Sunday November 15 at 3:00 pm EST — Join us at Wordsfest via Zoom to hear James Reaney’s and Colleen Thibaudeau’spoems set to music by London composers Stephen Holowitz and Oliver Whitehead. Soprano Sonja Gustafson and flautist Ingrid Crozman are among the performers recorded earlier at Aeolian Hall for this online presentation.
Stephen Holowitz, Sonja Gustafson, Oliver Whitehead, and Ingrid Crozman at Aeolian Hall, October 18, 2020
Following the music, host Carolyn Doyle of the London Public Library will lead a discussion about the relationship between Words and Music, and the stories behind the poems. The theme of Words and Music plays off “Words & Music”, an old downtown London cultural outpost beloved by Colleen and Jamie when they moved to London in 1960.
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.
Alice Munro Country: Essays on Her Works and its companion Alice Munro Everlasting form a two-volume collection celebrating the work of Canadian writer Alice Munro. Editor J.R. (Tim) Struthers has brought together critical appreciations from 34 contributors, including Catherine Sheldrick Ross, George Elliott Clarke, Jack Hodgins, Judith Thompson, Monika Lee, and James Reaney.
Like James Reaney, Alice Munro grew up in Southwestern Ontario and many of her early stories are set around Wingham, Ontario, in Huron County. Reaney’s essay, “An ABC to Ontario Literature and Culture,” outlines a graduate course he taught at the University of Western Ontario in the early 1970s.
JULY 18: VIII.Through the Years in West Nissouri, Miller, Duncan, Munro. This was local history into fiction day since Alice Munro in Lives of Girls and Women has an historian uncle whose idea of writing is to pile up droplets from the parish pump (Who was the reeve in 1901? When did the school trustees put in cement platforms around the porch?) and never try to drive a line through them. Eventually, the tin box with his research in it is thoroughly drowned by the Maitland River in flood.
Since Sara Jeanette Duncan’s novel about Brantford is our first successful realist novel, you should read it to see how these things should be done; what is frequently depressing about the run-of-the-mill novel about us nowadays is the imprecision of viewpoint; all right, you’re not going to tell us much of a story, but could you have dug out some photographic details just a tiny bit less clichéd than these? [Volume I, page 54]
Alice Munro Country: Essays on Her Works and Alice Munro Everlasting: Essays on Her Works are available from Guernica Editions.
James Reaney’s “An ABC to Ontario Literature and Culture” originally appeared in Black Moss, Ser. 2, No. 3 (Spring 1977).
See also Stan Dragland’s Wordsfest lecture James Reaney on the grid (November 2, 2019) where Dragland recalls being part of an earlier team-taught version of the course when he first came to Western.
The Alice Munro Literary Garden in Wingham, Ontario
February 5, 2020 — Congratulations to Steady Theatre Collective and director Julia Schultz for your ingenious production of James Reaney’s 1966 play Listen to the Wind.
The production was staged at McCully House, an old Halifax mansion, allowing the audience to move through the house and through the play – Act I in the attic, down to the lower floor for Act II, and back up to the attic for Act III.
McCully House, 2507 Brunswick Street in Halifax, Nova Scotia
The web of actors, music, and intimate setting kept us close to the action and drew us into the world of Owen, Harriet, Ann, and Jenny, the four children who put on the play. Four chairs can be anything!
Producer: Kirsten Bruce Director: Julia Schultz Music: Edie Reaney Chunn Stage Manager: Sophie Schade Set and Costume Designer: Emma Roode Fight Choreographer: Anika Riopel Weathervane designed and crafted by Kelly Trout
Cast: Lou Campbell, Henricus Gielus, Kyle Gillis, Stepheny Hunter, Brittany Kamras, Michael Kamras, Rachel Lloyd, Briony Merritt, Noella Murphy, Peter Sarty, and Sam Vigneault
Act I Scene 2: Owen & Chorus: Let’s hear the North Wind. (Rehearsal photographs courtesy Steady Theatre)
Act III Scene 44: Sam Vigneault as Owen and Peter Sarty as Mitch
OWEN: … Mitch, sit down and talk to me. MITCH: Will I do your favourite cartoon? OWEN: Yes. Now you rock in the rocking chair and I say… (gets off the bed) Grandma, how about a dime so I can get an ice cream cone and cool myself off? MITCH: Ah, I’ll tell you a ghost story instead son. It’ll freeze your bones and chill you off twice as fast. Listen!
