Join us on Sunday, October 21 at 3:00 pm at TheStratford Public Library Auditorium in Stratford, Ontario, for a talk by Jean McKay, James Reaney’s research assistant on several projects, including The Donnelly Documents: An Ontario Vendetta. Jean will also share her memories as a student and workshop participant in James Reaney’s play Wacousta.
The annual lecture is a project developed by The Stratford Public Library and Poetry Stratford, and features a talk by a person who is knowledgeable about the life and work of Stratford poet and playwright James Reaney and of writing in the Southwestern Ontario region, which is such a strong element in Reaney’s writing.
Saturday June 16, 2012 — Here in Saskatoon at the Poetry Festival and Conference of the League of Canadian Poets, poet Wendy Morton of Sooke, B.C. was the winner of the first-ever Colleen Thibaudeau Outstanding Contribution Award.
Established in memory of late poet and honorary member Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012), the award was created by the League of Canadian Poets and Colleen Thibaudeau’s family to honour and recognize a substantial volunteer project or series of projects that significantly nurture and support poets and poetry across Canada.
Also honoured were poet Sue Goyette, who won the 2012 Pat Lowther Memorial Award for her book outskirts (Brick Books), and Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang, the winner of the 2012 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for her book Sweet Devilry (Oolichan Books). The League also recognized the contributions of Oscar Malan of Novel Idea Bookstore in Kingston, Ontario, who is now an Honorary Member, and Penn Kemp, Poet Laureate of London, Ontario (2010-2012), who is now a Life Member.
Short-listed poets for the Pat Lowther Award were Stephanie Bolster for A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth (Brick Books), Lorna Crozier for Small Mechanics (McClelland & Stewart Ltd.), Rosemary Griebel for Yes. (Frontenac House), Amanda Jernigan for Groundwork (Biblioasis), and Jan Zwicky for Forge (Gaspereau Press).
The runners-up for the Gerald Lampert Award this year were Kirsty Elliot for True (Leaf Press), Rosemary Griebel for Yes. (Frontenac House), Suzanne Robertson for Paramita, Little Black (Guernica Editions), Lisa Shatzky for Do Not Call Me By My Name (Black Moss Press), and Leslie Vryenhoek for Gulf (Oolichan Books).
Congratulations to all the award winners and shortlisted poets, and also to Robert Currie for presenting the Anne Szumigalski Lecture. Anne Szumigalski (1922-1999) was a much-loved Saskatchewan poet and winner of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry for her book Voice in 1995. Robert reminded us of Anne Szumigalski’s work as a mentor for other writers and her commitment to the arts in her province.
Thank you to the sponsors of the event: The Canada Council for the Arts, WestJet, Saskatchewan Arts Board, Jennifer Boire and Jacques Nolin and the estate of Diane Brebner.
Poetry is alive and well in Canada and in Saskatchewan! ♥
Wendy Morton of Sooke, B.C. is the winner of the 2012 Colleen Thibaudeau Outstanding Contribution Award
May 26, 2012: James Stewart Reaney with Dr. Ranjana Harish at the Reaney family home in London, Ontario
On May 25-28, we were pleased to welcome Dr. Ranjana Harish, the Director of the Reaney Canadian Centre at Gujarat University in Ahmedabad, India. Dr. Harish was happy to see London, Ontario and visit the Reaney family home, and also see the farm where James Reaney grew up near Stratford, Ontario.
May 28, 2012: James Stewart Reaney and Dr. Ranjana Harish visit James Reaney’s childhood home near Stratford, Ontario
Before her visit to London, Dr. Harish attended the International Council for Canadian Studies Biennial Conference in Ottawa on May 22-24, where she presented her paper “Linguistic Crossings in the Chase of a Rainbow: Gujarati Immigrants in Canada.” The theme of the conference this year was Cultural Challenges of Migration in Canada. We wish Dr. Harish continued success in all her endeavours, and hope she’ll come back to explore Canada soon.
May 28, 2012: Dr. Harish at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Stratford, Ontario
Devil’s Artisan, founded in 1980 to present to Canadian readers “information on the craft of printing and bookmaking, on bibliographic and historic matters, and on communicative, sociological, and technical subjects related to printing,” has added James Reaney to its Rogue’s Gallery of the Canadian Book and Printing Arts this month.
“In the spirit of Gutenberg, printing copies of the Bible for lay people to read, and of William Blake, infernally printing his own illustrated poems, Reaney hand-set Alphabet and printed it with a motorized Chandler & Price vertical platen press.”
