There are two events celebrating the work of dramatist James Reaney this month and next:
Patricia Nacamoto as Mattie Medal in Gyroscope: “Is it true, Gregory La Selva, is it true that one of the conditions of your marriage was that, were that you were never, never to read her stuff?”
October 28-30 and November 4-6: James Reaney’s play Gyroscope, directed by Adam Corrigan Holowitz and presented by AlvegoRoot Theatre.
All performances at Manor Park Memorial Hall, 11 Briscoe Street, London, Ontario.
( ( 0 ) ) Listen to an interview with Adam Corrigan Holowitz and Janis Nickleson (who played Hilda La Selva in the 1981 production of Gyroscope!): Gyroscope Conversations on Soundcloud
November 6 at 12:00 noon at Wordsfest: The James Reaney Memorial Lecture at Museum London. Terry Griggs, author and former student of the late Stan Dragland (1942-2022), will present “James Reaney Off the Grid”, the lecture Stan had planned to give.
Wordsfest is at Museum London, 421 Ridout Street North, London, Ontario.
Sunday November 6 at 12:00 pm EDT — Join us in-person or by webinar at Wordsfest for the 13th Annual James Reaney Memorial Lecture. We are honoured to have Terry Griggs, author and former student of the late Stan Dragland, present “James Reaney Off the Grid”, the lecture Stan had planned to give.
Stan Dragland (1942-2022)
For Dragland, the lecture he gave at Wordsfest in 2019 only scratched the surface of what he wanted to say about James Reaney’s work. “In my previous lecture I pointed out that he was only sometimes limited as an artist by the grids he so loved. Today I want to stress the Reaney who knew how important it is to be able to pry or bounce one’s mind outside of inherited, imprisoning systems, who knew how to improvise, who could make plays out of the simplest things he found in his own environment.”
When: Sunday November 6 at 12:00 pm Where: Wordsfest at Museum London, 421 Ridout Street North, London, Ontario
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.
October 28 to November 6 — Don’t miss AlvegoRoot Theatre‘s production of James Reaney’s play Gyroscope later this month. For Director Adam Corrigan Horowitz, this play is “a shape-shifting comedy of marriage, art and passion!”
About the play: When poet Hilda La Selva got married, she made her husband Greg swear to never read any of her poetry, a vow he inevitably fails to keep. As their relationship lists and tilts, they are pursued by an intrepid PhD student intent on putting their marriage under the microscope.
The performers are Kydra Ryan, Steven Barber, Patricia Nacamoto, Elizabeth Durand, and Dan Ebbs.
Content Advisory: Gyroscope contains sensitive content including references of suicide. If you would like more information before purchasing a ticket please contact AlvegoRoot.
In this excerpt from James Reaney’s play Gyroscope, Gregory La Selva, lab technician, seeks to restore his self-esteem and win back the love of his wife, Hilda, a famous poet. To win Hilda’s respect, he must prove to her that he too can write poetry. He enlists the help of Mattie Medal, PhD student, to help him write a poem that will win him a place at the Harpers’ Poetry Guild alongside Hilda.
Scene Six: The Husband Takes a Chance on Being Skinned by Apollo*
PUZZLE gets down from the chair. We focus on MATTIE, with wagon, who is talking to GREG.
GREG: Look, is there some sort of crash course in writing poetry? I’d like to crack that bunch of Harp Guild Workshop Poetry ladies wide open. MATTIE: You’re a man; the contest is open to women only. GREG: I’m desperate enough for a sex-change operation. MATTIE: You’re just jealous of your wife. GREG: I’m even more ashamed of my sterility. I have no dreams. She is virile. I am not. HILDA: Gregory La Selva couldn’t write a poem if he tried. He should stick to being a poem. GREG: She’ll be sorry she said that. I’m going to do as you say and start remembering things from childhood, keep a diary, get a pen and an ink bottle. MATTIE: A typewriter is okay. GREG: I’m so dull, why hasn’t she left me ages ago? How do I get more introverted? Is there anything I could take? NICHOLAS: Did you look at my scrapbook of intoxicating mushrooms? GREG: Nicholas, it’s no use — showing me pictures of mushrooms. I want to see the mushrooms in person before I start collecting. NICHOLAS: Opium. GREG: Opium. MATTIE: Awfully good at first — friend did a thesis on it about it. Your mind starts out being a palace; then… the palace turns into a boarding house, then a flophouse for tramps, then the tenements of criminals whose windows are striped with bars. The palace has turned into a prison. GREG: I don’t care. Show me the palace, Nicholas, get me a dress. NICHOLAS: What’s your size? GREG: In a dress? (gives NICHOLAS a slip of paper) MATTIE: For a start, Mr. La Selva, underline the words you really like in this forty-thousand-word dictionary. Nicholas, go to Agnes Dactyl’s place and see what she has in second-hand dresses. Let’s see these measurements. Very well.
