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Buoyant blog of septuagenarian (78) Kanadian poet and haikuist Chris Faiers/cricket. People's Poetry in the tradition of Milton Acorn, haiku/haibun, progressive politikal rants, engaged Buddhism and meditation, revitalizing of Callaghan's Rapids Conservation Area, memories of ZenRiver Gardens and Purdy Country LitFests (PurdyFests), events literary and politikal, and pics, amid swirling currents of earth magick and shamanism. Read in 119 countries last week - 43,329 readers in September.

Showing posts with label Raymond Souster. Show all posts

Friday, 25 April 2014

Sharing a beer with Souster and Acorn in Sarnia April 27

I've cut & pasted the following from Debbie Okun Hill's excellent blog:

Why I’ll Never Share a Beer with Canadian Poets Milton Acorn and Raymond Souster

Monday, 20 January 2014

Ray Souster Tribute Launch - Patrick Connors

Under the Mulberry Tree

By patrick on January 20, 2014

New Book and Launch event Honour Raymond Souster

Patrick Connors – Toronto: On Wednesday, January 15^th, Quattro Books released Under the Mulberry Tree, a book of poems celebrating the life and legacy of Raymond Souster. A true “People’s Poet”, Souster passed away in Toronto last year at the age of 91 after a lengthy illness. This tribute to his work and personality was edited by longtime friend James Deahl.

James Deahl with Quattro Books employee Kristen Blank – Photo Credit: Anna Yin

“Even if Ray Souster had never written a poem, edited a literary magazine, published a book, or hosted a public reading, he was a truly great and honourable man,” Deahl said. “Ray showed how to live a life of grace and compassion. It was a privilege to know him.”

“I first encountered Ray Souster’s poems almost half a century ago,” said Norma West Linder, a contributing poet to the anthology. “Seeing the way he made the ordinary into the extraordinary with the art that disguises art, I was inspired to try my own hand at writing poetry.”

In all, there are 35 poets to the book, paying affectionate and admiring tribute to Souster, widely considered one of the most important figures in Canadian poetry in the second half of the 20^th Century. He was a groundbreaking poet of wide-ranging influence who distinguished himself as an editor, publisher, readings organizer, and mentor. The contributors include some who knew Souster personally and others from younger generations who are extending the tradition of modernist “People’s Poetry” in a Sousterian spirit.

“When I consider the mutual friendship I had with Ray, I’d have to say serendipity and pleasant fortune is my connection to him,” said Michael Fraser, another contributing poet, and a co-ordinator of the excellent Plasticine Poetry reading series. “I was immensely fortunate to have been welcomed into his house and have the opportunity to bask in his brilliance.”

14 of the contributors appeared at the launch event, held in the upstairs of Tequila Bookworm, located at 512 Queen Street West. One of them was noted Toronto-based poet and editor Mick Burrs.

“2 years before Ray passed away, James Deahl told me that I lived in the same neighbourhood as Souster,” Burrs said. “In fact, I had been for a number of years.

“He was a major Canadian poet, and I got to meet one of my idols in person, although it took 70 years!

“After James introduced me to Ray, I in turn introduced him to Kent Bowman, who is also in the anthology. Ray and Kent were jazz afficionado’s, and could talk about music for hours.

“Also, we would always talk poetry with Ray, sharing our poems with one another. In general, he stood by a lot of poets, encouraging them, even starting the League of Canadian Poets.

“I felt saddened when he died. You just enjoyed being with him.”

Burrs poem, “Basho Watching Baseball”, appears in the anthology, and marked the beginning of the reading. “Another thing Ray and I talked about was baseball. We would discuss it on the phone, how the Jays were doing, during commercial breaks.”

The second stanza is simply:

“During a dull night game
at last the dome opens –
ah, the full moon!”

“This is something I experienced at a Jays game, and, of course, many others have, as well. Inside the climate-controlled environment of the Rogers Centre, you are not experiencing the reality of the outside world. The shock of the last line, the appearance of the full moon, is what makes it a haiku.

“Whenever Ray was talking about something he was passionate about, whether it was jazz, baseball, or poetry, he forgot he wasn’t feeling well. In turn, we forgot he wasn’t feeling well.”

The launch event itself included stories of Souster’s influence on the presenters, both personally and poetically. It was emotional without being maudlin, and brought everyone in the crowded room into a kind of communal participation, whether they knew Souster or not.

