Beyond Forgetting

by Howard White

  Wednesday Hudson lives in Calgary, sometimes Vancouver, and works as a realtor in both, a tale of two cities fraught with pro-pipeline and anti-pipeline energetics. Her mother always said things happen in threes so she has three boys and three dogs. She remains an untreated Purdy fanatic and confirmed student of Life.

  I had only read a few of Al’s poems before writing “For Eurithe.” I wrote it in about ten minutes sitting on my fireplace ledge. I remember the experience vividly because it felt like I wasn’t writing the poem.

  My connection to Al continues. I collect his books, gathered with great effort at times. There was a bookseller who told me he had no Purdy books but after conversing on all things poetic, decided I was worthy enough, and went to the back, emerging with several Purdy gems, including my favourite, Wild Grape Wine.

  There are a few things about Al I can’t help but admire: his late blooming, which inspired me at forty-something to finally put a book of poems together, a.k.a. it’s never too late to write a poem; his commitment to poetry—legendary, rare, and at times hard to understand given some of the sacrifices that were made; and the simple fact he wrote real poems that didn’t look to be clever or academic or up or down. Just finely crafted here-I-am poems that relate on the level of the human condition. Our fake news world could use a lot more Al.

  Laurence Hutchman, writer and professor, has published ten books of poems, co-edited Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada and edited In the Writers’ Words. He received the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence and was recently named poet laureate of Emery. He lives with his wife, the artist and poet Eva Kolacz, in Oakville.

  My first encounter with Al Purdy’s work was in grade thirteen when I read his Cariboo Horses at the Kipling Public Library. I was captivated by his poems about hopping freight trains across Canada during the Depression, working in the factory and the idiosyncratic character of hockey players. Here, I discovered a real voice of Canadian poetry and I learned that poems happen at the intersection of objective and personal history. Later he encouraged me in my writing and in a letter from Ameliasburg he invited me to be part of the anthology Storm Warning 2.

  My PhD thesis was largely dedicated to his poetry… “Purdy captures a sense of the country and its people with clarity of expression that has rarely been achieved in Canadian literature. Purdy uses epigrammatic lines, appropriate allusions, original imagery, various rhythms and ritualistic diction.”

  My poem “Al Purdy's Place” is dedicated to him.

  Ben Ladouceur completed a residency at the Al Purdy A-frame from September to November 2016, during which time he worked on his second collection of poems, Mad Long Emotion (Coach House Books, 2019). Ben is honoured to be a current member of the Al Purdy A-frame Selection Committee. He is also the prose editor for Arc Poetry Magazine, and his work has appeared in such publications as Poetry, North American Review, Maisonneuve and The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry.

  Patrick Lane lives in the municipality of North Saanich on Vancouver Island with his wife, the poet Lorna Crozier, their two cats, Basho and Po Chu, and two large turtles, Drabble and Emily.

  I was born eighty years ago and have written poetry for sixty of those years. In this I resemble Al Purdy. His early chapbook, Poems for All the Annettes, was an early major influence. I remember well reading it as I sat on rock by the North Thompson River near the sawmill village of Avola where I worked as a first-aid man. Purdy and I crossed tracks many times over the years, but our real friendship began in 1990 on Vancouver Island and continued until his death. One of the last favours I did for Al was to nail his deathbed back together after it collapsed under him. I remember Al standing shakily to the side holding on to his intravenous pole as he leaned against the wall, Eurithe encouraging me to hurry the job. He died a few weeks later, the bed intact. Over the many years of my writing life I have on the rare occasion wondered at my calling. At such times I have turned to the poetry of Al Purdy among only a few others to remind me why I was a poet.

  Dennis Lee lives in Toronto. His most recent collections are Heart Residence: Collected Poems 1967–2017 and Melvis and Elvis.

