The date and venue for the launch of Milton Acorn's new selected, IN A SPRINGTIME INSTANT, has been changed to Thursday, July 12th, at the Parliament Street Public Library.
(All poets are invited to share their favourite poem by or about Milt during the afternoon visit to Robert Burns' statue in Allan Gardens, where Milt & Joe Rosenblatt led the Free Speech Movement 50 years ago.)
Several of the organizers of this event plan to have dinner after the visit to Allan Gardens at
the Young Thailand Restaurant at 446 Parliament Street (around 5:15 - 6:15) - please join us : )
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To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Allan Garden’s Free Speech Movement in July 1962, Mosaic Press and the Parliament Street Public Library are sponsoring an evening celebrating that important cultural and political event in Toronto’s history on Thursday, July 12, from 6:30 pm to 8:00pm
The library will host the launch of Mosaic Press’s new selected poems of Milton Acorn: In A Springtime Instant. Acorn, who later read with his people’s poetry colleagues at the Parliament Street Library, spearheaded the free speech struggle in Allan Gardens in the summer of 1962, when along with other Toronto poets and cultural figures, such as Joe Rosenblatt, he was able to change Toronto bylaws to allow poets to read their works in Toronto parks without penalty by courageously reading his politically and socially critical poetry to large crowds in front of Robbie Burns’ statue in the Gardens.
The program will feature a talk on Acorn’s literary contribution by long-time Acorn friend and editor of the new book James Deahl, a background to the Allan Gardens issue by Humber College teacher Terry Barker, poetry about Acorn by poet Anna Yin, music by Toronto Artist Honey Novick, and readings of Acorn's poetry.
Special guests will be include Acorn biographer Chris Gudgeon, and Acorn friend, scholar Joyce Wayne.
There will be light refreshments, and those interested are invited to join Acorn friends for an informal tour of the nearby Allan Gardens site from 4:00 to 5:00 pm.
Parliament Street public library is located at 269 Gerrard Street East at the corner of Parliament Street. Phone: 416-393-7798
The Acorn event will be held in the upstairs meeting room.
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LINKS
Milton Acorn : Biography
From: James Deahl. "Introduction," The Northern Red Oak, ed. with intro. by James Deahl. Toronto: Unfinished Monument Press, 1987.
Milton James Rhode Acorn : 1923-1986
He was born in Charlottetown on March 30, 1923. He died of heart disease and diabetes on August 20, 1986 in his home town. He was, and remains, Canada's national poet.
He was born in Charlottetown on March 30, 1923. He died of heart disease and diabetes on August 20, 1986 in his home town. He was, and remains, Canada's national poet.
The Northern Red Oak, poems for and about Milton
Acorn, is published on the first anniversary of his death. The spirit
of Milton touched every person that he met. As Gwendolyn MacEwen
has written—"You could go for years without seeing him, and yet he'll
always be there somehow, a great craggy presence at the back of your
mind, a gnarled tree in silhouette on the horizon." Or, in the words of
Al Purdy, "the Acorn-tree always walked on its roots, and always into
sunlight. It lifts the heart."
Poems
And Milton met a lot of people, especially poets, in
his journeys across Canada. Wherever he was he collected people like
some sort of modern Pied Piper. Not only did he live from coast to
coast, he was a tireless reader, and was always about to hop a train to
some new part of the country. He forged strong literary and personal
links in each area of Canada he visited.
The Montreal Years
Milton began to focus his attention on the writing of poetry in 1950. His first slim collection, In Love and Anger,
was published in Montreal in 1956. It was about this time that Milton's
only child was born, a son who was later given up for adoption. Having
published sixteen poems, he decided to meet some other poets and he
tracked down Al Purdy and Irving Layton in 1957. He was soon deeply
involved in the whole Montreal literary scene that included, among
others, Louis Dudek and Frank Scott.
Montreal was always an important centre for Milton. Many of the poets he most admired—Dorothy Livesay and the
so-called Montreal Group of Scott, A.J.M. Smith, A.M. Klein,
and Leo Kennedy—were associated with that city. To Milton, the heart of
modern Canadian poety was New Provinces and the long list of poets who
had clustered around McGill University since the 1920s.
Nonetheless, no sooner had Milton established himself in the Montreal
poetry scene than he decided to move to Toronto.
