In celebration of Brick Books 40th anniversary, here is one of the 26 stanzas from James Reaney’s poem “Brush Strokes Decorating a Fan”.
(u)
A Useful List:
Hermes
Hera
Apollo
Zeus
Venus
Vulcan
Mars
Athena
Vesta
Hades
Poseidon
Ceres.
Useful for what?
Well, I don’t quite know yet,
But I swear that as an infant,
Born near the Little Lakes,
I met them.
Every morning in our house,
Vesta used to light the stove
James Reaney, 2005
James Reaney at home, age 1 1/2 years, January 1928.
Ten of the stanzas from “Brush Strokes Decorating a Fan” (including “(u) A Useful List”) were set to music by Oliver Whitehead and Stephen Holowitz and performed by the Antler River Project in 2008.
Director Jillian Keiley’s production of Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking Glass, adapted for the stage by James Reaney, opens December 9 to January 3 at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.
Jillian Keiley is the National Arts Centre’s English Theatre Artistic Director, and she led a successful production of Alice Through the Looking Glass at the Stratford Festivalearlier this summer.
Lois Anderson as the White Queen and Natasha Greenblatt as Alice in Alice Through the Looking Glass, National Arts Centre, Ottawa, December 9, 2014 to January 3, 2015. Photo by David Krovblit.
Richard Stingle’s talk “A learned poet writes a Suit of Nettles”, London Public Library, May 25, 2010Richard Stingle with Jean McKay at “The Art of James Reaney,” Landon Library, June 9, 2006, London. Ontario.Student days: Richard Stingle, Bob Patchell, and James Reaney in Toronto, 1949.
Tim Inkster in Stratford, Ontario, October 19, 2014. Photo by Laura Cudworth, courtesy Stratford Beacon Herald.
Thank you all for coming to the Fifth Annual James Reaney Memorial Lecture in Stratford to hear publisher Tim Inkster’s talk on “The Iconography of James Reaney: A Collector’s Manual.”
Inkster praised the excellence of the typography and graphic design in many of James Reaney’s published works, particularly Paul Arthur’s design for The Red Heart (1949) and Allan Fleming’s design for A Suit of Nettles (1958). Tim is also impressed by James Reaney’s work hand typesetting the early issues of his magazine Alphabet (1960-1971).
Alphabet Number One, September 1960. Cover design by Allan Fleming (1929-1977)
A full version of Tim Inkster’s lecture will appear in an upcoming issue of The Devil’s Artisan, a journal of the printing arts.
Cover for James Reaney’s Twelve Letters To A Small Town, first published in 1962 by Ryerson Press.Pages 6 and 7 from Twelve Letters To A Small Town (1962). Drawings by James Reaney.
Our thanks also to Charles Mountford of Poetry Stratford and Robyn Godfrey of the Stratford Public Library for their help in organizing this event. Future speakers for the James Reaney Annual Memorial Lecture include Thomas Gerry and John Beckwith.
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.
Join us on Sunday, October 19 at 2:30 pm at The Atrium (behind Café Ten) in Stratford, Ontario, for a talk about graphic design in James Reaney’s work by publisher Tim Inkster.
Tim Inkster is particularly intrigued by the excellence of the design in James Reaney’s first book, The Red Heart(1949), one of the nine titles in McClelland & Stewart’s Indian File series (1948-1958) and designed by Paul Arthur (1924-2001).
Cover and title page from James Reaney’s The Red Heart (1949). The Red Heart was the third title in McClelland & Stewart’s Indian File poetry series.
Café Ten is located at
10 Downie Street,
Stratford, Ontario
N5A 7K4
Tel: (519) 508-2233
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.
James Reaney’s thoughts on putting on your own version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking-Glass:
Is There Life After Alice? That is, after you’ve seen the show, what do you do when you get home? … Once when I was eight, I had a parallel experience to the one you may have just had, of watching a professional production, authentically acted with exuberance and supported by sophisticated design and fabulous illusions and compelling direction. My theatrical experience wasn’t a play though. In those days, Stratford was not as lucky as it is nowadays, but what it was was my very first circus — Ringling Brothers — an absolutely enthralling show, unforgettably enchanting. The only reaction you could have was to go home and put on your own circus, in this case with my cousins and whatever the farm could muster. Cows as elephants? Of course, you couldn’t rival the production you had just seen, but what you could do was with your own simplicity rival its feeling, and the attempt turned me into an artist. I don’t see this as an improbable effect of the show you have just seen and I hope that the various first steps I have described in paralleling its effects and impacts may lead some of you to a lasting love of theatre and art…
James Reaney leading an Alice workshop at Stratford Central Secondary School (Stratford Collegiate) in 1994. Photo by Scott Wishart, Stratford Beacon Herald.