“I think one measure of the success of a book launch is the number of the writers in attendance who are not there to read their own work or promote themselves, but to celebrate the poetry of some other writer,” Deahl said. “More to the point, there were about 15 people in the room I had never seen before. When people attend a poetry event who you did not personally invite, that is amazing. It demonstrates the respect people have in their hearts for Ray Souster.”

Also, the service at Tequila Bookworm was very good.

In 2012, there were revivals of the extraordinary work of Irving Layton (http://newz4u.net/archives/28339), as well as Milton Acorn (http://newz4u.net/archives/32987). I am hopeful that 2014 will see a compilation of Souster’s work released—or at least set in motion—to bring his work and his place in the Canadian literary canon to a new generation of readers.

with files from Quattro Books

Tuesday, 22 October 2013

Ray Souster Tribute book update & launch info (James Deahl)

October 22, 2013

Dear Contributor,

         I thought it was time for an update on Under the Mulberry Tree: Poems for & about Raymond Souster. This anthology was to have been published by Fourfront Editions, an imprint of Quattro Books. It will now be published by Quattro itself. This is happy news. This will insure greater library sales

         Under the Mulberry Tree will be launched in Toronto on January 15, 2014, Ray’s birthday. Please let me know if you think you would like to participate in the book launch.

         Also, one of you contributors send a photo of Ray in a blue and red “Oberon” sweatshirt sitting at a piano. I have forgotten who sent this. It is to be used in the tribute book and I want to give a proper photo credit. It looks as though it was taken 20 to 25 years ago. If it is yours, please let me know.

         Finally, as a contributor you will receive one copy of the anthology in January. If you would like to buy additional copies at a reduced price, please let me know how many. Under the Mulberry Tree will likely be priced by the publisher at about $20. If so, I will be able to sell you additional copies at $15 (includes postage).

         Thank you for being part of the Souster tribute.

Fraternally,

         . . . James

Monday, 31 December 2012

Ray Souster (and Statue?) in Joe Fiorito's Toronto Star column

Fiorito: Warm thoughts to some who have warmed this space

Published on Monday December 31, 2012

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RENE JOHNSTON/TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO

Poet, publisher, and former banker Raymond Souster is shown at the Old Mill Bridge on the Humber River in Lambton Park in October 2000. Souster died earlier this year.

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By Joe Fiorito City Columnist

Let us offer best wishes for the year ahead to some of the people who have appeared in this space over the past 12 months.

Happy New Year to my two favourite priests, Father Hernan Astudillo of the Church of San Lorenzo, and to Father Roberto Ubertino, of St. John The Compassionate Mission.
Father Hernan and his parish have raised thousands of dollars in aid and supplies, including ambulances and buses, for those who have been harmed by earthquakes in Central America.
This year, among other things, the padre worked as a field hand in the Niagara region, in order to better understand the migrant workers for whom he says mass.

Father Roberto? He runs the mission on Broadview north of Queen. You may also know the St. John’s Bakery, which makes some of the best sourdough bread in the city; more importantly, it employs a dozen or so people who would otherwise be on welfare or collecting benefits; instead, they are paying taxes.
I am not, by nature, a religious guy, but these two are an example of faith through good works.
They should meet.
I’ll see what I can do.

I now want to wish a happy new year to Nick Lounsbury, who helped to rescue a man who jumped in front of a subway train last spring.
I send best wishes to Russ Loader of Oshawa, who discovered that there was so much electrical current coursing under the floors of his apartment that he could power a light bulb, simply by touching bare wires to the floor. No one but me, and Dr. Magda Havas of Trent University, seems to think this is a serious problem. Best of the season to you, too, Dr. Havas.

Tashi delek and happy New Year to Pema Choden, who fed me the best momos I have ever eaten.

Now here is a Raymond Souster story. The poet died earlier this year. The last time I saw him, he gave me an armload of his books. I opened one of them recently. It was an orphan; the pages were blank. If I had any nerve at all, I would hand-write some of my own poems between the covers.
I don’t have that kind of nerve.
I wonder why the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce does not erect a statue of the banker-poet in the courtyard in front of their head office downtown.

Happy New Year to John West, who dominates the ping-pong tables at the Wellesley Community Centre; also to his happy foil, the recreationist Lucky Boothe.
We are the ones who are lucky.

Nathaniel Banton? We love that man around here. We also send our love to Donald and Alane Simmonds, who mourn the loss of their son Kevin.

