 1\\n00:41:26\\nDon't explain, just say it.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:41:28\\nAlright, you can tell me then, eh? \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:41:33\\nReads \\\"Bestialities\\\", part 6 [from The Dumbfounding].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:41:40\\nNow, 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.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:42:17\\nReads \\\"Bestialities\\\", part 6 [from The Dumbfounding].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:42:35\\n“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. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:43:09\\nReads \\\"The Absorbed\\\" [from The Dumbfounding].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:45:50\\nReads [\\\"Thaw\\\" from Winter Sun].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:47:37\\nI would like to read two other weather ones and then I'll give you a break. This is “Two Mayday Selves”.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:47:54\\nReads \\\"Two Mayday Selves\\\" [from The Dumbfounding].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:49:42\\nAnd the last one is late spring, early summer. Jet-plane and terminuses, called \\\"Black-White Under Green, May 18th 1965”.\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:50:06\\nReads \\\"Black-White Under Green, May 18th 1965” [published as “May 18 1965” in The Dumbfounding].\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:52:53\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n00:52:54\\nI'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. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:53:34\\nReads \\\"The Valiant Vacationist\\\" [published later in Always Now: Vol. 1].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:56:54\\nThen the one \\\"To Professor X, Year Y\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n00:57:03\\nReads \\\"To Professor X, Year Y\\\" [from Winter Sun].\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n00:59:57\\nI'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\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n01:00:22\\nReads \\\"The Absolute, the Day\\\" [published later as “Absolute” in sunblue and in Always Now Vol. 2].\\n\\nMargaret Avison\\n01:01:39\\nThis one is \\\"The Earth that Falls Away\\\". There's an epigraph from Beddoes’ [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2165597] Death's Jest-Book [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q42188673]: \\\"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. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n01:02:32\\nReads \\\"The Earth that Falls Away\\\" [from The Dumbfounding].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n01:15:52\\nReads [\\\"He Couldn’t Be Safe (Isaiah 53:5)”, published later in sunblue].\\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n01:16:54\\nThere's one more and I'll stop with this one. \\n \\nMargaret Avison\\n01:17:00\\nReads [section from “The Jo Poems”, part 6. Published later in No Time. Subtitled “Having” in Always Now: Vol. 2].\\n \\nEND\\n01:17:54\\n[Cut off abruptly].\\n\",\"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).\\n\\nI086-11-002.1=AC\\n\\n(Rachel has indexed poems)\\n00:00- 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    \\tScarborough College (Toronto), Guggenheim Fellow 1956-7, Canadian and American    \\tmagazines; books: The Winter Sun won Governor General’s Award in 1960, The    Dumbfounding (W.W. Norton in New York, 1966).]\\n02:59- Avison introduces poem by Charles Bukowski, first line “She had gone wrong somewhere...” [INDEX: Roy Kiyooka (meeting), Angry Art Week in NYC, dedicate    \\treadings to Angry Art Week, Bach, Manhattan, American people, American poet,        \\tMimeograph Magazine.]\\n05:28- Reads section from a poem by Charles Bukowski “She had gone wrong somewhere...”\\n06:30- 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.]\\n07:01- Reads poem by Al Fowler, first line “Quote: Are you a root or a tender mint tea?”.\\n07:30- Introduces poem by Gerry Gilbert called “Zoo”.\\n07:39- Reads poem by Gerry Gilbert, called  “Zoo”.\\n08:00- Introduces poem called “The Delinquent”  by unknown child. [INDEX: friend in Toronto, in grade seven.]\\n08:33- Reads “The Delinquent”.\\n10:20- Interjects comment about poem.\\n10:30- Continues reading “The Delinquent”.\\n11:33- Interjects comment about poem.\\n11:41- Continues reading “The Delinquent”.\\n12:43- Explains “The Delinquent”, Introduces poem, first line “Inside the TTC’s fence...”.  [INDEX: Toronto poem, footnotes, TTC means Toronto Transit Commission, Yonge       \\tSubway between Bloor and Rosedale.]\\n13:38- Reads first line “Inside the TTC’s fence...”. [INDEX: cities, Toronto, transportation, subway; from an unknown source.]\\n14:37- Introduces “Subway Station Why Not”. [INDEX: subway poem, child, from unknown source]\\n14:53- Reads “Subway Station Why Not”. [INDEX: cities, Toronto,  transportation, subway, child; from an unknown source.]\\n15:56- Introduces “Insomniac Report”. [INDEX: St. Clair Avenue (Toronto), car tracks.]\\n16:11- Reads “Insomniac Report”. [INDEX: cities, Toronto, night, streets, sounds, sleep; from an unknown source.]\\n17:07- Introduces “Is that You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?”. [INDEX: students writing exams, teaching, theory, idealism; from an unknown source.]\\n18:18- Reads “Is that You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?”. [INDEX: school, teaching, work, children, student.]\\n19:21- 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.]\\n19:36- Reads first line “No instant morality for us...”. [INDEX: school, teaching, work,        children, students.]\\n20:36- Introduces incomplete poem, first line “The boy with the brilliant promises...”. [INDEX: teacher’s answer, two stanzas, incomplete poem; from an unknown source.]\\n21:01- Reads first line “The boy with the brilliant promises...”. [INDEX: work, school,        teaching, children, students.]\\n21:51- Introduces \\\"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way.\\\". [INDEX: daybreak bus; from an unknown source]\\n22:03- Reads \\\"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way.\\\". [INDEX: nature, time, day.]\\n23:07- 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.]\\n23:55- Reads first line “A junk truck stopped beside my bus...”. [INDEX: cities, bus, truck, metal, urban, waste, stone, wreck, yard, grass, gargoyle.]\\n26:39- Introduces first line, “Grey by water...”. [INDEX: sketching, poet in Chicago, Art       Institute; from an unknown source.]\\n27:38- Reads first line “Grey by water...”. [INDEX: language, play, process, sketch.]\\n28:25- Introduces “The Seven Birds”. [INDEX: poem with syntax, corner of Bathurst and     College Street in Toronto, First World War building; from sunblue in “Sketches”.]\\n29:01- Reads “The Seven Birds”.\\n30:15- 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).]\\n32:27- Reads “Of Tyranny in One Breath” by Gyula Illyes.\\n39:26- Explains “Of Tyranny in One Breath”, introduces “Bestialities”. [INDEX: revolution, Gyula Illyes, insane asylum; from The Dumbfounding.]\\n40:19- Reads “Bestialities”. [INDEX: play, animals, language, puns.]\\n41:14- Introduces first line “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka...”.      [INDEX: misunderstood poem, 8x11 typing paper.]\\n41:26- Audience member interjects, asks her to read it without explanation.\\n41:28- Avison reads first line “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka...”.\\n41:40- Explains “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka...”. [INDEX:        crumpled up letter, mite; from unknown source.]\\n42:17- Re-reads “Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka...”.\\n42:35- Introduces “Be Absorbed”. [INDEX: cold day, glass pane, sky; from unknown source.]