Charles Lillard

Charles Marion "Red" Lillard (born February 26, 1944 in Long Beach , California , † March 27, 1997 in Victoria , British Columbia ) was a Canadian writer , poet and historian from the United States who focused on the history of Southeast Alaska and of the Pacific Northwest of North America. He was therefore also called the “chronicler of the Pacific Northwest” by his compatriots. In addition, his collection of poems Circling North won the 1989 award BC Book Prizes include the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and Its History of Vancouver Island , Seven Shillings a Year: The History of Vancouver Island (1986), the Lieutenant-Governor's Medal for Historical Writing .

Life

Charles Lillard was born in Long Beach, California in 1944 to a fisher couple. He grew up in Ketchikan , Alaska and attended school there. He spent most of his childhood on his parents' fishing boat. He visited British Columbia for the first time in 1961 and preferred to explore the interior by boat from Skagway to Seattle via the "Great North River" route. After traveling through Canada and Europe in 1965, he worked in various forestry jobs, tried his hand at trucking and taught at Ocean Falls .

He then took part in the creative writing program at the University of British Columbia , where he graduated and received the Brissenden Award in 1970 . Lillard's fellow students at the time were Derk Wynand , PK Page , WD Valgardson , Dave Godfrey and Harold Rhenisch . His first collection of poems, Cultus Coulee , he published in 1971. In the following year, he received Canadian citizenship. At that time, his play The Crossing , produced by the Freddy Wood Theater, premiered at the University of British Columbia. In 1973 he won the MacMillan Prize and did his Master of Fine Arts . For an issue of Canadian Fiction Magazine he served as editor in 1976. In the following year he met his partner and future wife Rhonda Batchelor.

In addition to his poetry books ( Drunk on Wood , Jabble , Voice , My Shaman , Shadow Weather , Circling North and A Coastal Range ) Lillard has worked as a co-author and co-editor on many regional and non-fiction books on the history of Alaska and British Columbia. With Michael Gregson he worked on an illustrated book about the post-war icons of British Columbia, Land of Destiny , with Ron MacIsaac and Don Clark a study on cult leaders of the 1920s, Edward Arthur Wilson , The Brother XII , with J. Ellis a local history, Fernwood Files , and together with Robin Skelton and Rhonda Batchelor he organized various literary meetings and publications in Victoria. His enthusiasm for the history of British Columbia and Alaska also led him to reprint some classic works, such as Three's a Crew , editor of The Malahat Review and co-founder of Reference West , as well as other historical works. He was also the editor of the latest edition of the Sound Heritage quarterly , published by the provincial government. He was also involved in the beginning of a bibliographic database on the literary history of British Columbia.

The last of his ambitious projects was a study of the trade language of the Chinook Wawa on the coast of British Columbia, A Voice Great Within Us . Before completion, he died of cancer. The work was posthumously completed thanks to Terry Glavin . As early as 1962, the Summer Institute of Linguistics had estimated that only close to 100 people who knew Chinnok would live in North America, and by 1990 the Creole language (a mixture of elements from the First Nations , English and French) was expected to die out, respectively Pidgin language . Lillard's personal reference to the language came from his childhood as a fisherman and the occasional use of chinnok expressions in his poems, such as in The Rain Language.

ABC Bookworld, who had worked as a columnist for years as well as the Times Colonist , closed his obituary with the following words: “He could be somewhat erratic in his writing, selective in his scholarship and highly opinionated in his judgements, but his enduring enthusiasm for Pacific Northwest literary culture made its presence necessary and constructive. He is missed. ”His wife Rhonda Batchelor continued editing small volumes of poetry and short stories by prominent Canadian authors with Reference West until 2000.

