Earle Birney

Alfred Earle Birney OC FRSC (born May 13, 1904 in Calgary ; † September 3, 1995 in Toronto , Ontario ) was a Canadian poet who contributed important works to Canadian poetry of the 20th century and, since his first collection of poetry, David and Other Poems ( 1942) consistently explored linguistic resources with passion and playful curiosity. During his writing career he was an experimental poet who published over twenty volumes of poetry, which varied just as widely in form and voice as in subjects. His poems reveal his constant concern to portray his encyclopedic experiences of Canada's geographic or cultural reach, nature, travel, or studies of love in wonderfully skillful and smooth, but always serious, language. In addition, he dealt in numerous publications with the life and work of poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Malcolm Lowry , but also on the mountain guide and trapper Konrad Kain .

Life

Birney spent his childhood in Alberta , first on a farm in Ponoka and later in Banff . After attending elementary school, he worked as a packer and mountain guide in the Canadian Rockies before finishing high school in Creston . After a subsequent job as a bank clerk, he began studying science at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1922 and later studying English with a focus on Old and Middle English at UBC. During his studies he was the editor of UBC's student newspaper, The Ubyssey , but was dismissed from this position by the university administration, which led to controversy at the university. To finance his studies, he worked as a painter, salesman, lumberjack and surveyor, as well as article writer and copywriter for the Point Gray Gazette . In 1926 he moved to the University of Toronto , where he obtained a Master of Arts degree in English (MA English) in 1927 .

After his father's death in 1927, Birney, who at the time was a staunch supporter of Marxism-Leninism , moved to San Francisco , where he lived in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood , and began his postgraduate studies to obtain a Doctor of Philosophy ( Ph.D. ) at the University of California, Berkeley . However, because of the global economic crisis that was beginning at that time , he first had to accept a position as a lecturer in the English department of the University of Utah before continuing his Ph.D. course at the University of London in 1934 with a grant from the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) . After the crossing with a tramp steamer , he financed his livelihood there in addition to the scholarship as an employee in the British Library and the headquarters of the Independent Labor Party (ILP). In the following years he also made trips to Norway , where he met Leon Trotsky , and to Berlin , where he was temporarily arrested during a deployment of the NSDAP for refusing to give the Hitler salute.

In 1936 Birney returned to Canada and received his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto with a dissertation on Geoffrey Chaucer. After further teaching activities, he was a personnel officer in the Canadian Army from 1942 to 1945 during World War II . In 1942 Birney won the Governor General's Award for Poetry for the first time for David and Other Poems and received this award for the second time in 1945 for Now Is Time . In the following years he was not only active as a poet, but also as a playwright, novelist and editor.

After working as a lecturer for creative writing and literature, took Birney 1946 a professor at the University of British Columbia and taught there until 1965. For Turvey - A Military Picaresque (1949), a darkly comic novel about the Second World War won, he 1950 Stephen Leacock Award for Humor . In 1953 he was awarded the Lorne Pierce Medal for Literature by the Royal Society of Canada . At UBC he founded and directed the first creative writing degree program in Canada, which ultimately led to the establishment of the first creative writing department at a Canadian university in 1965. His helpers in the construction of the study program in creative writing also included the literary scholar Warren Tallman and his wife Ellen King, which began in 1956 lecturers work at UBC, and Roy Daniells , whereas the later winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction , Jack Hodgins , one of his Student was. In 1965 Birney, who in the 1960s also supported young poets like Joe Rosenblatt , became the first Writer in Residence at the University of Toronto.

Birney was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Canada (OC) on June 26, 1970 for his long service to Canadian literature .