\\n43:09- Reads “Be Absorbed”. [INDEX: nature, weather, glass, window, cold, winter, ice.]\\n45:50- Reads “The Thaw”. [INDEX: city, children, weather, winter, spring, streets, dog, sparrow, pigeons, boy; published as “Thaw” in Winter Sun.]\\n47:37- Introduces poem, first line “The grackle shining in long grass...”. [INDEX weather   poem, May; Howard Fink list “To May Day”.]\\n47:54- Reads “The grackle shining in long grass...”. [INDEX: colours, birds, grackle, city,   streets, winter, day, breath; from unknown source.]\\n49:42- Introduces “Black-White Under Green”. [INDEX: late spring, early summer, Jet-plane terminuses, May 18th, 1965.]\\n50:06- Reads “Black-White Under Green”. [INDEX: nature, flowers, birds, plane, flight,     leaves, snow, sky, sea, music, ice; from The Dumbfounding.]\\n52:53.49- END OF RECORDING.\\n  \\nPoem (by stated title or first line):                                     \\nFIRST CD: I086-11-002.1=AC                         \\t\\t           Time            Duration\\n\\n[\\\"She had gone wrong...\\\"]by Charles Bukowski                        00:05:28      \\t01:01\\n[\\\"Quote: Are you a root or a tender mint tea?\\\"] by Al Fowler    00:07:01      \\t00:28\\n\\\"Zoo\\\" by Gerry Gilbert                                                       \\t00:07:39      \\t00:19\\n\\\"The Delinquent\\\" by an unknown, seven year-old friend  \\t00:08:33      \\t04:10\\n[\\\"Inside the TTC's fence...\\\"]                                               \\t00:13:38      \\t00:58\\n\\\"Subway Station Why Not\\\"                                    \\t        \\t00:14:53      \\t01:03  \\n\\\"Insomniac Report\\\"                                                            \\t00:16:11      \\t00:55\\n\\\"Is That You/Me Standing on My/Your Feet?\\\"                 \\t00:18:18      \\t01:02\\n[\\\"No instant morality for us...\\\"]                                          \\t00:19:36      \\t00:58\\n[\\\"The boy with the brilliant promises\\\"]                              \\t00:21:01      \\t00:50\\n\\\"October 21, '66, at a bus stop on the way\\\"                        \\t00:22:03      \\t01:02\\n [\\\"A junk truck stopped beside my bus\\\"]                           \\t00:23:56      \\t02:40\\n[\\\"Grey by water...\\\"]                                                            \\t00:27:38      \\t00:45\\n\\\"The Seven Birds\\\"                                                              \\t00:29:01      \\t01:13\\n\\\"Of Tyranny in One Breath\\\" by Gyula Illyes         \\t        \\t00:32:27      \\t04:58\\n\\\"Bestialities\\\"                                                           \\t        \\t00:40:19      \\t00:54\\n\\\"Said the mite on the single page of a sad letter: Eureka.\\\"      00:41:33      \\t00:57\\n\\\"Be Absorbed\\\"                                                                    \\t00:43:09      \\t02:40\\n\\\"The Thaw\\\"                                                                        \\t00:45:50      \\t01:40\\n\\\"The grackle shining in long grass\\\"                                   \\t00:47:54      \\t00:46\\n\\\"Black-White Under Green,\\\" May 18th, 1965                   \\t00:50:06      \\t02:47\\n\\nI086-11-002.2=AC \\n\\n00:00- Avison introduces “The Valiant Vacationist”. [INDEX: written more than thirty years before, writing when young; from Elsewhere.]\\n00:41- Reads “The Valiant Vacationist”. [INDEX: vacation, travel, walking, picnic, park, city, landing, steps, trees, bridge, tourist, stranger.]\\n04:00- Reads “To Professor X, Year Y”. [INDEX: November, waiting, uniformity, crowd,        downtown, history, historian, death, snow; from The Winter Sun.]\\n07:04- Introduces “The Absolute, the Day”. [INDEX: introductory poem to “The Earth that Falls Away”.] \\n07:28- Reads “The Absolute, the Day”. [INDEX: power, rabbi, Judaism, good, morality, love.]\\n08:46- 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.]\\n09:38- 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.]\\n22:58- 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.]\\n24:00- Reads first line “Sir, you have nothing...”. [INDEX emptiness, nothing, snow, heart, cup, fullness, joy; from unknown source. .]\\n25:01.03- END OF RECORDING.\\n \\nPoems Time Stamped with Duration\\nSECOND CD: I086-11-002.2=AC                         \\t\\tTime            \\tDuration\\n\\\"The Valiant Vacationist\\\"                                                  \\t00:00:41      \\t03:15\\n\\\"To Professor X, Year Y\\\"                                                   \\t00:04:10      \\t02:55\\n\\\"The Absolute, the Day\\\"                                                    \\t00:07:28      \\t01:15\\n\\\"The Earth that Falls Away\\\"                                              \\t00:09:38      \\t13:15\\n\\\"He chose a street where he wouldn't be safe\\\"                   \\t00:22:58      \\t01:00\\n \\\"Sir, you have nothing\\\"                                                     \\t00:24:06      \\t00:55\\n\\nHoward Fink List:\\n“Marg Avison” reading her own poetry 21/1/67 reel information.\\n\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-avison-at-sgwu-1967/\"}]"],"score":4.012125},{"id":"1263","cataloger_name":["Masoumeh,Zaare"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Margaret Atwood and Alden Nowlan at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 13 October 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"MARGARET ATWOOD & ALDEN NOWLAN Recorder October 13, 1967 3.75 ips on 1.mil tape, 1/2 track\" written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. \"ATWOOD & NOWLAN I006/SR36\" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-036\" also written on sticker on the reel."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 2"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Atwood, Margaret","Nowlan, Alden"],"creator_names_search":["Atwood, Margaret","Nowlan, Alden"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/109322990\",\"name\":\"Atwood, Margaret\",\"dates\":\"1939-\",\"notes\":\"Internationally acclaimed novelist, poet, critic and activist Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, November 18,  1939. She lived in Ottawa until 1946, when her family settled in Leaside, a suburb of Toronto. Atwood entered Victoria College, University of Toronto, graduating with honours in 1961. Her first published collection of short stories was Double Persephone (Hawkshead Press, 1961). By 1962 she had received her MA in English from Radcliffe College in the United States, working on further graduate work at Harvard University between 1962-3 and in 1965-7. Atwood published her second collection, The Circle Game (Anansi, 1966), which won the Governor General Award for Poetry. She wrote articles and reviews for Alphabet, Canadian Literature and Poetry among other publications, and poems for Kayak, Quarry and the Tamarack Review. Poems published in her book The Animals in That Country (Oxford University Press, 1968) won first prize in Canada’s 1967 Centennial Commission poetry competition. In 1970, she published three books, Procedures for Underground (Oxford University Press), Time, and The Journals of Susanna Moodie (Oxford University Press). Between 1971 and 1973, Atwood worked as an editor and on the board of directors for the House of Anansi press in Toronto, which in 1972 published Power Politics. Upon the discovery at Harvard that there was no published critical study of Canadian literature, she herself wrote and published Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (Anansi, 1971), which created a stir of controversy, but by 1982 it had sold more than 85,000 copies. Since 1973, she has lived with novelist and activist Graeme Gibson, producing one daughter, Eleanor Jess in 1967. Atwood taught and lectured at several Universities across Canada, the US and Australia, including