Jillian Keiley’s new production ofAlice Through the Looking-Glasscontinues this summer at theStratford Festival, May 31 to October 12. To buy tickets, contact the box office at1.800.567.1600 or visit stratfordfestival.ca
Trish Lindström as Alice in “Alice Through the Looking-Glass”, May 31 to October 12 at the Avon Theatre in Stratford, Ontario.
“Alice’s Dinner Party” scene from Alice Through the Looking-Glass, Avon Thetare, Stratford, Ontario 2014. Photo courtesy The Stratford Festival.
To celebrate the new Stratford Festival production of James Reaney’s adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking-Glass, the Porcupine’s Quill is offering a chance to win a free copy of the book!
Page 15: Alice rehearsal drawing by James Reaney, 1993.
Jillian Keiley’s new production ofAlice Through the Looking-Glasscontinues this summer at theStratford Festival, May 31 to October 12. To buy tickets, contact the box office at1.800.567.1600 or visit stratfordfestival.ca
Trish Lindström as Alice in “Alice Through the Looking-Glass”, May 31 to October 12 at the Avon Theatre in Stratford, Ontario. (Ruby Joy is the Alice Double.)“Alice’s Dinner Party” scene from Alice Through the Looking-Glass, Avon Thetare, Stratford, Ontario 2014. Photo courtesy The Stratford Festival.
Join us on Monday June 9 at 7 pm at the London Public Library for a lecture by James Stewart Reaney (James Reaney’s son) about the founding of Alpha Centre, an arts space devoted to drama where many of James Reaney’s “Listeners’ Workshops” were held. James Reaney described the new space and the activities there in Issue 13 of Alphabet (June 1967):
“[…] Just out of range — that part of Talbot Street across Dundas where a newly painted green door has appeared leading to newly founded Alpha Centre — in part a fulfullment of the editorial for Alphabet (4) — devoted to drama in Canada. This is “the bare long room” up above a store — it’s an old Legion Hall. Here Listeners’ Theatre Workshop has been meeting with its new kind of play theatre — children and young people pretending to be mirrors chromosomes marionettes, trees, rivers, — the Victoria Boat Disaster. Here Jack Chambers has been working on his Viet Nam film [Hybrid (1966)] transposing images of roses with those of burnt children. Here all of Paradise Lost and all of Blake’s Jerusalem were read at a sitting — experiences that showed me new depths in these poems….” [Alphabet Issue 13, June 1967, Editorial, page 2]
Note from Susan Reaney: My brother James is the first speaker in the library’s new series of local talks — Terrific Tales of London and the Area. If you remember the green door at 389 Talbot Street, come to the Stevenson & Hunt Room at the London Public Library (Central Branch) on Monday June 9th at 7 pm to share your stories. (The Alphabet Press printing shop was not far from Alpha Centre on the second floor of the Dixon Building, 430 Talbot Street.)
James Reaney and family in 1965 in Leith, Ontario. Standing left to right are the adults: Colleen Reaney, Wilma McCaig (Jamie’s sister), and James Reaney. The children are John Andrew Reaney, James Stewart Reaney, and Susan Reaney (beside Applebutter). Photo by Jay Peterson.
“As children take inspiration from their own lives, Bretta and I have planned a world as created by the child Alice – full of bicycles and toy wagons, kites and chessboards,” says Ms Keiley. “But since this world is through the looking-glass, bicycles have giant trees growing out of the handlebars, red toy wagons inspire a flotilla for the Queen’s entrance, and the kings and queens of chessboards join all the characters from Alice’s mounds of books. Our goal is to tap into that wonderful world of seven-year-olds, where anything is not only possible but likely, and the only thing you can reasonably expect is the unexpected.”