reception

"Lillard wrote out of a strong sense of place, but his combination of regionalism and Native mythology had a link with European classicism. He was therefore not a typical bush poet who celebrated the lonely life of a man in the wilderness: his poems are neither romantic nor understated. In the last frontier of the Canadian wilderness, he found a frontier of the human spirit. ”-“ Lillard wrote with a strong feeling for the place at hand, but his combination of regionalism and native mythology had a connection with European classicism. But he was not the typical Bush poet who celebrated man's lonely life in the wilderness: his poems were neither romantic nor understated. In the last frontier of the Canadian wilderness he found a limit of the human spirit. "

Charles Lillard encouraged his colleague Marilyn Bowering at the regular Haunted Book Shop talks and readings to focus more on the early writers and poets of British Columbia. This resulted in interviews with Hermia Harris Fraser , Doris Ferne and Dorothy Livesay in collaboration with Lillard , which were broadcast by CBC / Radio-Canada and Co-Op Radio in Vancouver even before Bowering's first book publication, The Liberation of Newfoundland (1973).

His lifelong friend, George Payerle, dedicated his first major work, The Last Trip to Oregon , to his deceased friend and referred to Lillard as an inspiration.

Lillard himself was known for his relentless criticism of his less valued colleagues. His judgment on Pauline Johnson's collected poems, Flint and Feather , which was Canada's best-selling collection of poems for a long time, was catastrophic: “(…) the majority of readers (buyers is possibly more accurate) are tourists, grandmothers buying their childhood favorites for their grandchildren, and the curious. ”This image that Johnson's poems were bought but not read, surprisingly prevailed in Canada's public opinion in the long term, and so the Mohawk poet was soon frowned upon by academics.

plant

Poetry

• Cultus Coulee. Sono Nis Press, Port Clements, BC 1971.
• Drunk on Wood. Sono Nis Press, Port Clements, BC 1973.
• Jabble. 1975.
• Voice, My Shaman. Sono Nis Press, Victoria, BC 1976.
• Poems. 1979 (with Doug Beardsley ).
• Circling North. 1988.
• Shadow Weather: Poems, Selected and New. 1996

Poetry anthologies

• Volvox: poetry from the unofficial languages ​​of Canada, in English translation. (with J. Michael Yates, Ann J. West), Sono Nis Press, Port Clements, BC 1971.

novel

• A coastal range. 1984 (nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize ).

Non-fiction

• Seven Shillings a Year. Horsdal & Schubart, Ganges, BC 1986, ISBN 978-0-920663-03-5 .
• Fernwood Files. 1989 (together with J. Ellis).
• The Brother, XII, BC Magus: A Quest for The Brother, XII. Pulp Press 1989 (with Ron MacIsaac, Don Clark and Michael Gregson ).
• Land of Destiny. 1991 (with Michael Gregson).
• Just East of Sundown. The Queen Charlotte Islands. Horsdale & Schubert, Victoria 1995, ISBN 978-0-920663-34-9 .
• A Voice Great Within Us: The Story of Chinook. New Star Books, Transmontanus, Vancouver 1998 (with Terry Glavin ) ISBN 978-0-921586-56-2 .

Anthologies

• In the Wake of the War Canoe. A stirring record of forty years' successful labor, peril, and adventure amongst the savage Indian tribes of the Pacific coast, and the piratical head-hunting Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia (by W. H Collison) Sono Nis Press, Victoria, BC 1981.
• Dreams of Freedom: Bella Coola, Cape Scott, Sointula. Provincial Archives Aural History Program, 1982.
• Warriors of the North Pacific: Missionary Accounts of the Northwest Coast, The Skeena and Stikine Rivers, and the Klondike, 1829-1900. Sono Nis Press, Victoria, BC 1984, ISBN 978-0-919203-48-8 .
• Nootka. Scenes and studies of savage life. Victoria, BC, Sono Nis Press 1986. (with Gilbert Malcolm Sproat)
• The Ghostland People. A documentary history of the Queen Charlotte Islands, 1859-1906 Sono Nis Press, Victoria, BC 1989. ISBN 978-1-55039-016-2
• The Call of the Coast. 1992.