University of British Columbia, University of Alberta, Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) (1967-68) and at York University, Toronto. A selection of her publications include Surfacing (Simon & Schuster, 1972), You Are Happy (Harper &Row, 1974), Selected Poems (Oxford University Press) in 1976, Two-Headed Poems (Simon & Schuster, 1978), True Stories (Oxford University Press, 1981) and Second Words (Anansi, 1982). Her 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (McClelland & Stewart) became one of her most popular and critically acclaimed works. In 1986 she was appointed the Berg Chair at New York University, as well as serving as writer-in-residence at several other Universities. She co-founded and served as chair to the Writer’s Union of Canada in 1982-3, and served as president of the Canadian Centre of International PEN from 1984-6. She has subsequently published dozens of books, including Cat’s Eye (McClelland & Stewart, 1988), The Robber Bride (Doubleday, 1993), Alias Grace (Nan A. Talese, 1996), The Blind Assassin (Nan A. Talese, 2000), Oryx and Crake (2003), The Penelopiad (Canongate, 2005) and The Tent (Bloomsbury, 2006). Along with many other publications of her critical essays, Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing 1970-2005 (Verago) came out in 2005. Her most recent novel, Year of the Flood was published in 2009 by Doubleday Press. Her many prizes and honours include the Booker Prize, the E.J. Pratt Medal (1961), The Radcliffe Medal (1980), the Commonwealth Writers Prize (1992), and she is a Companion of the Order of Canada. Atwood continues to work as spokesperson on behalf of human rights and the environment. \",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/61671170\",\"name\":\"Nowlan, Alden\",\"dates\":\"1933-1983\",\"notes\":\"Poet Alden Nowlan was born in 1933, in a small rural community near Windsor, Nova Scotia. Nowlan worked as a young man on farms, lumbermills and as a sawmill helper before he left Nova Scotia for New Brunswick to take a position as editor at The Heartland Observer and the night-news editor of the Saint John Telegraph-Journal. Nowlan published his first book of poetry, The rose and the puritan (New Brunswick University) in 1958, which was followed closely by A darkness in the earth (Hearse Press, 1959), Wind in a rocky country (Emblem Books, 1961), Under the ice (Ryerson Press, 1961) and The things which are (Contact Press,1962). In 1967 he was awarded the Governor General’s Award for his collection Bread, wine and salt (Clarke, Irwin). Nowlan was offered a writer-in-residence position at the University of New Brunswick, which he held until his death in 1983. His other publications include The mysterious naked man (Clarke, Irwin, 1969), Between tears and laughter (Clarke, Irwin, 1971), I’m a stranger here myself (Clarke, Irwin, 1974), Smoked glass (Clarke, Irwin, 1977) and I might not tell everybody this (Clarke, Irwin, 1982). Nowlan was also involved in theatre, and wrote three stage plays with Walter Learning: Frankenstein (Clarke, Irwin, 1976), The incredible murder of Cardinal Tosca (Learning Productions, 1978) and The dollar woman (Borealis Press, 1981). Nowlan was awarded a Doctor of Letters from the University of New Brunswick, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Nowlan has also published an autobiography, Various persons named Kevin O’Brien (Clarke, Irwin, 1973), a collection of short stories, Miracle at Indian River (Clarke, Irwin, 1968), a travel book Campobello, the outer island (Clarke, Irwin, 1975) and collected twenty-seven of his magazine articles in Double exposure (Brunswick Press, 1978). Numerous titles were published posthumously, including Alden Nowlan, early poems (Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1983), The best of Alden Nowlan (Lancelot Press, 1993), Will ye let the mummers in? (Clarke, Irwin, 1984), An exchange of gifts: poems new and selected (Irwin, 1985), Alden Nowlan: selected poems (Irwin, 1985).\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"contributors_names_search":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/30784426\",\"name\":\"Kiyooka, Roy\",\"dates\":\"1926-1994\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Presenter\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Series_organizer_name":["Kiyooka, Roy"],"Performance_Date":[1967],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"\",\"AV_types\":\"\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"\",\"recording_type\":\"\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"\",\"physical_composition\":\"\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"},{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"Half-track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 10 13\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on sticker on the back of the tape's box\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Location specified in printed announcement \\\"Georgantics\\\" (Supplemental material)\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Margaret Atwood reads from The Circle Game (House of Anansi, 1966) as well as poems later published in The Animals in that Country (Oxford University Press, 1968). Alden Nowlan reads from Bread Wine and Salt (Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1967) along with some poems from unknown sources.  "],"contents":["margaret_atwood_alden_nowlan_i006-11-036.mp3\n\nMargaret Atwood\n00:00:00\nI should apologize to begin with for my voice. I don't usually sound quite this much like Tallulah Bankhead [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q255815]. I have the Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340] plague. The first poem is called \"This is a Photograph of Me,\" and it's the first poem in The Circle Game [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7723073].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:00:22\nReads \"This is a Photograph of Me\" from The Circle Game.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:01:35\nThe next poem is called \"Camera,\" and is dedicated to somebody I knew who liked to take pictures. \n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:01:44\nReads \"Camera\" [from The Circle Game].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:03:24\nAnd a small poem called \"Carved Animals\".\n\nMargaret Atwood\n00:03:28\nReads \"Carved Animals\" [from The Circle Game].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:04:25\nNow some more recent poems, which I should explain were mostly written in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] when I was living there recently. The first one called \"At the Tourist centre in Boston\". Now Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] does have a Tourist centre in Boston [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q100].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:04:50\nReads \"At the Tourist centre in Boston\" [published later in The Animals in that Country [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7713834]].\n\nMargaret Atwood\n00:06:48\nAnd a poem called \"The Green Man\", which is dedicated to the Boston Strangler [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2855440]. \n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:06:56\nReads \"The Green Man\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:08:03\nThis poem called \"A Fortification\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:08:08\nReads \"A Fortification\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n\nMargaret Atwood\n00:09:17\nAnd this is a poem dedicated to my landlady who didn't remain my landlady for very long, called \"The Landlady\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:09:29\nReads \"The Landlady\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:10:47\nAnd this poem called, \"A Foundling\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:10:52\nReads \"A Foundling\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:11:41\nAnd this poem, which has no title.