Beyond Forgetting: Celebrating 100 Years of Al Purdy

By Steven Heighton

“... without a doubt the greatest poet English Canada has ever produced.”

—Dennis Lee

“A hundred years from now, one of the few Canadian poets whose work will still be read will be Al Purdy.”

—Maclean’s

Al Purdy (1918–2000), known as Canada’s unofficial poet laureate, wrote poetry that anyone could read. Having come from working-class roots with little in terms of formal education, he wrote in a colloquial style and with a rowdy yet sensitive poetic persona that has captured the hearts of many. Purdy was exceptional in the attention he paid to the geography and history of Canada; rather than using his Canada Council grant to write from Europe like many of his contemporaries, he took a trip to Canada’s Arctic where he wrote some of his most well-loved poems. His self-built A-frame in the Ontario township of Ameliasburgh also connected him to the land and history of that place, a literary legacy that lives on through the A-frame writer-in-residence program.

Purdy wrote over three dozen collections of poems, two memoirs, a novel, a number of collections of his correspondence and anthologies. He was awarded the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry twice, first in 1965 for The Cariboo Horses and then in 1986 for The Collected Poems of Al Purdy. He was an officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order of Ontario. The League of Canadian Poets honoured him with the Voice of the Land Award, created specifically to recognize his tremendous contribution to Canadian poetry.

This collection, created in honour of the poet’s upcoming 100th birthday on December 30, 2018, gathers voices old and new in celebration of the life and work of Al Purdy. Featuring poems by F.R. Scott, Earle Birney, Milton Acorn, Russell Thornton, David Zieroth, Lorna Crozier, Tom Wayman, Phil Hall, George Bowering, Peter Trower, Howard White, Cornelia Hoogland, Doug Beardsley, Patrick Lane, Susan Musgrave, Bruce Cockburn, Rodney DeCroo, Steven Heighton, James Arthur, Sadiqa de Meijer, Nicholas Bradley, Doug Paisley, Autumn Richardson and many more, Beyond Forgetting is guaranteed to move each and every Canadian poetry buff who grazes its pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harbour Publishing
• Release date: Oct 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781550178470

Steven Heighton

STEVEN HEIGHTON (1961-2022)’s most recent books were the novel The Nightingale Won’t Let You Sleep (Hamish Hamilton, 2017), the Governor General’s Literary Award–winning poetry collection The Waking Comes Late (House of Anansi Press, 2016), and the memoir Reaching Mithymna (Biblioasis, 2020), which was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. He was also the author of the novel Afterlands, which was published in six countries, was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, and was a “best of year” selection from ten publications in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. The novel was optioned for film by Pall Grimsson. His other poetry collections include The Ecstasy of Skeptics and The Address Book. His fiction and poetry have been translated into ten languages, have appeared in the London Review of Books, Tin House, Poetry, Brick, the Independent, the Literary Review, and The Walrus Magazine, among others; have been internationally anthologized in Best English Stories, Best American Poetry, The Minerva Book of Stories, and Best American Mystery Stories; and have won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry, the Gerald Lampert Award, the K. M. Hunter Award, the P. K. Page Founders’ Award, the Petra Kenney Prize, the Air Canada Award, and four gold National Magazine Awards. In addition, Heighton was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Trillium Book Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Journey Prize, the Moth Prize, and Britain’s W. H. Smith Award. Heighton was also a fiction reviewer for the New York Times Book Review. He lived in Kingston, Ontario. In 2021, Wolfe Island Records released an album of his songs, The Devil’s Share. To listen, visit www.wolfeislandrecords.com/stevenheighton. 

Book preview

Beyond Forgetting: Celebrating 100 Years of Al Purdy. Edited by Howard White and Emma Skagen, with a foreword by Steven Heighton. An Anthology of poems written in tribute to Al Purdy. Book cover.

Beyond Forgetting

Many of the poets who contributed their work to this anthology chose to donate their honorarium money to the Al Purdy A-Frame Project to support preservation of the Purdy house in Ameliasburgh and the writer-in-residence programme at the A-frame. Harbour Publishing matched all donations.

To find out how you can support the Al Purdy A-Frame Project and help preserve a living piece of Canada’s cultural heritage, please visit their website at

www.alpurdy.ca

and click on Donations.