More about Steady Theatre Collective and the play
Steady Theatre Collective’s Kirsten Bruce and Julia Schultz
On February 4-9 in Halifax, Steady Theatre will present Listen to the Wind, a play by James Reaney.
With the help of their families and neighbours, four children put on The Saga of Caresfoot Court – a melodrama set in a old manorhouse.
“… We watch a double story: Owen fighting illness and trying to get his parents together again; Angela Caresfoot threading her way through a world of evil manorhouses and sinister Lady Eldreds. The two stories illuminate each other….” James Reaney, 1966 Program Notes
When & Where:February 4 to 8 at 7:00 pm at the Jonathan McCully Mansion, 2507 Brunswick Street, Halifax B3K 2Z5
February 9 at 6:00 pm at the Maritime Conservatory for the Performing Arts, 6199 Chebucto Road, Halifax B3L 1K7
Join us on Saturday January 18 at 8:00 pm at Western’s von Kuster Auditorium for a musical evening of “Songs of London Poetry and Painting” by local composers Oliver Whitehead (guitar) and Steve Holowitz (piano).
Inspired by poems and art with a Southwestern Ontario connection, Whitehead and Holowitz have set to music poems from James Reaney’sSouwesto Home and Colleen Thibaudeau’sThe Artemesia Book.
The performers are London musicians Sonja Gustafson, soprano, and Adam Iannetta, baritone, along with Ingrid Crozman on flute and Patrick Theriault on cello (replacing Christine Newland).
When & Where: Saturday January 18, 8:00 pm, von Kuster Auditorium, Don Wright Faculty of Music, Western University
Saturday November 2, 2019 — Thank you all for joining us at Wordsfest at Museum London for the Tenth Annual James Reaney Memorial Lecture, and thank you, Stan Dragland, for coming all the way from St. John’s, Newfoundland to share your thoughts on James Reaney’s use of structure or “grids of meaning.”
Stan Dragland’s lecture “James Reaney on the grid” November 2, 2019 at Wordsfest in London, Ontario.
In his lecture James Reaney on the grid, Stan Dragland explains how Reaney drew material from the local and particular and used archetypal patterns to link and clarify it:
What about the grids? “Grid” is not Reaney’s own word, of course. He picked it up from others at the long-liner’s conference [a 1984 conference on the Canadian long poem], and the literal meaning, with all those right angles, is not the best image for what he does. He’d be more likely to say pattern, or formula, or catalogue, or paradigm, or list. Also backbone. I’ll keep on with grid here, but really list is the better word.
“There is something about lists that hypnotizes me,” Reaney says, introducing the “Catalogue Poems” section of Performance Poems [1990]. Now watch how he slides disparate things together in metaphor as he goes on: “I think this fascination is connected with our joy in the rainbow’s week of colours, in the 92 element candle you see in a physics lab at school, but then see all around you like a segmented serpent we’re all tied together by. Our backbones, with their xylophone vertebrae, are such sentences; lists of symbolic objects in some sort of mysterious, overwhelming progression I have elsewhere called the backbones of whales, and indeed they are, for they are capable of becoming a paradigm . . . used as a secret structure.” His play, Canada Dash, Canada Dot [1965] is built on lists of various sorts. So is Colours in the Dark [1967]. In fact lists or catalogues are everywhere in his work…
A video of Stan Dragland’s lecture is available here, and the full text version is here.
About the speaker
Stan Dragland’s immersion in James Reaney’s work began in 1970when he arrived in London to teach at the University of Western Ontario. One of the first courses he taught was English 138 Canadian Literature and Culture, a team-taught course designed by James Reaney. Stan Dragland is also a co-founder of Brick Books, a local poetry press now celebrating its 45th anniversary.
Souwesto Home by James Reaney, 2005, Brick Books.
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.
Our thanks toWordsfestand theLondon Public Libraryfor their support of the lecture series, and toPoetry Stratfordand theStratford Public Libraryfor their support in hosting the earlier lectures (2010-2015).
