Correspondence - Earle Birney to Al Purdy
-
-
MSS 4_22_IX_H_7_001
-
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIAI'm glad you thought of me for your Emu list, and grateful. It's come at the right time for me as I've been asked to do some poetry readings both on the campus and down town next week(opening of the new Public Library auditorium) and I wanted to rend some pieces of yours in a group of poems by B.C-ers Normally I dont give a damn where poets live or write but this crappy Centennial is ignoring all poets and poetry, and the parallel International Art Festival is interested only in Great(i.e. non - B.C.) artists, so it will give me some pleasure to be blatantly B.C. in the one field that no B.C. culture-vulture will spit at, poetry. And I can make up an amusing list: P.K. Page, Livesay, even Lister Sinclair, Hambleton—since by Centennial practice anybody who once set even the most reluctant foot in B.C. is a Native Son,especially if hedeparted quickly to Make Good elsewhere. Like you, maybe, but l dont know how long you were around before you fled. I do know that I'm damned annoyed with myself that I never got off my fanny and got together with you in at least one good beer and poetry session when you were here. Maybe we'll cross paths yet.I'm going to read "Here I am at six o'clock. " & Indictment & Mid- Atlantic & the Cave Painters—half the book,in fact.Hope you dont mind, especially as I cant pay you for reading your poems, as I dont get paid either. Cheers,
-
-
MSS 4_22_IX_H_7_005
-
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIAVANCOUVER 8, CANADA7th April, 1958DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISHDear Al,Meant to reply long ago but have been busy on various things, including a Pratt lecture I gave at Carleton University last month. Expect it will be published in the series by Bissell and would like to get your reactions. I agree with you about Sutherland on Pratt and tried to shift the emphasis back to Pratt's importance as a great craftsman in the neglected genre of heroic narrative. I think the fashions in poetry are changing in a way which will increase Pratt's reputation abroad.Are you serious about wanting to dramatise Down the Long Table for the CBC? They have never approached me but I have often thought it ought to go. Have been too busy myself and expect to remain busy with other things for quite awhile as I am going to London for a year this Fall to work on a Chaucer book. Perhaps The Table would go more easily on radio than t.v. Why dont you sound the CBC out and let me know their reaction.I keep reading your verse in various magazines and I think you get stronger all the time,as I said before. I havent yet seen your Contact Press book and am looking forward to it. I enjoyed the poems you sent and would like to return the compliment with some new work of mine but I am afraid I have done very little lately. A couple of things are coming out in Pan, and in Americanissue of the Royalthe current CanadianLetters, and a verse, sequence in the April issue Architectural Institue of Canada's journal. In Forum you will find my reactions to the Centennial, about which you asked. I have a couple of Mao translations in the next Queen's Quarterly. I agree with you that my Trial of a City had some aptness for the Centennial but the Cen. Committee turned it down and so also has the CBC, to whom I had sold a t.v. adaptation of it. I also asked them to revive the radio form this year but nothing has come of that either.I hope your house is going well at Roblin Lake and that you will get some real writing breaks this year. If you happen to drift over to Europe this winter 6r next summer dont fail to look me up through Nuffield House, London.All the best,
-
-
MSS 4_22_IX_H_7_007
-
ITALIAN SWISS COLONY VINEYARD SCENE AT ASTI,SONOMA COUNTY. CALIFORNIA BOWAN IS.Way back in 1881 a hardy group of immigrant families from the famous wine-growing regions of Northern Italy and Switzerland established their famous colony at Asti. Cuttings of the choicest European vines were brought over, and planted.Asti proved the ideal location for their winery because within a short eleven years its wines, entered in international competition, had won gold medals for excellence Dear Al Thanksthat good letter. You should see the letter I never sent Skelton! The bastard has decided he can get attention by attacking me (in B.C., any-way). So now Lowry's poems, he finds, are crap, & Lowry Ameliasburg not really a sensitive alco-olic but just non-U English. Ont.I've been busy setting upa large Creative Writing ept. here; now; handing overPOST CARDMr. Al Purdy R.R.1
-
-
MSS 4_22_IX_H_7_008
-
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIAVANCOUVER 8, CANADADEPARTMENT OF WRITINGAugust 25th, 1964.Mr. A. W. Purdy,R. R. #1,Ameliasburg, Ontario.Dear Al:Many thanks for sending ’’Cancell All My Appointments”, and for your letter. The latter I hope to answer in a few days. The poem I am holding until I get your reaction to a couple of puzzlements of mine about it. First let me say I like it very much and want to use it, but I do not understand the section beginning ’’uncautious love” down to ’’legendary innocence”. Does this passage refer to the father or is it a continuation of the message ”to the girl”? At the end why do you repeat your disparagement of your own work? To say ’’this awkward music” is charming and modest. To come back and say ’’These inconsequential verses with emphasis on all the wrong syllables” is to protest too much and appear falsely modest, even though I know this is not your intent.I would appreciate a quick reaction if you have time.Yours sincerely,/pf.Earle Birney.