Beyond

Forgetting

Celebrating 100 Years of Al Purdy

Edited by Howard White & Emma Skagen,

with a foreword by Steven Heighton

Portrait of Al PurdyHarbour Publishing logo

Copyright © 2018 Harbour Publishing and contributors

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright,

www.accesscopyright.ca

, 1-800-893-5777,

[e-mail]

.

Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.

P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0

www.harbourpublishing.com

Text design by Carleton Wilson

Cover design by Carleton Wilson and Anna Comfort O'Keeffe

Title page photo by John Reeves

Printed in Canada on FSC-certified and 100% post-consumer fibre

Government of Canada wordmark Canada Council for the Arts logo British Columbia Arts Council logo

Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd. acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Government of Canada and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Beyond forgetting : celebrating 100 years of Al Purdy / edited by Howard White and Emma Skagen.

Poems.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-55017-846-3 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-55017-847-0 (HTML)

  1. Purdy, Al, 1918-2000--Poetry. I. White, Howard, 1945-, editor II. Skagen, Emma, 1991-, editor III. Title: Celebrating 100 years of Al Purdy.

PS8279.B495 2018    C811'.6080351      C2018-904061-0

                        C2018-904062-9

Tell the Ones You Love

Tell the ones you love, you

love them;

tell them now.

For the day is coming, and also the night will come,

when you will neither say it, nor hear it, nor care.

Tell the ones you love.

I have lost many who mattered, and I will say it again:

tell the ones you love, you love them.

Tell them today.