She gives them to NICHOLAS, who slowly proceeds to AGNES’s store.
Oh boy, this is a new part of my thesis – the birth of a poet…
∞♥∞♥∞
*Note: “Being skinned by Apollo” is a reference to the fate of Marsyas, the satyr who challenges Apollo to a musical contest with the Muses as judges. In 1963 James Reaney wrote an adaptation of Euripides’ play The Bacchae (405 BCE), which was never produced. In Gyroscope, Gregory La Selva disguises himself as a woman to enter Hilda’s poetry contest, just as Pentheus goes dressed as a woman to spy on the Bacchae’s Dionysian rites. Gregory wins the poetry contest and avoids the gruesome fate of Pentheus at the hands of the Bacchae.
Gyroscope was produced in a workshop at Western University in early 1980, and performed in a rehearsed reading at Blue Mountain Poetry Festival that summer. Keith Turnbull later directed the play at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, May 14 to June 21, 1981. The cast members were Jerry Franken, Janis Nickleson, Rita Jiminez, Brian Dooley, and Nancy Palk.
James Reaney (holding mug of tea) with members of the Tarragon Theatre production of Gyroscope: Keith Turnbull, Dorothy Chamberlin, Nancy Palk, Suzanne Turnbull, and Janis Nickleson, May 1981. Photo courtesy Les Kohalmi.
Gyroscope is available in Reaney Days in the West Room: Plays of James Reaney (2009), edited by David Ferry and published by Playwrights Canada Press.
The local poet is riding his bike uptown On a fairly hot summer day Bent on Jumbo’s Ice Cream booth Before mailing a poem to Chimaera at the Post Office At Jumbo’s Ice Cream booth there are Thirty flavours available including— Licorice, fudge, lemon, orange, apple, grape, Banana, chocolate, cherry, Maple Walnut (my favourite) Vanilla, of course, peppermint, strawberry, raspberry— Weren’t there some vegetable ones? Do I remember— Onion ice cream? And this pair of double dip skim milk flavours Cost only a nickel each! And the ceiling was of pressed tin! So, I plunk down a nickel for a Maple Walnut! And so out the door bent on making the cone Last till I reach the Post Office door— The Post Office is French Provincial with 4 clocks. The poet holds his bicycle up with his left hand. Walks slowly licking as he proceeds. Two little girls say scornfully: “He’s acting Just like a little kid!” But he thinks— “Isn’t this what life is all about?”
James Reaney, 2005
September 1975: James Reaney at the Nihilist Picnic, Poplar Hill, Ontario.
“Ice Cream” is from Souwesto Home (2005) and available from Brick Books.
We were saddened to learn of writer, editor, and literary critic Stan Dragland’s passing earlier this month. Stan Dragland was a colleague of James Reaney’s at Western University (1970-1989) and a mentor and champion to writers and poets across Canada.
James Reaney on the Grid, an expanded version of Stan Dragland’s 2019 James Reaney Memorial Lecture, will be available later this fall from The Porcupine’s Quill.
From the Introductory section: This started out as the tenth annual James Reaney Memorial Lecture. It was delivered in London, Ontario, on November 2, 2019. That version turns out to have only scratched the surface of what I’ve been finding to say about Reaney’s literary career. As the talk grew into what it is now, it became ever clearer to me that Reaney’s legacy includes one unmistakable masterpiece, the Donnelly trilogy, a play in three parts so magnificent that it stands, or ought to stand, with the work of literary greats anywhere. But there are many other works of real importance, plus a few that may perhaps be worth reading only to someone like me, interested in all of Reaney, because of what all of it has to say about the best of his work […]
James Reaney’s translation of Pierre Falcon’s “The Battle of Seven Oaks” (“La Chanson de la Grenouillère”) can be found in Margaret Arnett MacLeod’s 1960 book Songs of Old Manitoba.