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:11:49\nReads [\"Untitled\"].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:12:58\nAnd a poem called \"Chronology\", which I wrote in one of my more paranoid states of mind. \n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:13:06\nReads \"Chronology\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:14:39\nAnd here's my love poem to the, our large, friendly neighbour to the south. \n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:14:50\nReads \"Backdrop addresses cowboy\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:16:28\nThen a slightly happier poem called \"A Voice\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:16:36\nReads \"A Voice\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:17:40\nAnd this one called, \"An Elegy for the Giant Tortoises\", which I wrote when I heard that they were planning to use a certain South Pacific island for the building of an airstrip. \n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:17:59\nReads \"An Elegy for the Giant Tortoises\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:19:19\nAnd this poem called, \"It is Dangerous to Read Newspapers\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:19:26\nReads \"It is Dangerous to Read Newspapers\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n\nMargaret Atwood\n00:20:49\nReads \"I was reading a scientific article\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:22:20\nAnd the last poem. \n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:22:25\nReads \"The Reincarnation of Captain Cook\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:23:44\nThank you.\n \nAudience\n00:23:46\nApplause [cut off abruptly].\n \nUnknown\n00:23:49\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \n \nRoy Kiyooka\n00:23:58\n...for quite a number of years as a journalist in the Maritimes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q731613], and this evening he is here with his wife and son and will be reading to you. Ladies and gentlemen, Alden Nowlan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4713563].\n \nAudience\n00:24:17\nApplause.\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:24:26\nThank you, Roy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789]. First of all, I want to reassure everyone that I'm not going to read everything that's in this. I feel that probably there are some who are terrified when they see this, you know. It's really basically laziness that I haven't shortened anything out, I simply have wads of things here. \n \nAudience\n00:24:55\nLaughter.\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:24:56\nNo no, not that one, I'm not going to read them all, definitely, definitely not. \n \nUnknown\n00:25:09\nSilence [pause].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:25:19\nFirst of all I have a very, very bad poem that I can't resist reading. I realized that it's sort of a bad beginning to start off with a poem that the poet himself considers a very bad one, but I wrote this when I arrived here this afternoon. To the natural egotism of a poet, you see, I can't resist offering it to this sort of captive audience here. [Audience laughter]. \"Poem for the Ritz Carlton\". [Audience laughter].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:26:06\nReads \"Poem for the Ritz Carlton\" [audience laughter throughout].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:26:30\nThat isn't really as critical of the Ritz Carlton as it sounds, because I sort of like the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q173882], too, you see. [Audience laughter]. Next, I'd like to read some poems from my new book, Bread Wine and Salt, which is going to be published by Carter when, the first week in November, at three dollars and fifty cents. [Audience laughter]. That is the commercial.  \"I, Icarus\".\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:27:15\nReads \"I, Icarus\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:28:34\nReads \"Sailors\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:30:06\nThis poem is entitled \"The Cinnamon Bears\", which sounds at first as if it were some sort of an animal cooking. But actually, what these cinnamon bears were, was back around the turn of the century in New Brunswick [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1965], as I've been told, there were all sorts of touring side-show type of things, you know, that, fortune tellers, and...people with a monkey, organ grinders with a monkey, and all this type of, sort of strolling pyres or wandering minstrels that existed up until the advent of radio and television. And it was a terrific thing, of course, in these backwoods communities. No doubt throughout Canada and the United States, when one of these people arrived. And among the, among these people were men who had trained bears, who, because of their colouration, were called cinnamon bears. And this poem actually is sort of a found poem, because it's not so much a creative thing as it is the transcription of a conversation which I happened to overhear between an old couple in northern New Brunswick. A man and his wife in their seventies, when they, suddenly something brought back these memories of these days of the organ grinders and the cinnamon bears. And as I say, I sort of made the poem more or less by simply transcribing the things which they said to one another, which it seemed to me was sort of a poetry, a form of poetry itself. \n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:32:20\nReads \"The Cinnamon Bears\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:33:21\nReads \"Britain Street, St. John, New Brunswick” [published as “Britain Street” in Bread, Wine and Salt].\n\nAlden Nowlan\n00:34:22\nThis is another, sort of a found poem, I'm not really terribly convinced that it's a poem at all. Last year, when I had a quite serious illness, one afternoon I was in the waiting room at the doctor's office, and the only thing that seemed to lay at hand for me to read was a copy of one of these Confessions magazines entitled Secret Life. [Audience laughter]. And as I glanced through it, it seemed to me, all that I actually read of it, you know, were these sort of captions at the top of the articles, and some of the big type in it. But it seemed to me really, as I glanced through it, that it had, that it contained sort of a crazy poetry of its own. At least, in the mood that I was in at the time, I sort of responded to it as though it were a crazy sort of poetry. And so as I sat there I sort of jotted down some of these things from the magazine, and ever since I've been trying to pass it off as a poem. \n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:35:37\nReads \"Secret Life\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt; audience laughter throughout].\n \nAudience\n00:36:39\nLaughter. \n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:36:57\nReads \"In Our Time\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:40:51\nReads \"The Changeling\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:41:49\nReads \"The Hollow Men\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:42:38\nThis poem is entitled \"Ancestral Memories Evoked by Attending the Opening of the Playhouse in Fredericton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2138], New Brunswick\". And I'm a little afraid that many of you will feel that it is sort of pointless. I'm not sure really but what you'd have to be completely immersed in the atmosphere of New Brunswick to get the real point of it, but. But that said, not implying any superiority on the part of New Brunswickers, unfortunately. Anyway.