Greetings, and thanks, to the person at Toronto Community Housing who arranged for the cover over the canopy at the entrance to 200 Wellesley.

Best wishes to Frank DiGenova, of Butcher By Nature on Annette St. Frank is back in business after the fire. Happy thoughts to my other favourite butcher, Peter Sanagan, of Sanagan’s Meat Locker in Kensington Market, who recently expanded.
These two should also meet.

And now to Bob Richardson and Bertie Nakogee. Bertie was a First Nations volunteer who died in Toronto before he could serve overseas in the First World War. He was buried in an unmarked grave. Bob secured him a tombstone.
Thanks Bob.
And thanks, Bertie.

But my kindest thoughts are for you, dear reader, for following me around town the past 12 months.
Happy New Year, one and all!
Joe Fiorito appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: jfiorito@thestar.ca

Wednesday, 24 October 2012

Raymond Souster: Jan. 15,1921 - Oct. 19,2012

Raymond Souster

         January 15,1921 – October 19, 2012

Raymond Holmes Souster, OC, was the true bard of Toronto, the city where, aside from service in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II, he spent his entire ninety-one years, never far from his beloved Humber River. No other poet has written so deeply about the Queen City.

         Souster began publishing poetry at the age of twenty-one. Since turning ninety-one he has brought out two full-size books of new work: Easy Does It and Never Counting the Cost. Never a slacker, he wrote his final poem on October 5, 2012, a mere two weeks before the end. His death brought to a close a remarkable seventy year publishing career.

         He was the last active member of the Great Generation of Canadian poets that included, among others, P.K. Page, Margaret Avison, Louis Dudek, Al Purdy, Eli Mandel, Milton Acorn, James Reaney, and Anne Szumigalski. Souster won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 1964 (for The Colour of the Times), was presented with Canada’s Centennial Medal in 1967, won the City of Toronto Book Award in 1979 (for Hanging In), and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1995. He was a founder of the League of Canadian Poets and served as LCP President from 1967 to 1971.

         During the 1950s, he edited first Contact and later Combustion, the foremost Canadian poetry magazines of their day. With Louis Dudek and Irving Layton he also ran Contact Press for fifteen years (1952 – 1967), which published initial books by many of Canada’s most important contemporary poets. For several years Souster hosted dozens of poetry readings in Toronto, bringing to Canada such major writers as Charles Olson, Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley, and other members of the so-called Black Mountain School.

         Between 1945 and 2012 he published two novels (one a bestseller) and at least fifty-nine collections of original poetry. He also edited or co-edited ten volumes of Canadian poetry and, with the late Richard Woollatt, four Canadian literary textbooks for use in Ontario schools. Through his textbooks as well as volumes like 100 Poems of Nineteenth-Century Canada, Comfort of the Fields, Vapour and Blue, Powassan’s Drum, and Windflower, Souster established himself as a leading expert on the poetry of Archibald Lampman, William Wilfred Campbell, Duncan Campbell Scott, and Bliss Carman. These books also introduced the Confederation Poets to readers in the last half of the 20th century.

         His poetry tended to fall into five main subject areas: love poems to his wife of many decades, Rosalia; nature poems, often set in the Humberside area of Toronto, especially in the Humber River valley; poems dealing with political and current events, usually from a leftist perspective; the bravery of soldiers and the horrors of war; and his Christian faith, he was a member of the United Church. In the years following World War II no one did more to introduce Modernism to Canadian readers. His poetry is among the very finest ever written in this “snow-eyed country” he so loved. It forms a lasting legacy.

         Both Donna Dunlop, his personal secretary and executrix, and I know that Ray had no use for obituaries. In his view, the personal details of a poet’s life are unimportant. It is only the gift that counts, not the giver. But I cannot let it go at that.

         I was blessed to have been Raymond Souster’s friend for the last three decades of his life. We first met when he was working at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and I for Maclean Hunter (we were both number crunchers), and we sometimes got together for lunch. Later there were annual poetry afternoons in his backyard on Baby Point. In terms of human courage, honesty, compassion, and devotion to family and church, Souster led a life that was pure inspiration to all who were fortunate to know him. He spent more time editing, publishing, and promoting the work of other writers than he gave to his own poetry. In short, he was the most decent, generous, modest man I have ever known. And, as the final member of the Great Generation, the passing of this fine poet closes an extraordinary era of Canadian literature.

         Souster is survived by his wife Rosalia.