Pierre Falcon (1793-1876) was a celebrated Métis balladeer and North West Company clerk. “He had a feeling for words, a sense of rhythm, and a love of a rollicking tune. He was strongly dramatic, and his idea of the importance of the Métis Nation may have been more right than his English contemporaries were ready to concede [.…]” (MacLeod, p. 2)
Pierre Falcon’s 1816 ballad commemorating the Métis victory at the Battle of Seven Oaks (Songs of Old Manitoba, p.5)
James Reaney offers these notes on his approach to translating the song:“This translation can be sung to Pierre Falcon’s original tune with some stretching, but no more than to sing his own words requires. In making this translation I have followed Ezra Pound’s practice. Since there can be no translation so inaccurate as that which sticks closely and literally to the surface of a song, I have attempted to make only an English equivalent of Falcon’s ballad and so translate the really important thing – its high spirits.” (MacLeod, p. 9)
1. Would you like to hear me sing Of a true and recent thing? It was June 19, the band of Bois-Brûlés Arrived that day, Oh the brave warriors they!
2. We took three foreigners prisoners when We came to the place called Frog, Frog Plain. There were men who’d come from Orkney, Who’d come, you see, To rob our country.
3. Well we were just about to unhorse When we heard two of us give, give voice. Two of our men cried, “Hey! Look back, look back! The Anglo-Sack Coming for to attack.”
4. Right away smartly we veered about Galloping at them with a shout! You know we did trap all, all those Grenadiers! They could not move Those horseless cavaliers.
5. Now we like honourable men did act, Sent an ambassador – yes, in fact! “Monsieur Governor! Would you like to stay? A moment spare — There’s something we’d like to say.”
6. Governor, Governor, full of ire. “Soldiers!” he cries, “Fire! Fire.” So they fire first and their muskets roar! They almost kill Our ambassador!
7. Governor thought himself a king. He wished an iron rod to swing. Like a lofty lord he tries to act. Bad luck, old chap! A bit too hard you whacked!
8. When we went galloping, galloping by Governor thought that he would try For to chase and frighten us Bois-Brûlés. Catastrophe! Dead on the ground he lay.
9. Dead on the ground lots of grenadiers too. Plenty of grenadiers, a whole slew. We’ve almost stamped out his whole army. Of so many Five or four left there be.
10. You should have seen those Englishmen — Bois-Brûlés chasing them, chasing them, From bluff to bluff they stumbled that day While the Bois-Brûlés Shouted “Hurray!”
11. Tell, oh tell me who made up this song? Why it’s our own poet, Pierre Falcon. Yes, she was written this song of praise For the victory We won this day. Yes, she was written, this song of praise — Come sing the glory Of the Bois-Brûlés.
( ( (0) ) ) Rufin Turcottesings the original French version on this 1963 Smithsonian Folkways Recording “Folksongs of Saskatchewan”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB1knUIOSH0
From Songs of Old Manitoba, Pierre Falcon’s original French lyrics (p. 6-7)
Note: James Reaney’s long poem “A Message to Winnipeg” (1960) includes this translation of Pierre Falcon’s 1816 song. For more about the June 19, 1816 Battle of Seven Oaks, see the entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia.
“August” by James Reaney rendered in stained-glass by artist Ted Goodden (2000).
James Reaney‘s poem celebrating the month of August is illuminated by stained-glass artist Ted Goodden for the 2000 calendar series “Perpetual Illuminations“.
I love gateways into farms & yards: even more Do I love door- ways (latches, their hooks, hinges, keyholes). From my collegiate days I remember the janitor, Mr January, Who lingered, with his blizzard broom At the highschool’s entrance, tending His garden of galoshes, rubbers, boots, Mudmats, sleet mops, rainwhisks. Awesomely quiet, brooding, puttering man, He had, in his pockets, keys for all locks Of classroom, gymnasium, Even the mysterious cubby holes under stairs, And the exits & entrances of the assembly Auditorium. You shuffler & sweeper, who opened, who shut, Kept the rain, wind, mud, snow, out, And us, inside, warm & dry. Doorkeeper, in some strange way, You caretaker, though you were Neither principal nor teacher, You secretly governed the school. We often dreamt of you, Our most remembered educator.
Congratulations to Kydra Ryan and AdamCorrigan Holowitz of Alvego Root Theatre for your encore performances of James Reaney’s short stories “The Box Social” and “The Bully” and for the first performance of Colleen Thibaudeau’s short story “Wild Turkeys” — thank you so much for bringing these early works by Reaney and Thibaudeau to life.
Our grateful thanks to Carolyn Doyle, our wonderful host, and Joshua Lambier and Gregory De Souza at Wordsfest for helping us put this special presentation of stories by two great writers together.
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.
We are honoured to dedicate the 2021 Memorial Lecture to the late Catherine Sheldrick Ross (1947-2021), a former Western University student and colleague of James Reaney’s.
Our thanks to Wordsfest and the London Public Library for their support of the lecture series, and to Poetry Stratford and the Stratford Public Library for their support in hosting the earlier lectures (2010-2015).