  John B. Lee was appointed Poet Laureate of the city of Brantford in perpetuity in 2004 and Poet Laureate of Norfolk County for life in 2015. His work has appeared internationally in over five hundred publications and he is the recipient of over one hundred prestigious awards for his writing. The author of nearly eighty books, his most recent work includes (from Black Moss Press) The Full Measure (2015) and The Widow’s Land (2017). He had several books forthcoming in 2018.

  The statue that is installed at Queen’s Park in Toronto was sculpted by my friends at the Negales Studio in the village of Highgate in southwestern Ontario near Chatham. (The studio is located in a converted hardware store once owned and operated by my great-grandfather Gustin Crosby. It is situated across the street from the elementary school I attended.) They were commissioned to create the statue by the Griffin folks in Toronto. I hosted several poetry readings there while they were doing studies for the statue. I called those readings “Reading to the Spirits” and dedicated them to the memory of Al Purdy. The readings were well attended—over one hundred people came. We read upstairs in the gallery with plaster busts of Purdy’s head lying on the shelf near at hand like the busts of Roman emperors.

  Jeanette Lynes is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Bedlam Cowslip; The John Clare Poems (Wolsak and Wynn/Buckrider Books, 2015). Her second novel, The Small Things That End The World, was published by Coteau Books in 2018. Jeanette directs the MFA in Writing and teaches writing and Canadian literature at the University of Saskatchewan.

  I remember the “Purdy revelation” moment vividly, despondent on my couch in my basement apartment in North York, struggling to feel connected to the Shakespeare text we were assigned by our professor. This must have been around 1980. Earlier that day, I had bought a book of poems by Al Purdy; I hadn’t heard of him but a quick scan through the pages told me it was a far cry from Shakespeare—and it was. At last, a voice that spoke in my vernacular, that of rural Ontario. Only over time did I realize the erudition underpinning Purdy’s work. But in that moment, I marvelled at the immediacy of the writing, the anecdote raised to art. I didn’t know a poet could write about wrecked cars, beer, and construction workers. Discovering Purdy was a homecoming. My hands felt again the stones we cleared from our fields. The poems evoked how nature gets inside our houses, through cracks, no matter how hard we try to keep it out, and stake our authority in the world. Purdy’s poems were quotidian, located, yet epic in scope. They felt authentic to me. They felt real. I’ve taught Purdy’s poems many times over the years.

  Kath MacLean’s award-winning poetry, prose, non-fiction and films have been published and screened across Canada, the United States and Europe. Her most recent books are Kat Among the Tigers (2011) and Translating Air (2018). MacLean was the writer-in-residence at the Purdy A-frame for three months in 2015.

  Susan McMaster’s publications include poetry books and anthologies; recordings with Geode Music & Poetry and First Draft; and projects with artists, musicians, and writers such as Waging Peace: Poetry & Political Action, and Branching Out, Canada’s first national feminist magazine. She’s a past president of the League of Canadian Poets.

  The phrase “death is yodelling quiet” from Purdy’s “Wilderness Gothic,” and the probably apocryphal story about the would-be poet who asked Al in a bar how he could write when it was so hard, have been touchstones for me, even while the drinking-man-among-men pose he cultivated was antithetical to my budding feminism in the seventies and my discovery of Canadian women writers. I never knew Al Purdy, know only the stories. But along with the roistering there are lovely words, and the quiet tale of a long and loving marriage. Thank you, Al.

  Julie McNeill is a Toronto poet and graphic designer. She was an original member of George Miller’s Bohemian Embassy, later Phoenix Poets’ Workshop. She has given numerous readings across the coun
try, as well as on radio and television. Her book, Four Red Crescent Moons, appeared in 1998.

  Al Purdy has always been a presence in my world. A friend gave me the 1971 book I am a sensation, edited by Gerry Goldberg and George Wright and published by McClelland and Stewart, in which I first found his poems “Hockey Players” and “Complaint Lodged with LCBO by a Citizen in Upper Rumbelow.” Then, while visiting a boyfriend’s mother, I noticed an old poetry book that included poems by her but also the early work of Al Purdy. His work had evolved since 1944. You can’t be writing and reading in Canada without having been touched by Purdy’s easygoing “people’s poetry.”