The Bohemian Embassy
The chief poetry reading place in Toronto was the
Bohemian Embassy, run by Don Cullen and John Robert Colombo. The most
important poetry publisher was Contact Press, founded in 1952 by Raymond
Souster, Dudek, and Layton to publish the new Canadian poetry. Milton
quickly fell in with Cullen, Colombo, and Souster.
Milton's broadsheet Against a League of Liars was
issued by Colombo's Hawkshead Press in 1960, the same year that The Ryerson Press published The Brain's the Target,
edited by Al Purdy. Milton set himself up at the Bohemian Embassy and
soon found himself at the centre of a sort of informal workshop with a
group of younger poets: Margaret Atwood, David Donnell, Dennis Lee, Gwendolyn MacEwen, George Miller, and Joe Rosenblatt. During 1962 Milton was married to MacEwen. After their marriage broke up, he moved to Vancouver.
Souster published Milton's first full-size book, Jawbreakers, through Contact Press in 1963. It remains an outstanding collection and a credit to Souster's judgement.
The West Coast
By the time Milton got established in Vancouver, the BC poetry scene was just getting underway. Milton was a founder of The Georgia Strait,
an alternative newspaper still publishing today. Again, he was at the
centre of a whole group of poets—Dorothy Livesay, bill bissett, Red and
Pat Lane, Maxine Gadd, and Seymour Mayne.
In Vancouver he organized poetry readings at the
Advanced Mattress, and was active in the movement against
the war in Viet Nam. Lane, bissett, and Mayne set up Very Stone House
and began to publish the new West Coast poetry. blewointment press was
founded by bissett in 1967, the same year that Talonbooks started
operation.
J. Michael Yates founded Sono Nis Press
and Bc was in the midst of a blaze of poetry. Writers from all over
North America were going to Vancouver; and, in 1969, Milton left town.
Toronto Again
I've Tasted My Blood, Milton's masterwork, was
published by The Ryerson Press in 1969. It too was edited by Purdy, who
would later edit his huge collection, Dig Up My Heart (McClelland and Stewart,
1983). Milton, fresh from the West Coast and a sort of local hero, soon
became the centre of the Toronto poetry scene. In 1970 he was named
"The Peoples' Poet" by a host of writers including Layton (who was now
in Toronto), Eli Mandel, Atwood, and Rosenblatt.
He lived in the city for a dozen years, blustering
around the downtown core and giving workshops, readings, and talks at
every poetry venue he came across. The first press he became involved
with was NC Press, which brought out More Poems For People (1972) and The Island Means Minago (1975). In 1976 Milton co-founded Steel Rail Publishing, which published Jackpine Sonnets a year later.
Once again, Milton gathered a collection of young
poets. I met Milton in 1972. A few years later he joined the LINK Poetry
Workshop, which Mike Zizis and I had founded in 1973. He had an
immediate impact on our group and was a source of encouragement and
controversy. In September, 1980, Milton, Terry Barker, and I founded the
Susan Chakraverty Institute at New College, University of Toronto.
Milton also taught poetry at the legendary Three Schools.
Milton and I shared an apartment for two years. His
love of poetry and his constant, obsessive work astound me to this day.
Among the poets associated with Milton during his second period in
Toronto were Zizis, Joe Blades, Michael Dudley, Chris Faiers, Mark
Gordon, Bruce Meyer, Ted Plantos, Robert Priest, Margaret Saunders, and Gerry Shikatani. By this time
Toronto had become the centre of English-language poetry in Canada. Milton, in declining health, returned to Charlottetown.
The Island
Milton's final years (1981-1986) were largely spent in PEI. There were,
of course, numerous trips to Toronto, where he met poets like Bev
Daurio, Carol Malyon, and Wayne Ray.
In Charlottetown Milton got to know Libby Oughton and Richard Lemm of Ragweed Press, who published Captain Neal MacDougal & the Naked Goddess (1982), edited by Fred Cogswell. Here, too, he met Valerie LaPointe, who was his steadfast comnpanion during his last years.
At the time of Milton's death, Wayne Ray was about to publish Whiskey Jack (HMS Press); Chris Faiers was about to publish A Stand of Jackpine (Unfinished Monument Press); and I had agreed to edit The Uncollected Acorn for Deneau Publishers. Ted Plantos had a special Milton Acorn issue of Cross-Canada Writers' Quarterly almost at the printers— it would become the Milton Acorn memorial issue.