We know James Reaney would appreciate this honour, and his deepest wish was that others would be inspired to write and publish their stories.
“Two years later (printing lessons, typesetting, waiting for t’s to come from Toronto, balancing trays of type on buses rolling in blizzards) here it is.” — James Reaney, July 1960, from the Editorial to Alphabet, Issue No. 1.
April 14, 2012: Thank you everyone who came to celebrate National Poetry Month and Colleen Thibaudeau’s poem “Balloon,” which is displayed on a billboard near the junction of Stanley Street and Wortley Road in London, Ontario.
It was a windy day, but you all held on bravely. Many thanks to Carolyn Doyle, Supervisor of the Landon Branch Library, and Christine Walde of Poetry London for organizing the event, and to Glenn and Peggy Curnoe for their photos. (Poetry London also has photos on their Facebook page.)
April 14, 2012: “Balloon” by Colleen Thibaudeau, 1925-2012April 14, 2012: Celebrating National Poetry Month. Jean McKay was on hand to play her fiddle.April 4, 2012: Elizabeth Reaney celebrates her grandmother’s poem
“Balloon” by Colleen Thibuadeau in London, Ontario. Photo by Chrsitine Walde, 2012
Colleen knew about the plan to put her poem on a billboard earlier this year before she passed away and was thrilled to think that her poem would be writ large for all to see. Thank you so much!
“Balloon” is a concrete poem and was first published in 1965 in Colleen’s book Lozenges: Poems in the Shapes of Things by James Reaney’s Alphabet Press. For this month only, the London Public Library has free postcards of “Balloon.”
Colleen Thibaudeau Reaney, 1925-2012 Photo by Diane Thompson, 1997
We are sad to learn of the passing of Jay Macpherson, who was a longtime friend of James and Colleen Reaney and their family. Jay was a poet and University of Toronto professor who first came to know the Reaneys in the 1950s. She passed away on March 21, 2012.
Jay Macpherson, 1931-2012
Jay Macpherson will long be remembered for her kindness and intelligence, and her brilliant poetry. Here are two poems by Jay Macpherson that James Reaney published in the first issue of Alphabet in September 1960.
The Love-Song of Jenny Lear
Come along, my old king of the sea,
Don’t look so pathetic at me:
We’re off for a walk
And a horrid long talk
By the beautiful banks of the sea.
I’m not Arnold’s Margaret, the pearl
That gleamed and was lost in a whirl,
Who simpered in churches
And left him on porches,
But more of a hell of a girl.
Poor old fish, you’re no walker at all,
Can’t you spank up that elderly crawl?
I’ll teach you to hurdle,
Led on by my girdle,
With whalebone, elastic and all.
We’ll romp by the seashore, and when
You’ve enough, shut your eyes and count ten.
I’ll crunch down your bones,
Guts marrow and stones,
Then raise you up dancing again.
Love-Song II of Jenny Lear
Were I a Shakespearean daughter,
Safe restored through fire and water,
You the party in the crown
—Someone get the curtain down.
Jay Macpherson, 1960
“Six Toronto Poets”, Folkways Records, 1958
Jay Macpherson won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 1957 for her book The Boatman. She can be heard reading her poem “The Boatman” on “Six Toronto Poets,” a recording made in 1958 on Folkways Records. (James Reaney also reads his work on this album, along with Margaret Avison, W.W. Eustace Ross, Raymond Souster, and Anne Wilkinson.)
Perhaps the best way to conclude what should be said in praise of The Boatman is that it shows you how to get from “here to there”. If “here” is this world and “there” the world of Eternity, then this book of poems shows the reader all the necessary steps of the way. These are steps that I am sure an increasingly great number of readers and writers in Canada are going to find very exciting to take.
(Excerpted from James Reaney, “The Third Eye: Jay Macpherson’s The Boatman“, published in Canadian Literature, Issue No. 3, pages 24-24, Winter 1960, page 34.)
Thank you and congratulations to all the fine musicians and singers who performed Taptoo! so splendidly last month at the Jane Mallett Theatre at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts in Toronto. Your spirited performances brought the characters to life.
We especially liked young Daniel Bedrossian as Seth Jr. and Teddy Perdikoulias as Ebenezer Jr., and Lise Maher as Mrs. Jarvis and Allison Angelo as Atahentsic were wonderful in Act II. We loved Todd Delaney as Major John Graves Simcoe and Robert Longo as Colonel “Mad Anthony” Wayne.