                                                      by James Deahl

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

October 25, 2012

Dear Chris,

       I have been reading the tributes to Ray in the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, NOW, and other places. While it is true that Ray was a great publisher, editor, and readings organizer, he was first and foremost a poet. I have started to get the impression that Ray is considered to be a minor poet, whose best years were in the 1950s and 1960s, who did a lot to promote other (and better) poets. Allow me to be clear, Ray did more to promote other poets than anyone else during the 1950s and 1960s. AND he was also one of the very finest poets to ever put pen to paper, and not just during the 1950s and 1960s. Ray wrote great poems from the 1940s into the 21st Century.

Sincerely yours,
       . . . James

*******************************************************
from NOW Magazine

In memoriam

Farewell to poet Raymond Souster 1921-2012

Souster, like Milton Acorn and Al Purdy used lyricism to address the big issues

By Robert Priest

Somehow we don’t expect poets to be bankers. But Raymond Souster who passed away on October 19, at the age of 91 combined the job of writing his lucid lyrical poetry with a job at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce foreign exchange for the first forty six years of his career.[briefbreak]

He didn’t write like the one percent though. He had a gritty lean immediate style that frequently addressed issues of the day. It’s a mode of poetry also exemplified by poets like Al Purdy and Milton Acorn—and often called by its modern day exponents, People’s Poetry.

In keeping with that categorization Souster wasn’t just a banker and a poet, he was an infrastructure worker as well. In the barely postcolonial literary world of the 50s, he along with Louis Dudek and Irving Layton, started Contact Press one of the first artist run publishing houses in Canada. Thereby he helped foster the works of Leonard Cohen and Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood and Canada’s first poet laureate, George Bowering.

“When I was trying to start out,” says Bowering, “I was reading Layton, Dudek and Souster. I felt as if I were learning most from Souster. That’s partly why I wanted my first real book to be published by Contact Press and why I was so damned glad that it was. I know that Ray had most to do with that.”

The ‘master-gatherer’ and poet John Robert Colombo (Colombo’s Canadian Quotations) recalls Souster fondly:

“Ray served as the still centre of poetry in Toronto. He established a north pole to complement the south pole of the academics. He single-handedly introduced Modernism in poetry to the city. He also corresponded with many of the movers and shakers of American poetry — notably Charles Olson, Frank O’Hara, Robert Creeley, LeRoi Jones — and brought them to Toronto to read at a series of fabled readings at the old Greenwich Gallery and the later Isaacs Gallery. Not for nothing was he known as the Dean of Toronto Poets.”

If you or your child has ever experienced a poetry reading at school, it was likely through an initiative of the league of Canadian poets—an outfit cofounded and first presidented by the unassuming Souster.

After a life of forty-one volumes of currently enduring poetry, two novels and uncountable foreign-exchange transactions, the venerable Raymond Souster’s good works live on not only between the covers of his volumes of poetry but in the form of an award established last year in his name by the League of Canadian Poets.

But the true award for Souster was the joy of writing the poetry itself. Or as he put it in his poem, The thundering horse:

“for better or for worse you’re hooked/must ride the thundering horse/hanging on any way you can/not the most graceful way to go/but even to be allowed to touch those great white flanks/ is a privilege and pleasure’’

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Monday, 22 October 2012

Ray's BIG SMOKE BLUES: James Deahl's fine intro

Big Smoke Blues

new poems by Raymond Souster

An Introduction

No one has written more lovingly, nor more honestly, about Toronto than Raymond Souster. Over the past 65 years in book after book, Toronto has been a major theme in Souster’s work. Now in his 90th year, this work continues with Big Smoke Blues.

Souster is the last active member of Canada’s great Modernist poets, a group born between 1916 and 1926. As always, his life and work are sustained by three pillars: his love for his wife Rosalia, his Christian faith, and his confidence in the power of sharp and decisive poetry. In Big Smoke Blues, Souster explores the role of memory in deepening his understanding of the world and of his place within it. The collection closes with the lines:

for the rest of my days

past memories like this

will continue

to wash over

the shores of memory.

And indeed, these poems reflect on the people, neighbourhoods, and places of old Toronto.