Acorn and Canadian Poetry
Milton always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. He made
it to Montreal while that city was still the centre of English-language
literature. He moved to Toronto just when the generation of poets who
would make Toronto the new centre were starting out. He met them all. He
was in Vancouver when the West Coast scene got going. Then it was
Toronto again and another circle of poets.
Milton saw himself as following the tradition in Canadian poetry established in the nineteenth century by Isabella Valancy Crawford and Archibald Lampman.
He learned much from Crawford and Lampman and from two poets whom he
met later: Dorothy Livesay and A1 Purdy.
Milton, along with Livesay and Purdy, forms a sort of bridge between
Canada's past and the new poets of the 1960s, 7os, and 8os. For the
record, Milton saw this tradition being carried on today by Margaret Atwood, bill bissett, James
Deahl, Mary di Michele, Chris Faiers, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Robin Mathews, Robert Priest, and Tom Wayman (a list that might amaze many critics as well as some of the poets listed!).
Acorn's opinion aside, his real influence lay in his
ready encouragement of younger poets. In Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto,
or Charlottetown, Milton was always exceptionally generous with his
time. He would tirelessly read manuscripts, encourage authors, and give
sound advice. He was the most accessible literary figure in Canada.
He would attend poetry readings and almost always stay
for the open set. Through the Bohemian Embassy workshop and the LINK
Poetry Workshop he met scores of young, mostly unpublished poets. These
people learned from Milton his concern for language and sound, his
doctrine of hard work, and his love of people. He also gave countless
readings. His passionate delivery and personal rapport with his audience
helped put the voice back into Canadian poetry. Milton was at all times pro-human or, as Lesley McAllister has written in The Toronto Star, "pro-life". He believed in the human spirit and in the celebration of life in all its forms.
Milton's taste was exceptionally catholic, as long as
the poetry reflected a love for humanity and the natural world. He was
supportive of Michael Dudley's haiku, Atwood's Canadianism (or, as he
put it, "From the Valleyism"), Wayman's work poetry, and bissett's pure
energy.
He was a nationalist, constantly recommending the
poetry of Livesay, Layton, Purdy, and MacEwen. And he was an
internationalist, insisting that young poets read W.B. Yeats, Robert
Lowell, Pablo Neruda, Garcia Lorca, and Andrei Voznesensky. Indeed, one
could not visit him at the Waverley Hotel without having a book thrust
into one's hands that must be read.
Almost all the contributors to The Northern Red Oak knew
Milton personally. Some are old friends like Purdy, MacEwen, and
Atwood; some only met him during his final years. Some (Cogswell, Purdy,
and I) edited Milton's books, and some were his publishers (Daurio,
Faiers, Letore, and Ray). All have been touched in a profound way by
Milton and his work.
When Milton died I decided to produce a memorial
anthology—so many people seemed to need to express their love and
respect for the man who ate, slept, and lived poetry. The call for
submissions met with great success. Unfortunately, much publishable work
had to be returned because of space limitations. This memorial
anthology could have been twice as long had poetry from all of Milton's
friends been included.
Many of the pieces presented here came with the words
"For Milton Acorn" attached to them. These have been deleted for cleaner
presentation and because, in an important sense, every poem in The Northern Red Oak is for Milton.
A few are o1d poems. Purdy's "House Guest" relates to
the time he and Milton lived together at Roblin Lake. bissett's are from
his Vancouver years with Milton. "The House", by Gwen MacEwen, recalls
the time and mood of their year together in Toronto. Some are elegies to
the finest poet ever to write in Canada. And others, like Ray's
anti-abortion haiku and Shikatani's anti-war poem, touch on issues that
were of great concern to Milton. Still others, such as "1838" (Lee) and
"At the Tourist Centre in Boston" (Atwood), are poems that Milton
particularly liked.
This collection is but a small gesture from the
contributors to one whose gift to poetry and to the Canadian people can
never be repaid.
To you, Milton, from your friends, with abiding love.
James Deahl
Toronto, 1987
Toronto, 1987
Milton Acorn's works copyright © to the Estate of Milton Acorn.
. A.
When the moon is full in the constellation of Scorpio and the sun is in
Taurus (usually the full moon in May), a world-wide event takes place
that is oftentimes referred to as Wesak (also known as Vesak, Sanskrit Vaishakha, Pali Vesakha).
In the East, this date also marks a celebration of Gautama Buddha's
birth, attainment of Buddhahood, and His departure from the outer
physical body.
Goddess of Liberty and the Sword of Truth