In his various poetic works and styles such as concrete and visual poetry , but also in his collection of recorded poems with the percussion ensemble Nexus (1982), Birney demonstrated his deep commitment to ensuring that language has meaning in every possible and eloquent way. His later works, some of which were published by Blackfish Press , which Brian Brett co-founded in 1970 , included Fix (1985), Words on Waves: Selected Radio Poems (1985) and Essays on Chaucerian Irony (1985). After his memoir Spreading Time: Remarks on Canadian Writing and Writers 1904-1949 (1989), his last collection of poems, Last Markings (1991) appeared.

plant

Birney played a role in the identity discussion in Canada in the 1940s and 1950s ("What is Canada?"). In his poem “Can. Lit. ”(1947, revised 1966) he saw above all the lack of history and the lack of tradition in the country, in contrast to the USA, as decisive:

"... We French, we English never lost our civil war / Endure it still, a bloodless civil bore / No wounded lying about, no Whitman wanted / It's only by our lack of ghosts we're haunted."

- Birney, 1947

Publications

1937-1949 English irony before Chaucer , 1937 The beginnings of Chaucer's irony , 1939 On going to the wars: an ode to my wife , 1941 The two worlds of Geoffrey Chaucer , 1941 David, and other poems , 1942 Is Chaucer's irony a modern discovery? , 1942 Now is time , 1945 Canada calling: an outline of the development of Canadian international short-wave broadcasting through the activities of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation , 1946 Has poetry a future in Canada? , 1946 Atlantic coast , 1947 Atlantic door , 1947 Pacific door , 1947 Bird in the bush , 1948 Conrad Kain, 1883-1934 , 1948 From the hazel bough , 1948 Gulf of Georgia , 1948 Inside path , 1948 The Strait of Anian: selected poems , 1948 Wind at the cliffs , 1948 World War III , 1948 TURVEY - A Military Picaresque , 1949 1950-1959 Down the long table , 1950 Driftwood , 1950 Slug in woods , 1951 Trial of a city and other verse , 1952 Images in place of logging , 1953 Twentieth century Canadian poetry , 1953 What is a plant? , 1954 Malcolm Lowry poeta , 1955 Academic obligations and low academic salary have hindered me in writing poetry , 1957 The damnation of Vancouver: a comedy in seven episodes , 1957 Wind-chimes in a ruin , 1957 Biography , 1959 Canadian Northland , 1959 1960-1969 Conference of heads , 1960 Mammorial stunzas for Aimee Simple McFarcen , 1960 Montreal , 1960 The inhibited and the uninhibited: ironic structure in the "Miller's tale" , 1960 Random remarks on a random world , 1960 Reverse on the coast range , 1960 The Kootenay highlander , 1960 Time bomb , 1960 Actopans , 1961 Canadian literature , 1961 Ellesmereland , 1961 First tree , 1961 The unknown poetry of Malcolm Lowry , 1961 Ulysses , 1961 Bangkok boy , 1962 Beldams of Tepoztlan , 1962 Ice, cod, bell, or stone: a collection of new poems , 1962 Letter to a Cuzco priest , 1962 Malcolm Lowry, poète méconnu , 1962 Quebec May , 1962 The writer and the Canadian university , 1962 The bear on the Delhi Road: selected poems , 1963 Barranquilla Bridge , 1964 Canada: case history , 1964 Caracas , 1964 Cartegena de Indias: Ciudad triste, ayer reina de la mar (Heredia) , 1964 Conducted tour: San Juan de Ulua , 1964 Decomposition , 1964 Five poems by Earle Birney , 1964 For George Lamming , 1964 Gray-rocks , 1964 Hot springs: Nueve Ixtapan , 1964 Kootenay October , 1964 Looking from Oregon , 1964 Meeting of strangers, Port-of-Spain , 1964 Nayarít , 1964 Near False Creek Mouth: new poems , 1964 Poetry circle tavern , 1964 Skull in grass , 1964 Still-life , 1964 This study is less specialized than its title might suggest , 1964 Two poems , 1964 Wake Island , 1964 Yallahs mountain transistor , 1964 Alaskan passage , 1965