2010: Colleen Thibaudeau 2011: Marion Johnson and Peter Denny 2012: Jean McKay 2013: David Ferry 2014: Tim Inkster 2015: Thomas Gerry 2016: John Beckwith 2017: Tom Smart 2018: James Stewart Reaney 2019: Stan Dragland
James Reaney at the farm near Stratford, Ontario, Summer 1979. (Photo by Les Kohalmi)
Join us at Wordsfest on November 2, 2019 at 12:00 pm at Museum London’s Lecture Theatre for the 10th annual James Reaney Memorial Lecture.
Stan Dragland, poet, novelist, and literary critic, will speak on James Reaney’s love of lists and how he uses them to express his vision, particularly in plays like The Donnellys.
Styling his lecture as “James Reaney on the grid”, Dragland explores how Reaney’s immersion in his local environment brings forth the universal in his art.
James Reaney’s The Donnellys: Sticks and Stones Act I Mr Donnelly: And this earth in my hand, the earth of my farm That I fought for and was smashed and burnt for (Jerry Franken as Mr Donnelly, Tarragon Theatre, 1973)
When: Saturday November 2 at 12:00 pm Where: Wordsfest at Museum London, 421 Ridout Street, London, Ontario Admission is free.
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.
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).
In the Summer 2019 issue of Queen’s Quarterly, Thomas Gerry’s article“Marvellous Playhouses” celebrates James Reaney’s emblem poems. For Gerry, the poems “put into play” Reaney’s artistic process, a “magnetic method” he developed for generating meaning through the use of wit.
The emblem poems are theatre-like devices that draw readers into the activity of making meaning. As with audiences for dramatic performances, emblem-readers’ participation is vital. [Queen’s Quarterly, Summer 2019, page 196]
James Reaney’s emblem poem “The Castle” first appeared in Poetry (Chicago) (1969). See Queen’s Quarterly, Summer 2019, page 197. Summer 1979: James Reaney working in the garden near Stratford, Ontario (Photo by Les Kohalmi)
For a full discussion of all ten emblem poems and James Reaney’s artistic process, see The Emblems of James Reaney, available from The Porcupine’s Quill.
May 4-5 in London, Ontario — In celebration of Canadian composers, the Village Opera directed by Adam Corrigan-Holowitz will present The Great Lakes Suite, which features six poems by James Reaney set to music by John Beckwith.
Reaney and Beckwith became friends when they were students at the University of Toronto in the late 1940s. The Great Lakes Suite is from The Red Heart (1949), James Reaney’s first poetry collection. Inspired by the poems, John Beckwith created a chamber cycle for two voices accompanied by a trio.
When:Saturday May 4 at 7:30 and Sunday May 5 at 3:00 Where: Elmwood Avenue Presbyterian Church, London, Ontario Tickets: $25/$15 for students: https://villageopera.com/buy-tickets
James Reaney’s poem“Lake Superior” begins the suite:
Lake Superior
I am Lake Superior Cold and gray. I have no superior; All other lakes Haven’t got what it takes; All are inferior. I am Lake Superior Cold and gray. I am so cold That because I chill them The girls of Fort William Can’t swim in me. I am so deep That when people drown in me Their relatives weep For they’ll never find them. In me swims the fearsome Great big sturgeon. My shores are made of iron Lined with tough, wizened trees. No knife of a surgeon Is sharper than these Waves of mine That glitter and shine In the light of the Moon, my mother In the light of the Sun, my grandmother.
The monograph, edited and introduced by James Reaney, recounts the story of The Biddulph Tragedy of February 4, 1880, where “a body of men, blackened and masked, entered the dwelling of the somewhat notorious Donnelly family and murdered the inmates, the father, the mother, one son, and a girl, a niece”* in Biddulph Township near Lucan, Ontario.
James Reaney heard about the tragedy as a child: “The effect of my first hearing this story was paralyzing… It was my first glimpse of evil close to home.”**
***
*London Free Press Weekly, 12 February 1880 (See The Donnelly Documents: An Ontario Vendetta, page xv and page 118)
**From the Introduction to The Donnelly Documents: An Ontario Vendetta, page xxiv.