The show runs May 31 to October 12 at the Avon Theatre in Stratford, Ontario. For tickets, contact the box office at 1.800.567.1600 or visit stratfordfestival.ca
For more about the Alice opening show, see JBNBlog.
Trish Lindström as Alice in “Alice Through the Looking-Glass”, May 31 to October 12 at the Avon Theatre in Stratford, Ontario.
Cynthia Dale as The Red Queen in “Alice Through the Looking-Glass,” May 31 to October 12, 2014
Flower from Alice Through the Looking-Glass, April 5, 2014. Courtesy Stratford Beacon Herald.
“Alice” events at the Stratford Festival Forum
Several Forum events and activities offer a chance to explore Alice Through the Looking-Glass, including Alice Adventure Lunches, a themed meal and activity to ignite your child’s imagination before the magic unfolds on stage; Adapting Alice, a panel discussion including Jillian Keiley and Peter Hinton, playwright for the Shaw Festival; and Acting Up: Alice, a drama workshop in which 8- to 10-year-olds use costumes to explore scenes and characters from the play.
Alice Through the Looking-Glass is a Schulich Children’s Play presentation and produced in association with Canada’s National Arts Centre.
At the May 5, 2014 preview performance of Alice Through the Looking-Glass, Chris Spaleta from Seaforth, Ontario was presented with a lifetime pass for two for being the Stratford Festival’s 26 millionth patron!
May 5, 2014: Chris Spaleta with the cast of Alice Through the Looking-Glass. Photo courtesy Stratford Beacon Herald.
Small babe, tell me
As you sat in your mother’s cave
What did you build there,
Little baby mine?
Sir, I made the tooth
I invented the eye
I played out hair on a comb-harp
I thought up the sigh.
I pounded the darkness to
Guts, Heart and Head:
America, Eurasia and Africa
I out of chaos led.
I fought the goblins
For the heart;
‘Twas a jewel they desired,
But I held it.
I fought off the rats
From the guts.
They nibbled but I
Smashed the mutts.
I choked the bat so intent
For the diamond of my mind;
I caught him in the ogre’s cellar
The tub of blood behind.
And the darkness gave me
Two boneless wands or swords:
I knew not their meaning then
Whether traps or rewards.
One was the vorpal phallus
Filled with jostling army,
Henhouse and palace
Street crowds and history.
Two was the magic tongue
Stuffed with names and numbers,
The string of song,
The waker from fallen slumbers.
My mother opened her grave,
I sprang out a giant
Into another cave
Where I was a seed again.
Hapless and wriggly small
As in my father’s groin:
My Shakespeare’s tongue a wawl
And impotent my loin.
The sun-egg I must reach
Was steeples far away,
The world that I must name
Was shapeless, sneaky gray.
Is it wonder then I rage
An old man one hour old,
A bridegroom come to a bride
Careless, unready and cold.
My wedding cake’s still in the field;
My bride is ninety and maggoty;
My groomsmen glaring hangmen;
My bridal bed bouldery.
Small babe, tell me
As you sit in your mother’s cave
What did you build there,
Little baby mine?
James Reaney, 1959
“The Baby” is part of a sequence of poems from James Reaney’s play One-man Masque, first performed by the author on April 5-6, 1960 at the Hart House Theatre in Toronto. You can also find the poem in The Essential James Reaney (2009), available from The Porcupine’s Quill.
#Jamie2026 in Stratford September 1, 2026 – Thank you, dear family and friends, for joining us at the Stratford Perth Museum for Jamie’s (James Reaney’s) 100th birthday. Your tales of Jamie – some from Jamie, some from others – made this a day to remember. Special thanks to Betty Jo Belton, Jerry Prager, Alice and Tim…
Our year-long celebration of James Reaney’s centenary — #Jamie2026 — continues in September. On Tuesday September 1, 1-3 pm, join us for what would have been James Reaney’s 100th birthday at the Stratford Perth Museum. There will be a pop-up exhibit celebrating his life and work and a chance for family and friends to share memories. Tea and coffee will be served, and…
On Tuesday September 1st, come join us for what would have been James Reaney’s 100th birthday in Stratford at the Stratford Perth Museum. James Reaney was known as “Jamie” to friends and family, and we have been calling our year-long celebration of his centenary #Jamie2026. There will be a pop-up exhibit celebrating his life and…