Literary and historical figures abound — Milton Acorn, Margaret Avison, Gwendolyn MacEwen, and Robert Weaver mingle with figures like William J. Stewart, Archibald Lampman, John Graves Simcoe, and the United Empire Loyalists. All are treated with sympathy and honesty. Much has been made of Souster’s “ironic vision” by Robert Billings and others. I prefer to talk about humour and affirmation. There is little bitterness in Souster’s poetry — instead one finds compassion. This is especially true when the poet deals with troubled friends such as Acorn or MacEwen. He remembers Milton Acorn leaving his cheque on the floor of Grossman’s Tavern following the ceremony in which he received the title “The Peoples’ Poet” and he expresses a deep sense of loss at the untimely death of Gwen MacEwen.

In general, the tone of these poems is one of quiet meditation. Food is remembered fondly, its sensuousness vividly portrayed in his mother’s baked apples with brown sugar, his mother-in-law’s polenta in chicken gravy, or his wife’s chili. Even bread pudding assumes a simple nobility.

The Junction District, Kensington Market, Toronto Islands, and Gerrard Street East are brought into focus, and readers see that in these neighbourhoods the past still lives today. Certainly the ethnic composition of Kensington has greatly changed, but it remains a microcosm of Toronto, a city in which a hundred tongues speak out as one.

Following William Carlos Williams, Souster realizes the power of a poetry rooted in place. Some of these places are gone: the Bohemian Embassy, the Village Bookstore, Pages Books, and Robert Simpson’s Department Store. But others are still vital parts of Toronto: Christie Pits, the C.N.E., Grenadier Pond, Wards Island, and Vesuvio’s Pizzeria & Spaghetti House.

Souster is no Pollyanna. He sings no song of innocence in which his youth was only delightful days when Mr. Peanut would visit Runnymede Public School. He also remembers the Depression when Chinese restaurants would offer a full-course meal for a quarter. Like Carl Sandburg writing of his beloved Chicago, Souster tells the whole story, and with affection.

Souster’s Toronto often starts in his backyard on Baby Point Road. Here his aged mulberry tree plays host to crows, juncos, starlings, and squirrels. Here also are his walks along the nearby Humber River, with its parks, opossums, and the occasional urbanized red fox. The Humber River valley is the setting for one of a handful of love poems to Rosalia, “Humber Afternoon”. Another poem that displays his unfading love is “For a 62nd Anniversary”.

Social issues are in no way lacking. There are poems dealing with homelessness and the need for proper social housing, the trap of current welfare laws, and the ever-increasing level of crime, especially youth and street gang violence. So the poet writes:

Shootings

and shooting-ups

feed the continuous

nervous pulse

of the city’s heartland.

There are many poems in Big Smoke Blues lamenting the prevalence of American-style street crime in what was once Toronto the Good, a problem neither the politicians nor the police seem competent to address.

Despite the decay of civil society, something of value endures. While old Tory Ontario is lost in the past, neighbourhoods survive. Although The Boat Portuguese restaurant has closed, other restaurants (some Portuguese) have opened in Kensington Market. And Wards Island is still a charming village for poets just as it was at the time when Milton Acorn and Gwendolyn MacEwen lived there.

Unlike his prior collections, Souster now offers five poems concerning his Christian faith. In “This Man of April” he affirms the presence of Jesus within our lives in this Easter meditation:

This Man of April

lives here

with us still

The poet states in “At Peace” that he has found solace in the arms of Jesus:

he’s found peace

nestled in

to his saviour’s

all compassionate grace.

In this poem, and throughout the book as a whole, Souster habitually refers to himself in the third person.

Souster is a member of Runnymede United Church. One of the few politicians he admires, William J. Stewart, was also in Runnymede’s congregation. In fact, Souster attended Sunday School with Stewart’s son. Stewart served as Toronto’s mayor during the Depression, and the poet praises his co-religionist for displaying “good common sense”.

Readers will notice a distinct paucity of visual images. There is nothing like

Rain-whipped leaf-ruin,

dying green-yellows,

already dead-crackling browns

in Big Smoke Blues. This is because Souster has gone blind and can no longer see the subjects of his poems. But his lack of vision is compensated for by the vitality and redemptive quality of his memory.

While most of these poems are set in the Toronto Souster has personally known for nine decades, history does appear in the form of John Graves Simcoe and the United Empire Loyalists. The Loyalists were the English-speaking founders of what we know today as Ontario. Souster observes that while they were the “cursed traitors” of the United States, they were Canada’s “steadfast, unsung heroes.” Governor Simcoe (1752-1806) and his wife left behind

such goodwill

that a lake,

a town, and a street

still bear their name.