\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:43:26\nReads \"Ancestral Memories Evoked by Attending the Opening of the Playhouse in Fredericton, New Brunswick\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:44:36\nReads \"Every Man Owes God a Death\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:46:41\nThis poem, for no particular reason, is entitled \"The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner\". \n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:46:48\nReads \"The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:48:23\nThis is a poem that came out of a serious illness that I had last year, and it's entitled \"In the Operating Room\". \n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:48:38\nReads \"In the Operating Room\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:50:05\nI have a few other recent poems I'll dig out of these. \n \nUnknown\n00:50:12\nAmbient Sound [pause; Nowlan turning pages].\n\nAlden Nowlan\n00:50:47\nAs I sort through these, I'm silently cursing myself for not having done this before I came here. \n \nUnknown\n00:50:52\nAmbient Sound [pause; Nowlan turning pages].\n\nAlden Nowlan\n00:51:20\nHere's a fairly recent poem which isn't a political poem at all, but a human poem. And one that I wrote as a result of watching on television the debates in the United Nations [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1065] on the Middle East [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7204] crisis. And one of the horrible things I felt as I watched it was how completely dehumanized it all was, that the real, human issues had been lost sight of, and sort of drowned in an ocean of resolutions and memos from embassies and all this sort of things. And one night when they televised these sessions through until about four o'clock, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q851] spoke, and he delivered certainly a very bigoted speech, and one that as a speech I wouldn't have agreed with, but I felt an admiration for him, because it had seemed to me that he was the only really human thing that had happened there all day. You know, that certainly he was a bigoted old man, full of thousands of years of hatred, but it was a human hatred, expressed in a human manner, something that the rest of them had completely lost sight of. And as a result of this feeling I wrote this poem, \"For Jamil Baroody [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96384169], Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United Nations on the Occasion of his Address to the Security Council, June 1967\".\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:53:21\nReads \"For Jamil Baroody, Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United Nations on the Occasion of his Address to the Security Council, June 1967\".\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:56:26\nReads \"Fireworks\".\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:57:34\nReads \"Two Poems for the Nova Scotia Department of Highways\".\n \nAlden Nowlan\n00:59:31\nFinally, this is a poem entitled \"State Visit\", and the motivation of it, like one of the earlier ones I read, was sort of this same feeling of frustration at the complete dehumanization of politics as we feel it today, and particularly, this sort of apotheosis of world leaders into some sort of a symbol, so they even, I think, begin to think of themselves in these sort of abstract terms, rather than as a human being. And out of--this is sort of, I suppose, perhaps to a degree sort of a bitter little poem, but it stemmed from an emotion which I'm sure many of us feel. \n \nAlden Nowlan\n01:00:27\nReads \"State Visit\".\n \nEND\n01:01:39\n[Cut off abruptly]."],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1967, Margaret Atwood had moved to Montreal and took a position at the Sir George Williams University English Department. She taught four courses, as well as working on The Animals in that Country, The Journals of Susanna Moodie, Procedures for Underground and finished The Edible Woman.\\n\\nIn 1967, Nowlan was awarded the Governor General’s Award for Bread Wine and Salt which was published the same year. He was also offered a position as writer-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick during this time.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nAtwood became an important award-winning poet and critic in Canada by the late 60‘s. Sir George Williams English Department hired Atwood in 1967 as an English lecturer, after she had graduated from Harvard.  \\n\\nHis direct connection to Sir George Williams is unknown, but Nowlan was one of the most popular and important Maritime poets of the sixties and seventies.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, print catalogue, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones.\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"http://www.ccca.ca/history/ozz/english/authors/nowlan_alden.html\",\"citation\":\"“Alden Nolan (1933-1983)”. One Zero Zero: A Virtual Library of English Canadian Small      Presses, 1945-2044. Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art: The Canadian Art Database. Toronto: York University. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-poems/oclc/977851868&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Atwood, Margaret. Selected Poems. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1977. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/animals-in-that-country/oclc/301739674&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Atwood, Margaret. The Animals in that Country. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1968. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/circle-game/oclc/549399081&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Atwood, Margaret. The Circle Game. Toronto, House of Anansi, 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-twentieth-century-poetry-in-english/oclc/840722670&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bartlett, Donald R. “Nowlan, Alden”. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Hamiton, Ian (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/contemporary-canadian-poem-anthology/oclc/489958766&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George, ed. The Contemporary Canadian Poem Anthology. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1984. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-atwood-and-alden-nowlan-at-sgwu-1967/\",\"citation\":\"Charny, Marty. “Georgantics.” The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 13 October 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"ttps://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol-1/oclc/32566813&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Findley, Timothy. “Atwood, Margaret (1939-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial        Literatures in English. Benson, Eugene; L.W. Connolly (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 vols. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. “Nowlan, Alden”. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Benson,       Eugene and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press, 2001. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/15-canadian-poets-times-2/oclc/622296707&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Geddes, Gary (ed). Fifteen Canadian Poets Times Two. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/poets-of-contemporary-canada-1960-1970/oclc/833713141&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Mandel, Eli (ed). Poets of Contemporary Canada 1960-1970. Montreal: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1972. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/bread-wine-and-salt/oclc/4321706&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Nowlan, Alden. Bread, Wine and Salt. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/concordia/offices/archives/docs/postgrad/Postgrad-1967-Spring.pdf\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. Post-Grad. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, Spring 1967, page 20. \"},{\"url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-atwood-and-alden-nowlan-at-sgwu-1967/\",\"citation\":\"“Poets Next Week:”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, October 1967.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-the-novel/oclc/470223344&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Rowland, Susan. “Margaret Atwood 1939- (Canadian)”. Encyclopedia of the Novel. Schellinger, Paul (ed.); Christopher Hudson, Marijke Rijsberman (asst. eds.). Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1998. 2 vols.\"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=np8tAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PKAFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4195,2837932&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“SGWU To Have Poetry Series”. The Gazette. 14 September 1967, page 15.\"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=waYtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=u58FAAAAIBAJ&pg=7250,4345207&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"Stephens, Anna. “Poetry- Anywhere, Anytime”. The Gazette. 20 October 1967, page 10. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. OP-ED. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 6 October 1967, page 6. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Kibble, Matthew. “Atwood, Margaret Eleanor, 1939-”. Literature Online biography. Proquest Information and Learning Company, H.W. Wilson Company, 2006. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548812333056,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0036_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0036_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Atwood and Nowlan Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0036_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0036_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Atwood and Nowlan Tape Box - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0036_side.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0036_side.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Atwood and Nowlan Tape Box - Spine\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006_11_0036_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0006_11_0036_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Atwood and Nowlan Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/margaret_atwood_alden_nowlan_i006-11-036.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"margaret_atwood_alden_nowlan_i006-11-036.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:01:39\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"148 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Margaret Atwood\\n00:00:00\\nI should apologize to begin with for my voice. I don't usually sound quite this much like Tallulah Bankhead [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q255815]. I have the Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340] plague. The first poem is called \\\"This is a Photograph of Me,\\\" and it's the first poem in The Circle Game [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7723073].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:00:22\\nReads \\\"This is a Photograph of Me\\\" from The Circle Game.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:01:35\\nThe next poem is called \\\"Camera,\\\" and is dedicated to somebody I knew who liked to take pictures. \\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:01:44\\nReads \\\"Camera\\\" [from The Circle Game].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:03:24\\nAnd a small poem called \\\"Carved Animals\\\".\\n\\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:03:28\\nReads \\\"Carved Animals\\\" [from The Circle Game].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:04:25\\nNow some more recent poems, which I should explain were mostly written in the United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] when I was living there recently. The first one called \\\"At the Tourist centre in Boston\\\". Now Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] does have a Tourist centre in Boston [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q100].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:04:50\\nReads \\\"At the Tourist centre in Boston\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7713834]].\\n\\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:06:48\\nAnd a poem called \\\"The Green Man\\\", which is dedicated to the Boston Strangler [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2855440]. \\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:06:56\\nReads \\\"The Green Man\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:08:03\\nThis poem called \\\"A Fortification\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:08:08\\nReads \\\"A Fortification\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n\\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:09:17\\nAnd this is a poem dedicated to my landlady who didn't remain my landlady for very long, called \\\"The Landlady\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:09:29\\nReads \\\"The Landlady\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:10:47\\nAnd this poem called, \\\"A Foundling\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:10:52\\nReads \\\"A Foundling\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:11:41\\nAnd this poem, which has no title.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:11:49\\nReads [\\\"Untitled\\\"].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:12:58\\nAnd a poem called \\\"Chronology\\\", which I wrote in one of my more paranoid states of mind. \\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:13:06\\nReads \\\"Chronology\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:14:39\\nAnd here's my love poem to the, our large, friendly neighbour to the south. \\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:14:50\\nReads \\\"Backdrop addresses cowboy\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:16:28\\nThen a slightly happier poem called \\\"A Voice\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:16:36\\nReads \\\"A Voice\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:17:40\\nAnd this one called, \\\"An Elegy for the Giant Tortoises\\\", which I wrote when I heard that they were planning to use a certain South Pacific island for the building of an airstrip. \\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:17:59\\nReads \\\"An Elegy for the Giant Tortoises\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:19:19\\nAnd this poem called, \\\"It is Dangerous to Read Newspapers\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:19:26\\nReads \\\"It is Dangerous to Read Newspapers\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n\\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:20:49\\nReads \\\"I was reading a scientific article\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:22:20\\nAnd the last poem. \\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:22:25\\nReads \\\"The Reincarnation of Captain Cook\\\" [published later in The Animals in that Country].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:23:44\\nThank you.\\n \\nAudience\\n00:23:46\\nApplause [cut off abruptly].\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:23:49\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \\n \\nRoy Kiyooka\\n00:23:58\\n...for quite a number of years as a journalist in the Maritimes [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q731613], and this evening he is here with his wife and son and will be reading to you. Ladies and gentlemen, Alden Nowlan [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4713563].