James Reaney at the farm near Stratford, Ontario in 1971 (TVO.org)
The Farm
James Reaney’s emblem poem “The Farm” (1969)
( ( ( 0 ) ) ) For more about James Reaney’s poems and a look back at the family farm where James Reaney grew up, see the 1971 TVOntario documentary “James Reaney” in the Canadian Writers series.
The Farm
There was a farm divided in two 1/2 of it surly brick maker owned swale & slough clay & stiff Into this from the western half Jutted an orchard of 50 young trees Captain Grape Arbour & Major Mulberry Angel greening trees in whitewashed trunks Roods & perches fought clayhole & swamp & the lawns won, the gravel pit’s gone Now the farm’s one.
James Reaney, 1969
(Note: “Roods & perches” are land survey measurements.)
Poems Written About The Donnellys To Assist The Renewal of The Town Hall at Exeter, Highway #4 *
I Around Borrisokane, in Eire, the roads twist After cowherds with willow gads, after wise woman’s spells, After chariots and the widest go-around found in a mare’s skin. But in Biddulph, Canada, in Mount Carmel’s brooder stove, St Peter’s fields, The roads cross at right angles, a careful Euclidean net, roods, rods Spun by surveyors out of Spider stars – Mirzak, Spicula, Thuban, Antares. Like serpents, twitchgrass roots, dragons – the Irish roads twist, The old crooked roads twist in the cage of the straight new.
II We were horsemen, dressed well and from my brother’s entire horse, From his entire horse came the colt fast fleet hoofhand with which We seized and held onto the path through Exeter down to London. We lifted the hills, creeks, rivers, slaughterhouses, taverns, We lifted their travellers and those who were asleep when we passed And those who saw us rattle by as they plowed mud or whittled. We lifted them like a graveldust pennant, we swung them up and out Till they yelled about wheels falling off, unfair competition, yah! And we lie here now – headless, still, dead, waggonless, horseless, Sleighless, hitched, stalled.
III As the dressmaker hems my muslin handkerchiefs, The night the Vigilantes burnt down one of their own barns, As I sit waiting for a cake to bake and my gentle niece with me I realize I am not doing what you want me to do. You – bored with your Calvinist shoes chewed to pieces By streets of insurance, streets of cakemix, packages, soap, sermonettes. You want me to – you project a more exciting me on me. She should be burning! Clip! Ax! Giantess! Coarse, I should curse! Why should I accept these handcuffs from you?
James Reaney, 2005
* Respectively, the three speakers of these poems are William Porte, the Lucan postmaster, Tom Donnelly and Mrs. Donnelly.
“Entire Horse” is from Souwesto Home, a collection of James Reaney’s poems from 2005 available from Brick Books.
( ( 0 ) )Listen to Jeff Culbert read “Entire Horse” and other poems from Souwesto Homehere.
All three plays from James Reaney’s The Donnelly Trilogy — Sticks and Stones, The St. Nicholas Hotel, and Handcuffs — were performed at the Blyth Festival in 2023 at Blyth’s Outdoor Harvest Stage.
“Are there any more ladies and gentlemen for Calamity Corners as ’tis sometimes called, St. John’s, Birr — my old friend Ned here calls it Bobtown, the more elegant name is Birr. Elginfield known to some as Ryan’s Corners, Lucan that classic spot if it’s not all burnt down, Clandeboye, Mooretown, Exeter and Crediton. If Ned here hasn’t sawn it to pieces, the coach is waiting for you at the front door and it pleases you.”
(Opening lines from James Reaney’s The St. Nicholas Hotel)
Summer 2023 — On the way to the Outdoor Harvest Stage on the old Blyth Fairgrounds. Photo courtesy The Blyth Festival.
James Reaney printing at the Alphabet Press print shop at 430 Talbot Street in London, Ontario (mid-1960s). Credit: London Free Press/Sun Media Corporation.
In late summer 1965, James Reaney’s Alphabet Press printed the first edition of Colleen Thibaudeau’s Lozenges: Poems in the Shapes of Things in London, Ontario. Thibaudeau’s husband James Reaney typeset the poems and also designed the cover.
In fall 2024, Hilary Neary, historian and former Alphabet Magazine designer, proposed a facsimile second edition of the original Lozenges for Colleening 2025, a celebration of the centenary of Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012).
Printers Hilary Neary, Stephen Sword, and Mike Baker at The Forge and Anvil Museum in Sparta, Ontario. (Photo by James Stewart Reaney)
On August 27, 2025, after many months coordinating and resourcing this venture, printers and compositors Hilary Neary, Stephen Sword, and Mike Baker (pictured above) gathered at The Forge and Anvil Museum in Sparta, Ontario to print the new second edition. The photo shows a proof from the new 2025 edition’s cover design in the foreground, and Mike Baker holding the original 1965 classic by Colleen Thibaudeau.
