Like the life here The wallpaper repeats itself Up and down go the roses Similar blows struck out By air-banging green fists: A bright rose and a blue one A pink blow and a blue one
The years have not changed their likeness Except that those behind the sofa Have kept their original blaze And those opposite the window Have turned yellow.
Aunt Henny says to Aunt Penny, “Have you read She? Oh, a terrible book, An awful book! Yes, it’s by Haggard Rider Haggard.”
Aunt Lurkey says to Aunt Turkey: “I nearly slipped today, I nearly Slipped today. We should put a piece of carpet On that particular step We should,” Says Aunt Lurkey taking another should Off the would pile.
No one remembers when The wallpaper was new, except The wallpaper itself In the green smothered darkness behind The sofa and the cupboard.
And I, I their awkward fool Board there while I go to school.
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
Listen to the Wind Act II: Rogue and DouglasListen to the Wind Act II: Angela, Arthur & Sir EdwardListen to the Wind: Lower floor McCully HouseListen to the Wind: Front of house reception areaJames Reaney’s illustrated story The Boy Who Lived in the Sun on view in the reception area
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 of 1961, James Reaney wrote and illustrated a story for children called The Boy Who Lived in the Sun. He made 36 watercolour illustrations to go with the text, stitched them together, and for many years it was only shared with family and friends.
In the story, a boy who lives in the sun dreams of going to earth to meet other children. He discovers that it’s not easy for a luminary being to have contact with humans, and that the process of becoming human will require lengthy and celestial labour on his part.
Once there was a little boy who lived in the Sun. (Illustration and text by James Reaney, 1961)
Every morning he watched the earth get up
(page 3 illustration)
and all the other planets — even tiny, gray Pluto
He loved watching earthsets best though
He dreamed of walking on earth. Beneath trees!
No trees, no shadows on the sun! In the dream, there were
were children picking berries in a lane. They looked at him as if they knew who he was
So the boy wanted very much to live on the earth, to pick berries, to meet the children in his dream. He wanted to be a little boy who lived on the earth. “Do you,” said the Archangel of the sun when he went to see him. “[I] wonder. It’s a very slow process. You can go to earth but first you must go to Pluto and then to….” “No,” stamped the boy. “I wish to go right now.” “Then go,” laughed the Archangel. “[I] think it may do you some good.” And
and down to earth went the boy — right through a big rainstorm.
It was night & a large moth pursued him all over. Since he was a child of the sun he glowed in the dark
He hid in a hollow tree at last but did not sleep. He did not need to. He did not know how to.
A bough of green apples ripened at one glance from him!
A farmgirl threw a pitcher of milk at him.
He melted the ice beneath skaters!
He caused a thistle and a butterfly to come out although it was snowing
In a minute a little baby he paused to talk to grew up into a woman & then down into a very old lady.
He could make no contact with earth-people. To them he was often just a sunbeam in the corner of the room.
There were no children picking berries and the leaves had fallen off the trees
Next he saw a crowd of people. He must have been in a city. The boy was discovering that he often had very little control over where he was. He was not human yet and so bounced about like a flash of light.
One day he went back to the sun. It was harder to go to earth than he had thought.
“As I was saying,” said the Archangel of the Sun. “In order to go to Earth first you must go to Pluto and be…
an old beggar man for 100 years
on Uranus harvest the enchanted hay
(Neptune with his sceptre)
sail the stormy seas of Neptune
On Mars you must lead the toy soldiers against the mad mice
You must be a madcap on the Moon for a full Leap Year
you must on Saturn think 1000 thoughts
On Mercury steal the ogress’ magic horn
on planet Venus find the tree whose leaves are flowers
And now that you have done these things go, for you are ready, Go to earth!
There he met the children of his dream who said that he was their brother. While berry picking they had lost sight of him in the forest. They were just going home to tell their parents that he was lost,
but now instead they would take him home.
Note from Susan Reaney: The Boy Who Lived in the Sun existed from my early childhood and was never published. I always thought of it as unfinished because I could not accept the ending. The boy returns to earth and is reunited with his family, but does he remember being a boy who lived in the sun? Now I think perhaps he does.
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.
2026 — James Reaney’s centenary year — is off to a good start with two plays based on his work from London’s AlvegoRoot Theatre. On February 20-21, AlvegoRoot presents two encore performances of Sleigh Without Bells: A Donnellys Story — a short story by James Reaney from The Box Social and Other Stories (1996). Adam Corrigan Holowitz reprises his solo…
Entire Horse Poems Written About The Donnellys To AssistThe Renewal of The Town Hall at Exeter, Highway #4 * IAround Borrisokane, in Eire, the roads twistAfter 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…
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…
James Reaney 