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:24:17\\nApplause.\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:24:26\\nThank you, Roy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3445789]. First of all, I want to reassure everyone that I'm not going to read everything that's in this. I feel that probably there are some who are terrified when they see this, you know. It's really basically laziness that I haven't shortened anything out, I simply have wads of things here. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:24:55\\nLaughter.\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:24:56\\nNo no, not that one, I'm not going to read them all, definitely, definitely not. \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:25:09\\nSilence [pause].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:25:19\\nFirst of all I have a very, very bad poem that I can't resist reading. I realized that it's sort of a bad beginning to start off with a poem that the poet himself considers a very bad one, but I wrote this when I arrived here this afternoon. To the natural egotism of a poet, you see, I can't resist offering it to this sort of captive audience here. [Audience laughter]. \\\"Poem for the Ritz Carlton\\\". [Audience laughter].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:26:06\\nReads \\\"Poem for the Ritz Carlton\\\" [audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:26:30\\nThat isn't really as critical of the Ritz Carlton as it sounds, because I sort of like the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q173882], too, you see. [Audience laughter]. Next, I'd like to read some poems from my new book, Bread Wine and Salt, which is going to be published by Carter when, the first week in November, at three dollars and fifty cents. [Audience laughter]. That is the commercial.  \\\"I, Icarus\\\".\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:27:15\\nReads \\\"I, Icarus\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:28:34\\nReads \\\"Sailors\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:30:06\\nThis poem is entitled \\\"The Cinnamon Bears\\\", which sounds at first as if it were some sort of an animal cooking. But actually, what these cinnamon bears were, was back around the turn of the century in New Brunswick [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1965], as I've been told, there were all sorts of touring side-show type of things, you know, that, fortune tellers, and...people with a monkey, organ grinders with a monkey, and all this type of, sort of strolling pyres or wandering minstrels that existed up until the advent of radio and television. And it was a terrific thing, of course, in these backwoods communities. No doubt throughout Canada and the United States, when one of these people arrived. And among the, among these people were men who had trained bears, who, because of their colouration, were called cinnamon bears. And this poem actually is sort of a found poem, because it's not so much a creative thing as it is the transcription of a conversation which I happened to overhear between an old couple in northern New Brunswick. A man and his wife in their seventies, when they, suddenly something brought back these memories of these days of the organ grinders and the cinnamon bears. And as I say, I sort of made the poem more or less by simply transcribing the things which they said to one another, which it seemed to me was sort of a poetry, a form of poetry itself. \\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:32:20\\nReads \\\"The Cinnamon Bears\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:33:21\\nReads \\\"Britain Street, St. John, New Brunswick” [published as “Britain Street” in Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n\\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:34:22\\nThis is another, sort of a found poem, I'm not really terribly convinced that it's a poem at all. Last year, when I had a quite serious illness, one afternoon I was in the waiting room at the doctor's office, and the only thing that seemed to lay at hand for me to read was a copy of one of these Confessions magazines entitled Secret Life. [Audience laughter]. And as I glanced through it, it seemed to me, all that I actually read of it, you know, were these sort of captions at the top of the articles, and some of the big type in it. But it seemed to me really, as I glanced through it, that it had, that it contained sort of a crazy poetry of its own. At least, in the mood that I was in at the time, I sort of responded to it as though it were a crazy sort of poetry. And so as I sat there I sort of jotted down some of these things from the magazine, and ever since I've been trying to pass it off as a poem. \\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:35:37\\nReads \\\"Secret Life\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nAudience\\n00:36:39\\nLaughter. \\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:36:57\\nReads \\\"In Our Time\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:40:51\\nReads \\\"The Changeling\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:41:49\\nReads \\\"The Hollow Men\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:42:38\\nThis poem is entitled \\\"Ancestral Memories Evoked by Attending the Opening of the Playhouse in Fredericton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2138], New Brunswick\\\". And I'm a little afraid that many of you will feel that it is sort of pointless. I'm not sure really but what you'd have to be completely immersed in the atmosphere of New Brunswick to get the real point of it, but. But that said, not implying any superiority on the part of New Brunswickers, unfortunately. Anyway.\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:43:26\\nReads \\\"Ancestral Memories Evoked by Attending the Opening of the Playhouse in Fredericton, New Brunswick\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:44:36\\nReads \\\"Every Man Owes God a Death\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:46:41\\nThis poem, for no particular reason, is entitled \\\"The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner\\\". \\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:46:48\\nReads \\\"The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:48:23\\nThis is a poem that came out of a serious illness that I had last year, and it's entitled \\\"In the Operating Room\\\". \\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:48:38\\nReads \\\"In the Operating Room\\\" [from Bread, Wine and Salt].\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:50:05\\nI have a few other recent poems I'll dig out of these. \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:50:12\\nAmbient Sound [pause; Nowlan turning pages].\\n\\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:50:47\\nAs I sort through these, I'm silently cursing myself for not having done this before I came here. \\n \\nUnknown\\n00:50:52\\nAmbient Sound [pause; Nowlan turning pages].