  I remember his readings: his booming voice, mirrored sunglasses and his rolled-up shirtsleeves. I especially recall an evening when a small group of us had gone along after a reading at U of T for a drink at the top of the Park Plaza Hotel. That was when you could still sit outside. It was a balmy evening and just being included made me feel like a “real” writer. I can still recall him sitting at the head of the table enjoying the attentive queries of a young woman who was writing an article about him. He’d made it, too.

  Sid Marty, writer and musician, is the author of five books of poetry, five non-fiction books, two CDs of original songs and many magazine articles. His poems have been included in numerous school readers and anthologies. He lives with his wife, Myrna, at the foot of the Livingstone Range in southwest Alberta.

  He was the kind of poet who could change lives, through the force of his poetry and the power of his friendship. Once he took an interest in you, he was a tireless champion—and critic—of your work and an indefatigable correspondent. But he hit the typer so hard sometimes that every period was a tiny bullet hole through the page. His letters were full of avuncular advice, such as, “Look, if you go teach you’re crazy, not to mention lost!” (August 25, 1970), and racy anecdotes, such as, “I’ve burned half a dozen tiny almost unnoticeable holes in Everson’s rug. Only thing to do to cover up is burn down the apt. bldg.” (Feb 12, 1974).

  I think that staying in touch with writers young and old as he aged kept him feeling connected and relevant, a sensation that inspired more writing to the very end. He seemed, for example, to have eyes on just about everything written back in the sixties and seventies. He “discovered” my own stuff in a little samizdat-style project of Andy Suknaski’s called Elfin Plot. On the basis of that and some other obscure publications, he invited me to submit poems to the first Storm Warning anthology published by McClelland & Stewart, and later offered to write the preface for my first book of poems, Headwaters (M & S, 1973), an offer I gratefully declined.

  But here is Al to sum up for himself in “Her Gates Both East and West,” the last poem he ever wrote: “On a green island in Ontario / I learned about being human / built a house and found the woman / and we shall be there forever / building a house that is never finished.”

  Bruce Meyer is author or editor of more than sixty books of poetry, fiction, short fiction, non-fiction and literary journalism. His books include 1967: Centennial Year (2017), Portraits of Canadian Writers (2016), the short story collection A Feast of Brief Hopes (2018) and the national bestseller The Golden Thread (2000). He was the winner of the Gwendolyn MacEwen Prize (2015, 2016), and was the inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Barrie. He teaches at Georgian College and Victoria College at the University of Toronto.

  Susan Musgrave lives on Haida Gwaii. She teaches in the University of BC’s MFA program in creative writing. Her A Taste of Haida Gwaii: Food Gathering at the Edge of the World was published in 2015 by Whitecap. It won the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award, BC, and gold in the Taste Canada Awards.

  I met Al Purdy in Mexico—in the Yucatan—in 1972. He and his wife, Eurithe, were travelling on poet’s wages—staying in cheap motels, shopping for meat and potatoes in the markets, and cooking on their own hot plate. They must have blown up every electrical circuit in the Yucatan. I was all of twenty at the time; I’d never met anyone like Al, and though he was one of the most difficult men, in my young, nervous way, I grew to love him. (How could anyone resist a poet who takes his own hot plate to Mexico?)

  Wherever I have travelled, Al Purdy has been there first. And written poems about it. No subject was too small or too awkward for Purdy, with his meat and potatoes small-town Canadian sensibility as big as the world’s. His poems had a way of exuding what Seamus Heaney has called “some of the smelly majesty of living.”

  One day when I reach that “unknown country” myself, there is one thing I’ll know: Al Purdy will have been there and written a poem about it, before moving on to wherever it is we go.