Aluroid , 1965 Appeal to a lady with a diaper , 1965 Arrivals Wolfville , 1965 A six-sided square in Mexico , 1965 Buenos Aires , 1965 Captain Cook , 1965 Curacao , 1965 On Cartagena, his native city , 1965 Prosperity in Poza Rica , 1965 Saltfish and ackee , 1965 State of Sonora , 1965 These with wind , 1965 Twenty-third flight , 1965 Villanelle , 1965 Vitus Bering , 1965 Candidate's prayer before Master's Oral , 1966 Epidaurus , 1966 Flying fish , 1966 Haiku , 1966 Holiday in the foothills , 1966 Hot springs , 1966 John Cabot , 1966 Nobody's as poor as a poor man. From the Hungarian of Joszef Attila , 1966 Plaza del inquisición , 1966 Selected poems 1940-1966 , 1966 Some poems by Earle Birney , 1966 The creative writer , 1966 The mammoth corridors , 1966 There are delicacies in you , 1966 Vancouver lights , 1966 Way to the West , 1967 Memory no servant , 1968 Fragments for th wind , 1969 Like an eddy , 1969 Pnomes jukollages & other stunzas , 1969 The poems of Earle Birney: a New Canadian library selection , 1969 1970-1979 Driving up the Sacramento Valley , 1970 Earle Birney: Phonotape , 1970 Natural History Museum , 1970 Rag & bone shop , 1970 Christchurch, NZ , 1971 Daybreak: high Rockies , 1971 On the night jet , 1971 Pachucan miners , 1971 Poet-tree 1 , 1971 Six poems , 1971 I accuse us , 1972 If you were here , 1972 S (t) ing rays , 1972 The cow jumped over the moon: the writing and reading of poetry , 1972 Buildings , 1973 Cucarachas in Fiji , 1973 Four feet between , 1973 What's so big about green? , 1973 1984 minus 17 & counting at u of waterloo , 1973 Ancient Cana-bardic lament , 1974 The collected poems of Earle Birney , 1975 Collected Poems 1 & 2 in Slipcase , 1975 She is , 1975 To Swindon from London by Britrail aloud / Bagatelle , 1975 Alphabeings & other seasyours , 1976 The rugging and the moving times: poems new and uncollected 1976 , 1976 Damnation of Vancouver , 1977 Ghost in the wheels: selected poems , 1977 Big bird in the bush: selected stories and sketches , 1978 Fall by fury & other makings , 1978 1980–1991 and posthumous publications Spreading time , 1980 Copernican fix , 1985 Essays on Chaucerian irony , 1985 Words on Waves: selected radio plays of Earle Birney , 1985 Last makings: poems , 1991 Celebration! Selected Canadian Poets (# 1) , 2000 One Muddy Hand: Selected Poems 2006

literature

• Peter Charles Noel-Bentley: A study of the poetry of Earle Birney . 1966
  • dsb .: Earle Birney. An Annotated Bibliography . 1983
• Kathleen B. Braid: The development of idea and technique in the poetry of Earle Birney . 1967
• Frank Davey : Earle Birney . 1971
• Richard H. Robillard: Earle Birney . 1971
• Rod S. Brown: Three perspectives on the depression. Morley Callaghan , Hugh MacLennan , Earle Birney . 1974
• Peter Aichinger: Earle Birney . 1979
• Debra Barr: Guide to the papers of Earle Birney in Canadian repositories. Compiled by Debra Barr for the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library . 1987
• Elspeth Cameron: Earle Birney: a life . 1994
• Bruce Nesbitt: Earle Birney . 1974
  • dsb .: Conversations with Trotsky . Earle Birney and the Radical 1930s. University of Ottawa Press 2017

Web links

• Entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia
• Entry in Canadian Poetry Online
• Earle Birney. A Brief Biography
• Entry in Canadian Writers
• Works by the Earle Birney Open Library
• Background literature on Earle Birney (Open Library)
• Two Poems by Earle Birney

Individual evidence

1. ^ Order of Canada: Earle Birney, OC, Ph.D., FRSC