Thank you, Larry Beckwith, for conducting and directing the orchestra and singers so well. And thank you, Guillermo Silva-Marin, General Director of Toronto Operetta Theatre, for making the premiere of John Beckwith and James Reaney’s work possible. We wish you every success in the future.
John Beckwith, composer, and his son Larry Beckwith, Conductor and Chorus Director at Taptoo!, February 25, 2012.The Jane Mallett Theatre, Toronto, February 25, 2012
James Reaney and John Beckwith developed Taptoo! in 1994, when it had a workshop reading at Historic Fort York. Before this professional production (February 24-26, 2012), there were two presentations of Taptoo! by the students of McGill University (1999) and by the opera division of the University of Toronto Faculty of Music (2003).
Colleen Thibaudeau Reaney, poet and beloved wife of James Reaney, passed away on February 6, 2012 in London, Ontario. Colleen will long be remembered by her family, neighbours, and many friends.
The Star Over the House Quilt (Last night I dreamed…)
Last night I dreamed about you all under the Star Over the House Quilt;
I remember mother making it: the little squares of jonquil window lit
The doors, shutters often green. Your block has still the hollyhock (french knots)
Mine has the lilac (front yard), looking hard the lilacs still are blooming there,
The real ones down — time and town development don’t affect the quilt.
Each of us, house body, and the star, the star-filled head;
Each of us bedded down lifetime dreams the star-filled town
Waking goes walking the houses of our own making, talking the blocks away.
I might move into you taking on hollyhock but it’s not
Me really just the dreaming of the star-filled head.
The Star Over the House Quilt she made it extra size;
Her eyes puzzled out each stitch; she declared her fingers to be all pricked
And she licked the blood from roofs, sidewalks, from the small yards
With the ever-blooming trees pointing to the stars
Of the Star Over the House Quilt.
Sheila and Colleen in St. Thomas, Ontario, 1942Colleen Thibaudeau and James Reaney, 1949James Reaney and Colleen Thibaudeau near Stratford, Ontario, 1982.
Update March 3, 2012: In tribute to Colleen Thibaudeau and her work, the London Public Library, Brick Books, and Poetry London have commissioned a billboard with her poem “Balloon”. The billboard will go up sometime in the week of March 26, and there will be a a “Balloon” billboard launch on Saturday April 14 at 3:00 pm.The library is also printing postcards of “Balloon” to hand out during April, which is National Poetry Month.
On February 24-26 next month in Toronto, the Toronto Operetta Theatre will present the premiere of Taptoo!, an opera in two acts, libretto by James Reaney and music by John Beckwith.
The opera is based on events surrounding the founding of the town of York, Upper Canada (now Toronto), roughly from 1780-1810. Using real historical characters like Major John Graves Simcoe as well as imaginary ones, the story tells how a Quaker family, the Harples, flee America to Canada to escape mob violence:
From Scene 1:
MOB: Take off your hat
To the emblem of our state,
Our state, our state!
TWO VOICES: (shouting) The rattlesnake!
JESSE: Friends, I will
Take off my hat
To neither king nor republic
Nor a flag, nor a …
MOB: You don’t want freedom?
JESSE: Yes. Freedom from all oppressors
Kings or — mobs like yourselves!
MOB: (shouting in unison)
Take off your hat!
(Jesse does not move. Pause, then sudden quick action as they seize him.)
MOB: Tar and feather him!
Seize that tub,
Burn that little flag there!
In a recent article about his collaboration with James Reaney, John Beckwith describes the music of Taptoo! “as the modern equivalent of a ballad opera, in which scraps of familiar songs and dances would now and then drift in to the musical score. I included about 20 such musical references — hymn tunes, popular sentimental or patriotic songs, dances, marches and, of course, historical military music.”*
Taptoo! will be led by Larry Beckwith, Conductor, and Guillermo Silva-Marin is the Stage Director. Featured performers are Robert Longo,Michael Barrett, Todd Delaney, Sarah Hicks, and Mark Petracchi.
When: February 24 and 25 at 8 pm; February 26 at 2 pm
Where:Jane Mallett Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre, 27 Front Street East Toronto, M5E 1B4
Order your tickets here from the St. Lawrence Centre box office, or
by phone: (416) 366-7723 or 1-800-708-6754
See you there!
Old Fort York at the foot of Bathurst Street in 1793
The full libretto for James Reaney’s Taptoo! is available in Scripts: Librettos for Operas and Other Musical Works, published by Coach House Books.
*John Beckwith, “Portrait of a partnership,” Opera Canada, Fall 2011, page 32.