-
-
MSS 4_22_IX_H_7_009
-
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIAVANCOUVER 8, CANADADEPARTMENT OF WRITINGNovember 26th, 1964,Mr. Al Purdy,134 Front Street,Trenton, Ontario.Dear Al:Thanks for yours of the 23rd. Glad you liked Prism. What you think about the early ones is no skin off my back since I never edited them.There is no chance for anyone from W.H. Auden down! or up, coming reading here this winter unless they pay for everything. We have a new dean who cut that item out of our budget. As soon as the situation changes, we will of course let you know, but the immediate future is grim.Peg Atwood has already been in to see me and I have asked her for some poems, and glad to know you think well of her work.EQ/pf.
-
-
MSS 4_22_IX_H_7_010
-
28 Feb 65Dear Al,Good to hear, even if it's to learn you haven't any heat. So long as the scotch holds out. Thank you for being in Vancouver,and at such a time.Maybe I haven't many years left,so it's not such a Big Thing to say I'll never forget what you did for me, but anyway that goes for saying. Many other things go without, only because I'd only embarrass you trying to say them. That day I thought he'd strangled her! Wish things had gone better for youwith your Miss A. though. I've seen little of her, except for a passing smile in the corridors, but this will interest you:STORY*INDICATING SPEED OF ASSEMBLY LINE IN VANCOUVER GOSSIP FACTORYRona Murray, one of our Creative Writing grad students & also a teaching fellow in the English Dept., came into my office in a great show of gravity and concern, said "I think you ought to know...everybody knows that you and Ikuko are still Seeing Each Other.." I splutter the usual whaddyumeans.She says "She was on a drinking party with you and Al Purdy last week, in his flat." So I say whotolyuhthatbloodynonsense etc. "O I cant tell you,but the English Dept. teaching fellows all know." So I tell her, O.K., so did. Mr.Sato, it wasnt a drinking party, etc. But afterwards I try to think: whospread it? I know it wasnt you, or me, or Ikuko. And I very much doubt it was Peggy, who seemed friendly to both I. & me, & for whom I have done a favor (i.e. I got tne UBC library to purchase a copy of her $125 book). It was undoubtedly that wormy little Cohen who came and took her off at 10.30 p.m. I'm just waiting to encounter him.Well, as for Ikuko, things continue up and down, but presently somewhat up. Thanks partly to the discovery of a wonderful friend and counsellor, Giose Rimanelli, the Italian author who is on the staff here this winter. He has established a sort of Neutral Territory of his house, where I. goes to get coaching from his wife,and where he propagandizes her on my behalf, with proper Machiavellian appearance of high disinterest. Also he has kept me from going stark mad by letting me talk myself out to him—as I did to you! And I think I would really be in a ward, if you hadnt been here that week.At the moment then there is a surface calm, I see her only in my office & for professorial reasons, but there seems some kind of hope we may see you in the east--but for god's sake breathe no word of it, for if it ever gets back here, I'll be a dead goose.I hope good news comes soon about the northern safari. I've been talking to Dick Zukerman, a local impresario for concerts,etc., who tells me the new streamlined mining towns up there have a much more sophisticated population than we might assume,and they would go "even"(he says) for poetry readings.So maybe you could pick up some extra cash while up there,if the CC pays up to start you going.I've written quite a few poems to Ikuko, or about her, but they are too involved in the overdramatic tangles of the moment, I think And I've no time to do more than slop out first drafts. However, I'm hoping. It's all or nothing for me this time, as you know, Al.I hope things go well with you at home,the poems too; let me know as soon as you hear from the CC. And keep writing anyway,whenever you have the impulse.Prism 1:3 is easy to send you; no.4 is in very short supply,but I'll wangle one shortly and send the two together,with my compliments,
-
-
MSS 4_22_IX_H_7_011
-
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIAVANCOUVER 8, CANADAEARLE BIRNEY 28 Mar 65DEPARTMENT OF WRITINGDear Al,I'm delighted the CC had the sense to give you the grant. Cheersl When do you start roaming again then? This is really wonderful—but I hope it doesnt mean we wont see you, IF AND WHEN we go east. The pot is still bubbling, but all may spill into the fire, any moment. She is firm,constant, determined; and so am I. But we seem pitted against the universe in this matter. The whole enormous mass of Canadian Squaredom is poised to crush us for daring to feel our obscene,comic ,incestuous, tremendous, racially impure, determined unputoutable LOVE. We dare confide in no one, get help nowhere, just endure, fear, hope. The Marquis de Sato grows madder daily, an incredibly watchful jealous jailer,who now will not even allow her to come up to the university and take my class(the only one she is now left with).The telephone is not answered, he accompanies her shopping,everywhere. I see her in a hurried stolen dangerous moment or two perhaps once a week. We read Donne's Canonization (once together, now separately, and mutter: "For God's sake hold your tongues and let us love!—but the tongues go on waggling, the husband refuses ever to divorce, threatens suicide or other violences).Two more weeks must be endured, at least, before we can dare make a move, even if then any opportunity is granted. Pray for us, and for all criminals,all round lovers in the world's square cells.Al, that is a most marvelous kind appreciativereview. Thank you, my friend, for being so sparingeven silent, of my faults--and for writingwith such ease of style and sense of sincerity andwarmth. It's the most welcome of all the reviewsI've had of this book, and doubly welcome coming from you.If the miracle happens, you'll hear quickly from me.