Copies of the new Lozenges: Poems in the Shape of Things were given out at Colleening 2025 events in London and St. Thomas.
( ( ( 0 ) ) ) Listen to Hilary Neary and Mike Baker read poems from Lozenges.
Colleen Thibaudeau’s poem “The Train” from Lozenges (1965)Colleen Thibaudeau’s poem “The Hockey Stick” from Lozenges (1965)
Alphabet Issue 10 from July 1965 shows an announcement for Lozenges by Colleen Thibaudeau and one of her poems “The Hockey Stick” on the inside front cover.
Peggy Roffey presents “Colleen Thibaudeau’s ‘Big Sea’ Vision” at the James Reaney Memorial Lecture on November 29, 2025 in London, Ontario. London poets Patricia Black and Ola Nowosad (seated) read many of Colleen Thibaudeau’s poems.
Thank you for coming to the 16th annual James Reaney Memorial Lecture celebrating poet Colleen Thibaudeau’s ‘Big Sea’ Vision this past Saturday November 29th. This year’s lecture is part of Colleening 2025, a year-long celebration of Colleen Thibaudeau’s centenary.
Thank you, Peggy Roffey, for leading us through a thoughtful exploration of Thibaudeau’s poetry. After getting us to reflect on someone dear to us and on what we associated with that person, Peggy said that we “… had all donea bit of Colleening. You’ve used memory and imagination to reach beyond time and space. You found an association, made a connection and had that associated detail there. You’ve also connected to somebody else in the room.”
“You’ve touched on the way Colleen wrote her poems; they are peopled, very peopled. Full of significant objects, places, experiences, but all attached to people. I actually counted the number of people that she named by name or role: five hundred. Five hundred people in just over two hundred poems….”
Thanks also to Alannah Vanderburgh-Oakley and Dan Hamilton of the London Public Library for their coordination and assistance, and to Josh Lambier of Words Festival for his technical expertise.
This year’s James Reaney Memorial Lecture celebrates the legacy of poet Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012), the late wife of poet and playwright James Crerar (Jamie) Reaney (1926-2008). Our grateful thanks to the London Public Library and Wordsfest for giving the lecture a new home and partnership.
James Reaney and Colleen Thibaudeau near Stratford, Ontario in 1982. (Photo by Marty Gervais)
This year, in the spirit of metaphor, the 2025 James Reaney Memorial Lecture steps to the side and shows the “she” beside the “he”: James Reaney’s wife, poet Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012).
Join us on Saturday November 29that the London Public LibraryCentral Branch for poet Peggy Roffey’s presentation “Colleen Thibaudeau’s Big Sea Vision”.
In a combination of photo images, presentation, and readings, Peggy Roffey and readers from London’s poetry community will explore Colleen Thibaudeau’s unique voice, sensibility, and metaphor-making artistry.
Thibaudeau’s ‘Big Sea Vision’ helps us enter the very nature of metaphor, illuminating the connectedness of things, people, times and places, showing the as-yet unseen inside something else. Her big sea vision is all over her poems like fingerprints, a vision worth holding in a fragmenting world.
It was Colleen Thibaudeau who delivered the first Reaney Memorial Lecture in 2010 at a grassroots event in Stratford. Since the Lecture was welcomed to London under the Words Festival banner and with support from the London Public Library in 2016, performances of her poems and short stories have inspired several of its iterations.
The 2025 Lecture is the first one devoted to her words and life. It marks another peak for Colleening 2025, a year-long celebration of her centenary. The last scheduled event is Antler River Poetry’s evening of Colleen Thibaudeau poems, December 3, 7 pm, at the Landon Branch Library.
About the presenter:Peggy Roffey is a Londoner who did her Master’s Thesis at UWO on Colleen’s poetry to 1975 and was a frequent reader alongside Colleen. Peggy has also had an interesting career in organizational culture and leadership development at St. Joseph’s Health Care London and at UWO (Western). She taught English Renaissance Literature and Canadian Literature at Western for the last 15 years of her career.
For more about Colleen Thibaudeau and her poetry, see the biography on her website.
This year’s James Reaney Memorial Lecture celebrates the legacy of poet Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012), the late wife of poet and playwright James Crerar (Jamie) Reaney (1926-2008). Our grateful thanks to the London Public Library and Words Festival for giving the lecture a new home and partnership.