Dennis Lee

Contents

xi Foreword / Steven Heighton

xv Introduction

Encounters

3 In Purdy’s Ameliasburg / Earle Birney

6 Knowing I Live in a Dark Age / Milton Acorn

7 Once in 1965 / Robert Currie

8 Sensitive Men / Candace Fertile

9 Al Purdy: Voice / Bruce Meyer

11 Al on the Island / David Helwig

13 Purdy’s Otters / Russell Thornton

16 Interview at Eden Mills / Katherine L. Gordon

17 from Real Life—Can You Imagine It? / Brian Brett

19 Famous Last Lines / Linda Rogers

20 While You Were Out / Doug Paisley

21 Ancestor vs. Ancestor / Sadiqa de Meijer

22 In Al Purdy’s House / James Arthur

24 Transient / Grace Vermeer

25 Al and Eurithe / Rodney DeCroo

30 I Met You Only Once, Al Purdy / David Zieroth

32 A Word from Al / Howard White

34 A Drive with Al Purdy / Richard M. Grove

Wildness

37 Problem / Milton Acorn

38 Poem for Al Purdy / Milton Acorn

39 Acorn and Al Build Something / Julie McNeill

40 You Have to Keep Writing! / Rolf Harvey

42 My Editor / Sid Marty

46 For Al / Wednesday Hudson

48 Purdy’s Crocuses / Tom Wayman

49 Shoulders Descending / Gregory Betts

51 As the Days and Nights Join Hands / K.V. Skene

52 How I Think of Al / Susan McMaster

53 At the Cecil Hotel / George Bowering

Inspiration

57 This Inn is Free / F.R. Scott

58 Say the Names / Kate Braid

59 Standing on a Newfoundland Cliff / Magie Dominic

61 3 Al Purdys / Bruce Cockburn

63 Spring at Roblin Lake / Kath MacLean

65 Challenging the Law of Superimposition / Lynn Tait

67 Maps of the Top of the World / Steven Heighton

70 Stone Song / Christine Smart

71 Lament for a Small Town / Solveig Adair

73 The Sharing Economy / Karen Solie

75 Long Reach: Thanksgiving, 2000 / John Oughton

78 Cactus Cathedral / Glen Sorestad

80 Too Tall for Antiquity / Kath MacLean

83 The Last Spar-Tree on Elphinstone Mountain / Peter Trower

85 When the Deities are Tended, Morning Comes / Autumn Richardson

86 Roadtripping / Jeanette Lynes

87 Iowa City / Rachel Rose

89 Stockpile / Ben Ladouceur

90 Ode to Al Purdy—A Litter of Poets / Dymphny Dronyk

93 Chrysalids / Autumn Richardson

94 Ground Rules / Ian Williams

95 Al Develops His Pleasures / Cornelia Hoogland

96 Cromwell’s Head Under the Antechapel / Ken Babstock

Legacy

99 from Essay on Legend / Phil Hall

100 How Students Imagine the Dorsets / Kat Cameron

102 The Unveiling / John B. Lee

105 English Assignment: Situate Al Purdy’s Poems in Their Various Literary Traditions / Jeanette Lynes

106 On Realizing Everyone Has Written Some Bad Poems / Rob Taylor

107 The Statue of Al Purdy / Sid Marty

110 Roblin Lake / Doug Paisley

112 The Poet’s Wife / Howard White

113 On Being Archaic / Nicholas Bradley

115 At Queen’s Park / David Helwig

117 Thirty-Two Uses for Al Purdy’s Ashes / Susan Musgrave

121 Al Purdy’s Place / Laurence Hutchman

123 A Cat Named Purdy / Lorna Crozier

Elegies

127 Last Night / Doug Paisley

128 Breakout / Doug Beardsley

129 Trains, Beer & Bronze / Julie McNeill

130 For Al Purdy / Patrick Lane

132 The Oracle / Autumn Richardson

133 Al Purdy Took a Bus to the Town Where Herodotus Was Born / Susan Musgrave

135 Each Life is a Language No One Knows / Susan Musgrave

136 In Memory of A.W. Purdy / Tom Wayman

141 Variations / John Watson

142 from An Oak Hunch: Essay on Purdy / Phil Hall

145 Biographies and Statements

173 Acknowledgements and Credits

Foreword

Steven Heighton

On Trying to Wear Al’s Shirts

The following is an abridged version of a paper delivered in 2006 at the University of Ottawa symposium Al Purdy: The Ivory Thought.

One afternoon sometime in 1983 or ’84, Dr. Leslie Monkman of the Queen’s University English Department managed to bring both Al Purdy and Earle Birney into our Canadian Literature class for a reading. I was in my early twenties, just beginning to write poetry, and in awe of both poets. Birney, tall and cadaverous, read first, in a croaky voice, ancient and wavering. He read for about twenty minutes and clearly it taxed him. He had a heavy cold. He seemed to grow smaller and more concave as the reading progressed. He left immediately afterward on the arm of a beautiful young woman who looked as though she could have been a student in our class.

When Al Purdy got up for his turn and peered down at us, the crown of his head almost grazed the bank of fluorescent tubes on the ceiling, or so it seemed to us. In a big, barging voice he prefaced his reading by asking what we had thought of Birney’s performance. Nobody spoke. Purdy’s high, sunned forehead was stamped with a scowl and his shaded glasses made it hard to decode his expression or even to know exactly where he was looking. After some moments of laden silence I put up my hand and offered that I’d liked the reading but had hoped Birney would also read from David, his famous long poem. Purdy stared at me with an unamused grin. A few long moments more and he said, Yeah, sure, nice old man like that comes here to read, what else are you going to say? Then he took the toothpick out of his mouth and launched into a long reading, brilliant and riveting.

If I was surprised that Purdy would crack wise about a fellow poet who’d just left the stage—in fact, an older poet, and one who, I later learned, had influenced and encouraged him—it was because I was naive then, maybe a bit wilfully, about a natural and unavoidable aspect of the literary world: the competition. Every poet wants to loom tall. Fiercely competitive poets like Al Purdy aim to loom tallest.

I met him and Eurithe Purdy a few years later, at the famous A-frame in Ameliasburgh, in the summer of 1988. He seemed if anything to have grown taller. Over the preceding years I’d gotten to know his poetry well, this process having begun with an essay I wrote about his Arctic poems soon after he and Earle Birney gave that reading at Queen’s. Now Tom Marshall and David Helwig had brought me and a couple of other young poets out to meet him. We sat in a circle of chairs on the deck in the sloping afternoon sunlight and we drank beer and talked. David and Al talked, mainly. Al had only a vague memory of his reading at Queen’s and when I reminded him of what he’d said about Birney, he smiled wryly as if to suggest, I don’t remember saying it, but it sounds about right.

A scene from the early nineties, one of our by-now annual summer visits to Al and Eurithe Purdy in Ameliasburgh. Al has taken me into his windowless, clammy, mildewed writing shed. It’s above ground but feels like a root cellar. Still air, muffled sounds. From one of the bookshelves he pulls a slim volume—his first published book, The Enchanted Echo, from 1944. Here, have a look at this poem. An awkward moment. These were Al’s first published poems. I’d heard he’d disowned them, more or less, but maybe he’d had a change of heart, or had always retained a private