Editing

• Mission to Nootka, 1874-1900: The Diary of Father Augustin Brabant Gray's Publishing, Sidney 1977.

Awards and nominations

• 1970: Brissenden Award
• 1973: MacMillan Prize
• 1985: Shortlist : Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for A Coastal Range.
• 1986: Lieutenant-Governor's Medal for Historical Writing , for Seven Shillings a Year: The History of Vancouver Island
• 1989: BC Prize for Poetry , for Circling North
• 1997: Shortlist , Governor General's Award for Shadow Weather: Poems Selected and New

Web links

• Charles Marion Lillard ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia .
• Charles Lillard on ABC Bookworld. Retrieved April 9, 2012.
• Charles Lillard's estate at the University of Victoria, Special Collections. Retrieved April 9, 2012.
• Raven Prayer . Opening poem from Voice my Shaman .

Individual evidence

1. ^ 1989 Winners & Finalists. In: bcbookprizes.ca. Retrieved February 8, 2015 . 
2. ↑ Charles Lillard's work as a lumberjack was also manifested in his poems by means of chains of associations and word creations: Cf. Logging Expressions and Stories - midisislandnews.com . Retrieved April 10, 2012.
3. ^ ^{A b} " Charles Lillard " on ABC Bookworld. Retrieved April 9, 2012.
4. ↑ A Biography of Harold Rhenisch .
5. ↑ See the volume of poetry dedicated to him, Rhonda Batchelor: Weather Report. Dundurn Press Ltd./Porcépic Books, Vancouver, BC 2000, ISBN 978-0-88878-408-7 .
6. ↑ See Skelton's memorial edition: The Malahat Review. Fall 2007. No. 160 . Retrieved April 10, 2012.
7. ^ ^{A b} Rhonda Batchelor: www.leafpress.ca And Roll from Me like Water. The Erotic Tanka Suite . Retrieved April 10, 2012.
8. ^ Charles Marion Lillard ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved November 22, 2015 ..
9. ^ Tom Snyders: Review of A Voice Great Within Us. In: Quill & Quire . 1998. Retrieved April 10, 2012.
10. ^ David Mattison: Obituary / Necrologie: Poet-Historian Charles Lillard, Victoria, BC . - h.net.msu.edu. March 31, 1997. Retrieved April 10, 2012.
11. ↑ Nicholas Klassen: Can We Still Speak Chinook? A language 'thrown together to make a strange new country. In: The Tyee . January 10, 2006. Retrieved April 10, 2012.
12. ↑ Songs and Stories. (PDF) In: rjholton.com. Retrieved February 8, 2015 . 
13. ↑ John Sutton Lutz: Makuk: A New History of Aboriginal-White Relations. University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver 2008, p. 297.
14. ↑ Lillard's author page on www.touchwoodeditions.com ( Memento of the original from November 29, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
15. ↑ How Did I Get From There to Here? - marilynbowering.com ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved April 10, 2012.  
16. ^ MW Books - Home. (No longer available online.) In: mwbookpublishing.com. May 3, 2024; Archived from the original on February 5, 2015 ; Retrieved February 8, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
17. ^ The Hungarian Presence in Canada. Second-generation Hungarian-Canadian Authors. ( Memento of the original from January 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 10, 2012. 
18. ^ George W. Lyon: Pauline Johnson. A reconsideration. Studies in Canadian Literature. - www.lib.unb.ca. Retrieved April 10, 2012.
19. ^ Charles Lillard: Choice of Lens. In: Canadian Literature 118 (1988): pp. 154-155.
20. ↑ 1985 Winners & Finalists. In: bcbookprizes.ca. Retrieved February 8, 2015 . 
21. ^ Charles Lillard: Just East of Sundown. Horsdal & Schubart, 1995, ISBN 978-0-920-66334-9 ( limited preview in Google book search).