\\n\\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:51:20\\nHere's a fairly recent poem which isn't a political poem at all, but a human poem. And one that I wrote as a result of watching on television the debates in the United Nations [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1065] on the Middle East [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7204] crisis. And one of the horrible things I felt as I watched it was how completely dehumanized it all was, that the real, human issues had been lost sight of, and sort of drowned in an ocean of resolutions and memos from embassies and all this sort of things. And one night when they televised these sessions through until about four o'clock, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q851] spoke, and he delivered certainly a very bigoted speech, and one that as a speech I wouldn't have agreed with, but I felt an admiration for him, because it had seemed to me that he was the only really human thing that had happened there all day. You know, that certainly he was a bigoted old man, full of thousands of years of hatred, but it was a human hatred, expressed in a human manner, something that the rest of them had completely lost sight of. And as a result of this feeling I wrote this poem, \\\"For Jamil Baroody [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96384169], Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United Nations on the Occasion of his Address to the Security Council, June 1967\\\".\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:53:21\\nReads \\\"For Jamil Baroody, Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United Nations on the Occasion of his Address to the Security Council, June 1967\\\".\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:56:26\\nReads \\\"Fireworks\\\".\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:57:34\\nReads \\\"Two Poems for the Nova Scotia Department of Highways\\\".\\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n00:59:31\\nFinally, this is a poem entitled \\\"State Visit\\\", and the motivation of it, like one of the earlier ones I read, was sort of this same feeling of frustration at the complete dehumanization of politics as we feel it today, and particularly, this sort of apotheosis of world leaders into some sort of a symbol, so they even, I think, begin to think of themselves in these sort of abstract terms, rather than as a human being. And out of--this is sort of, I suppose, perhaps to a degree sort of a bitter little poem, but it stemmed from an emotion which I'm sure many of us feel. \\n \\nAlden Nowlan\\n01:00:27\\nReads \\\"State Visit\\\".\\n \\nEND\\n01:01:39\\n[Cut off abruptly].\",\"notes\":\"Margaret Atwood reads from The Circle Game (House of Anansi, 1966) as well as poems later published in The Animals in that Country (Oxford University Press, 1968). Nowlan reads from Bread Wine and Salt (Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1967) along with some poems from unknown sources.  \\n\\n00:00- Atwood introduces “This is a Photograph of Me”. [INDEX: Montreal plague, Tallula Bankhead, The Circle Game; from The Circle Game.]\\n00:22- Reads “This is a Photograph of Me”.\\n01:35- Introduces “The Camera”. [INDEX: dedication; published as “Camera” in The Circle \\tGame]\\n01:44- Reads “Camera”.\\n03:28- Reads “Carved Animals”. [INDEX: from The Circle Game, part III of “Some Objects of Wood and Stone”.]\\n04:25- Introduces “At the tourist center in Boston”. [INDEX: recent poems, written in the   United States, Canada’s Tourist Center in Boston; from The Animals in that Country.]\\n04:50- Reads “At the tourist centre in Boston”.\\n06:48- Introduces “The Green Man” [INDEX: dedicated to the Boston Strangler; from   unknown source.]\\n06:56- Reads “The Green Man”.\\n08:03- Reads “A fortification”. [INDEX: from The Animals in that Country]\\n09:17- Introduces “The landlady”. [INDEX: dedicated to Atwood’s landlady; from The Animals in that Country.]\\n09:29- Reads “The landlady”.\\n10:47- Reads “A foundling”. [INDEX: from The Animals in that Country.]\\n11:41- Reads “Untitled”.\\n12:58- Introduces “Chronology”. [INDEX: written in a paranoid state of mind; from unknown source.]\\n13:06- Reads “Chronology”.\\n14:39- Introduces “Backdrop addresses cowboy”. [INDEX: U.S.A.]\\n14:50- Reads “Backdrop addresses cowboy”. [INDEX: from The Animals in that Country.]\\n16:36- Reads “A voice”. [INDEX: from The Animals in that Country.]\\n17:40- Introduces “Elegy for giant tortoises”. [INDEX: South Pacific Island as airstrip; from The Animals in that Country.]\\n17:59- Reads “Elegy for giant tortoises”.\\n19:19- Reads “It’s dangerous to read newspapers”. [INDEX: from The Animals in that        Country.]\\n20:49- Reads “I was reading a scientific article”. [INDEX: from The Animals in that Country.]\\n22:25- Reads “The reincarnation of Captain Cook”. [INDEX: from The Animals in that      Country.]\\n23:44- End of Atwood’s Reading.\\n23:49- CUT in recording.\\n23:58- Roy Kiyooka introduces Alden Nowlan (recording starts mid-introduction). [INDEX: Journalist from the Maritimes, with wife and son.]\\n24:26- Alden Nowlan introduces the reading. [INDEX: shortened poems, poems for reading.]\\n25:19- Introduces “Poem for the Rich Carlton”. [INDEX: bad poem, written upon arrival in Montreal, egotism of poet, audience.]\\n26:06- Reads “Poem for the Rich Carlton”.\\n26:30- Explains “Poem for the Rich Carlton”. [INDEX: crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral.]\\n26:43- Introduces “I, Icarus”. [INDEX: from new book, Bread Wine and Salt, published by Carter at $3.50.]\\n27:15- Reads “I, Icarus”.\\n28:34- Reads “Sailors” [INDEX: from Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n30:06- Introduces “The Cinnamon Bears”. [INDEX: animal cooking, turn of the century, New Brunswick, touring side-show, fortune tellers, monkey, organ grinders, strolling pyres, wandering minstrels, advent of radio and television, Canada, United States, trained bears, found poem, creative, transcription of a conversation, northern New Brunswick, form of poetry; from Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n32:30- Reads “The Cinnamon Bears”.\\n33:21- Reads “Britain Street, St. John, New Brunswick”. [INDEX: published as “Britain     Street” in Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n34:22- Introduces “The Secret Life”. [INDEX: found poem, maybe not a poem, serious illness, doctor’s office, Confessions magazines called Sacred Life, crazy poetry; from Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n35:37- Reads “Secret Life”.\\n36:57- Reads “In Our Time” [INDEX: from Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n40:51- Reads “The Changeling” [INDEX: from Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n41:49- Reads “The Hollow Men”. [INDEX: from Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n42:38- Introduces \\\"Ancestral Memories Evoked by Attending the Opening of the Playhouse in Fredericton, New Brunswick.\\\" [INDEX: atmosphere of New Brunswick; from   Bread, Wine and Salt.].]\\n43:26- Reads \\\"Ancestral Memories Evoked by Attending the Opening of the Playhouse in Fredericton, New Brunswick.\\\"\\n44:36- Reads “Every Man Owes God a Death”. [INDEX: from Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n46:41- Introduces “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner”. [INDEX: title, from Bread, Wine and Salt.]\\n46:48- Reads “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner”.\\n48:23- Introduces “In the Operating Room”. [INDEX: serious illness the previous year, from Bread, Wine and Salt.].]\\n48:38- Reads “In the Operating Room”.\\n51:20- Introduces “For Jamol Barudi, Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United Nations on the Occasion of his Address to the Security Council, June 1967”. [INDEX: political      poem, human poem, television debates, United Nations, Middle East Crisis,    dehumanization, bigoted speech.]\\n53:21- Reads “For Jamol Barudi, Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United Nations on    the Occasion of his Address to the Security Council, June 1967”.\\n56:26- Reads “Fireworks”.\\n57:34- Reads “Two Poems for the Nova Scotia Department of Highways”.\\n59:31- Introduces “State Visit”. [INDEX: dehumanization of politics, apotheosis of world     leaders into a symbol, abstract terms, emotion.]       \\n1:00:27- Reads “State Visit”.\\n1:01:27- RECORDING ENDS (suddenly).\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-atwood-and-alden-nowlan-at-sgwu-1967/\"}]"],"score":4.012125}]