Colleen Thibaudeau and James Reaney near Stratford, Ontario, 1982. (Photo by Marty Gervais)
Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012) in 1977 in London, Ontario. Colleening 2025 is a year-long celebration of Colleen Thibaudeau’s poetry.
Colleening 2025 in St. Thomas, Ontario
September 2025 — On September 18, celebrate Colleen Thibaudeau’s centenary with a feast of her St. Thomas poems read by local fans including Joe Preston, John Allen, Julie Berry, Barb Hoskins, Mike Baker & more!
Where: The Elgin County Railway Museum, 225 Wellington Street, St. Thomas When: Thursday, September 18, 2025, 7-9 pm Cash Bar — Admission is free.
Colleening 2025 in London, Ontario
November 2025 – On November 7-9, AlvegoRoot Theatre presents a brand new concert version of Colleening: The Letters and Poetry of Colleen Thibaudeau, which premiered in 2013.
Compiled by Adam Corrigan Holowitz with music by Stephen Holowitz and Oliver Whitehead, Colleen’s letters and poems take us on a journey through childhood memories, home life, and Canadian culture. The performers are Katy Clark, Paul Grambo, and Kydra Ryan.
Where: The Manor Park Memorial Hall, 11 Briscoe Street W, London, Ontario When:Friday November 7 at 7:30 pm and matinees at 2 pm on Saturday November 8 and Sunday November 9.
Colleening: The Life & Letters of Colleen Thibaudeau, November 7-9
On Saturday November 29, poet Peggy Roffey presents “Colleen Thibaudeau’s Big Sea Vision” at the 2025 James Reaney Memorial Lecture. This year the annual lecture, in the spirit of metaphor, steps to the side and shows the “she” beside the “he”: James Reaney’s wife, poet Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012). Presented by London Public Library and Words Festival.
Where: London Public Library, Central Library Lawson Room, 251 Dundas Street, London, Ontario When: Saturday November 29, 1 pm. Admission is free.
On Wednesday December 3, Antler River Poetry presents Celebrating Colleen Thibaudeau: An Evening of Poetry and Memories. A lineup of well-known local poets and readers will share their favourite work by Canadian literary legend Colleen Thibaudeau. Where: The London Public Library, Landon Branch, 167 Wortley Road, London, Ontario When: Wednesday December 3, 7 pm. Admission is free.
For more about Colleen Thibaudeau and her poetry, see the biography on her website.
Sometimes when I hold Our faded old globe That we used at school To see where oceans were And the five continents, The lines of latitude and longitude, The North Pole, the Equator and the South Pole— Sometimes when I hold this Wrecked blue cardboard pumpkin I think: here in my hands Rest the fair fields and lands Of my childhood Where still lie or still wander Old games, tops and pets; A house where I was little And afraid to swear Because God might hear and Send a bear To eat me up; Rooms where I was as old As I was high; Where I loved the pink clenches, The white, red and pink fists Of roses; where I watched the rain That Heaven’s clouds threw down In puddles and rutfuls And irregular mirrors Of soft brown glass upon the ground. The school globe is a parcel of my past, A basket of pluperfect things. And here I stand with it Sometime in the summertime All alone in an empty schoolroom Where about me hang Old maps, an abacus, pictures, Blackboards, empty desks. If I raise my hand No tall teacher will demand What I want. But if someone in authority Were here, I’d say Give me this old world back Whose husk I clasp And I’ll give you in exchange The great sad real one That’s filled Not with a child’s remembered and pleasant skies But with blood, pus, horror, death, stepmothers, and lies.
James Reaney, 1949
“The School Globe” is from The Red Heart (1949), James Reaney’s first book of poems.
You licker of precambrian rock I am your liker. You are both plant and sister To yeasts, moulds, rusts, mildews. Hungry for green. No stems, leaves, nor roots In you are seen And so You married yourself to a plant, Green plant wed to greenless you, And together you chew, chew Rock into earth, Precambrian into postcambrian, Helped, no doubt By the sun and her daughter, Water. O determined soil-maker, We all lie in the hammock Of your ceaseless patient work.
James Reaney, 2005
“Lichen” is from James Reaney’s book Souwesto Home, available from Brick Books.
Lichen photo courtesy Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen Xanthoparmelia sp. with dark-colored reproductive structures (disc-like apothecia) at center, surrounded by a pale coloured vegetative thallus.
Lichens are fungi that have discovered agriculture – lichenologist Trevor Goward
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 Trialin 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’sLozenges: Poems in the Shapes of Things and its publication by James Reaney’s Alphabet Press in 1965.
James Reaney in London, Ontario in 2005. Photo by Jeff Culbert.
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.
James Reaney 