Simcoe’s vision of a common sense alternative to the United States has not worked out as planned. The present Americanization of our culture is, perhaps, an unintended consequence of the consumption of American culture, such as the poetry of Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Charles Olson. No one person is to blame, of course. Canada had the unfortunate fate to share a continent with a nation ten times as powerful and ten times as committed to the notion of progress. Progress was the flavour of the 20th century. But, as Souster suggests, Archibald Lampman would have grown to curse the 20th century

with every fibre

of his fragile body

had our great poet

been destined

to survive.

Big Smoke Blues closes with a section dealing with old age, illness, and mortality. Few poets take up these concerns, as common as they unfortunately are. Raymond Souster, however, is a brave poet who ducks no topic, not even pain and his own frail and failing body. While some people speak of “dying with dignity”, all too few speak of living with dignity. These final poems, humane and with a seriousness softened by humour, written while in hospital and rehab centre, are a most welcome addition to Canadian literature. Our culture and our lives are enriched by this book.

James Deahl

Hamilton

September, 2010

Ray Souster: Two Last Poems

October 22, 2012

Dear Friends,

            Below are two of the last poems Raymond Souster wrote. One is a love poem (Ray never stopped writing love poems) and the other is one of his best Christian poems.

Best wishes,

            . . . James (Deahl)

Silver Creek

She has become
the magical silver creek
of his boyhood’s hot
summer afternoon,
meandering lazily
beneath a leafy canopy
through which
the mottled sunshine
faintly shines.

Now in his imagination
he cups both hands
and dips them in
her gently murmuring stream,
getting at least
one thirsty sip
of her life-renewing water
with the certainty
that her wondrous presence
will never happen again
in his lifetime.

Good Friday

While 4,700
advance poll election stations
are being readied across
the length and breadth
of this fair land,
Roman soldiers
are tying the wrists
and nailing the feet
of our Jesus Christ,
and while children
are hunting excitedly
through the grass
for chocolate-covered eggs
of Easter,
His thirst-driven cries
are being cruelly answered
by those same soldiers
raising on a pole
to His lips
a cloth soaked in vinegar,
and while Earth Day celebrations
occurring at the same time
find many people
planting much needed trees,
the tortured head
of the Son of God
sinks down
and with a last moan of pain
is released from this world.

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Chris -
I'll have a piece about Ray in my column on Wednesday.
cheers,
- Joe (Fiorito)
Toronto Star

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Hi Chris,
    It was with great sadness that I learned of Ray Souster's
passing.   He made such a large contribution to our country's
literature. His work will live on.
    He was always very kind to me over the years. Many of his
handwriiten poems are happily residing in my collection in Calgary.
    There will always be a place in my heart for Ray Souster.
    Take care.
    Marvin (Orbach)
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Raymond Souster, Toronto poet, dies at 90

Published on Monday October 22, 2012

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Rene Johnston/TORONTO STAR file photo Raymond Souster, pictured here in 2000, won the Governor General's Award in 1964 for The Colour of the Times.

Paul Irish
Entertainment Reporter

3 Comments

Raymond Souster — often described as Toronto’s unofficial poet laureate — died this past Friday at the age of 91.

Growing up in the west end of Toronto, his writing career spanned almost 70 years with the author still penning works until recently.

Well known for his focus on Toronto, he won the prestigious Governor General’s Award in 1964 for his collected poems The Colour of the Times, as well as being instrumental in the forming of the League of Canadian Poets in 1966, of which he was the president from 1967 to 1972.
His poems — with titles such as Ten Elephants on Yonge St. — probed the everyday nuances of life in a large city focusing on “ordinary citizens.”

A tribute was held for the late poet on his last birthday, Jan. 15, where an annual writing prize in his name was announced, but he was unable to attend due to health reasons.

Correction: This article has been edited from a previous version that mistakenly said Souster died at 90. The previous version also said he grew up in Humberside.

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Ed Baker has left a new comment on your post "Ray Souster: Two Last Poems":

that first poem Silver Creek especially the second stanza

"she" 's the same muse that drives my bus.. (though I 'use' her differently than he does slightly (?)
sorry that i didn't get into his work in the seventies when Cid mentioned him to me along with Layton and some others "up there"

a long drop-out period for me 1975-1998 and now
that I am back... for me lots of new things

good thing I am now 72 and my style (of writing and rating) is set ... no need to imitate

Posted by Ed Baker to Riffs & Ripples from ZenRiver Gardens at 22 October 2012 15:01

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