Thank you for coming to the 15th James Reaney Memorial Lecture this past Saturday. A recording of the lecture is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEQ0KjnWuDc

Thanks especially to our wonderful speaker, actor and director Jeff Culbert, who read poems from both One Man Masque and Souwesto Home and played songs from his “Donnelly Sideshow” collection. Jeff also spoke about directing Chris Doty’s play The Donnelly Trial in 2005.

Thanks also to Josh Lambier of Wordsfest for his work as host and guide to an afternoon of tales.  Our wonderful audience members shared memories of being in James Reaney’s plays, including productions of One Man Masque at their high schools in North Bay and Sault Ste. Marie. Hilary Bates Neary, local historian and former Listeners’ Workshop member, remembered being in Listen to the Wind in 1966.

Thank you Sarah Caetano and the London Public Library for providing a home for this event. Next year’s lecture will look at poet Colleen Thibaudeau’s Lozenges: Poems in the Shapes of Things and its publication by James Reaney’s Alphabet Press in 1965.

The James Reaney Memorial Lecture series celebrates the life and work of Southwestern Ontario poet and dramatist James Reaney, who was born on a farm near Stratford, Ontario and found a creative home in London, Ontario.

Earlier Wordsfest lectures on James Reaney:

2016: John Beckwith on James Reaney and Music 
2017: Tom Smart on James Reaney: The Iconography of His Imagination 
2018: James Stewart Reaney on James Reaney’s Plays for Children
2019: Stan Dragland on James Reaney on the grid
2020: Stephen Holowitz and Oliver Whitehead on James Reaney Words and Music
2021: Kydra Ryan and Adam Corrigan-Holowitz on Tales for a Reaney Day: Two Great Writers, Three Short Stories
2022: Terry Griggs for Stan Dragland: James Reaney Off the Grid
2023: Katy Clark on The Beckwith Connection: An Afternoon of Big Hits from the Reaney and Beckwith Songbook