  John Oughton was born in Guelph, but spent many summers in Prince Edward County. Recently retired as Professor of Learning and Teaching at Centennial College, he is the author of five poetry books, a mystery novel, and about five hundred reviews, articles and interviews. He is also a photographer and guitarist.

  Al Purdy’s poetry and life have influenced me in many ways. One is that he provided an exemplar of the non-academic poet, one who wrote from life and travel rather than theoretical or critical positions. He placed a key role in the development of a truly Canadian literature, with his many poems about ordinary jobs, different places across Canada, and his focus on the significance of place, and of local history. Also, his often long lines and works, and loose style, conveyed the sense that anything was possible in poetry, and one did not have to write sonnets or works following a given formal or thematic approach. Despite his persona as the shambling, uncouth small-town guy, he read widely, and used his knowledge of the classics and other poets to push poetry further towards honesty and validity, in the same way that his friend Milton Acorn did, becoming a genuine “people’s poet.” He and Robbie Burns would have shared some whiskey and a few laughs, had they been contemporaries.

  Doug Paisley is a singer-songwriter from Toronto and a stay-at-home dad to his wonderful son Arlo. In his late teens he met Al Purdy several times at Purdy’s poetry readings and was inspired by those encounters to pursue his own creative ambitions.

  Autumn Richardson is a poet, editor and publisher. Her writing explores landscape, ecology, ritual and memory. Her poetry and translations have appeared in literary journals, pamphlets, anthologies and exhibitions in Canada, the UK, Ireland, Norway and the USA, including Contemporary Verse 2, Room, Carte Blanche, The Goose and Five Dials. She was awarded a Banff Wired Workshop Residency in 2015 and was poet-in-residence at the Al Purdy A-frame in 2017. She co-runs Corbel Stone Press, a small publishing house based in Canada and the UK.

  Linda Rogers is a poet and fiction writer who has also written song lyrics, screenplays and social and literary criticism. She is a past president of the League of Canadian Poets and the Federation of BC Writers, past Victoria Poet Laureate and, like Al, a Canadian People’s Poet. “Undeserving,” he booms in heaven or hell, and she puts another big spoonful of ex-lax in his coffee.

  Al Purdy and I were in a relationship, yin and yang, bratty siblings, oyster and pearl. If irritation is influence, so be it. I never let Al have the last word if I could help it and I defended Eurithe to the death, not that she, lethal words being the arrows in her quiver, needed help either. Eurithe and I enjoy having lunch and talking about Al now that he doesn’t eat with us any more and can’t criticize our cooking. And we do sort of miss him. What I will say is that Al Purdy was a great poet, unique unto himself, a lover of music who found his own voice. That is what I learned from him. Tell it your own way. That is authentic. I hope that the many poems that were sent to Al as he lay dying find their way into this book. They gave him so much pleasure. But I will caution those who want to be him. Don’t even try.

  Rachel Rose is the Poet Laureate of Vancouver and the author of The Dog Lover Unit: Lessons in Courage from the World’s K9 Cops (St. Martin’s Press) and the editor of the anthology Sustenance: Writers from BC and Beyond on the Subject of Food (Anvil Press). Her work has appeared in publications such as The Globe and
Mail, The American Poetry Review, Monte Cristo Magazine, The Vancouver Sun and The Press Democrat.

  F.R. Scott (1899–1985) was a trailblazer equally in law, literature and politics “in both official languages,” as the Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature notes. Among his other contributions, he co-edited and contributed to New Provinces (1936), the first anthology of modernist Canadian poetry. His landscape poetry and social poetry strongly influenced many younger poets, including Purdy. Scott won the Governor General’s Literary Award twice, once for poetry and once for non-fiction.

  K.V. Skene’s work has appeared in Canadian, UK, US, Irish, Indian, Australian and Austrian magazines. Her publications include Love in the (Irrational) Imperfect (Hidden Brook Press, 2006), You Can Almost Hear Their Voices (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2010) and Under Aristotle Bridge (Finishing Line Press, 2015).