[{"id":"1253","cataloger_name":["Mahtab,Banihashemi"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":[" Margaret Atwood at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 18 October 1974"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"MARGARET ATWOOD\" written on the spine of the tape's box. \"I006-11-008\" written on sticker on the reel. \"MARGARET ATWOOD 5780 H. FINK ENGLISH 18-10-74 Weisman Gallery OP-Gvadnay?\" written on the front of the tape's box"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"access":["Closed"],"creator_names":["Atwood, Margaret"],"creator_names_search":["Atwood, Margaret"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/109322990\",\"name\":\"Atwood, Margaret\",\"dates\":\"1939-\",\"notes\":\"Internationally acclaimed novelist, poet, critic and activist Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, November 18, 1939. She lived in Ottawa until 1946, when her family settled in Leaside, a suburb of Toronto. Atwood entered Victoria College, University of Toronto, graduating with honours in 1961. Her first published collection of short stories was Double Persephone (Hawkshead Press, 1961). By 1962 she had received her MA in English from Radcliffe College in the United States, working on further graduate work at Harvard University between 1962-3 and in 1965-7. Atwood published her second collection, The Circle Game (Anansi, 1966), which won the Governor General Award for Poetry. She wrote articles and reviews for Alphabet, Canadian Literature and Poetry among other publications, and poems for Kayak, Quarry and the Tamarack Review. Poems published in her book The Animals in That Country (Oxford University Press, 1968) won first prize in Canada’s 1967 Centennial Commission poetry competition. In 1970, she published three books, Procedures for Underground (Oxford University Press), Time, and The Journals of Susanna Moodie (Oxford University Press). Between 1971 and 1973, Atwood worked as an editor and on the board of directors for the House of Anansi press in Toronto, which in 1972 published Power Politics. Upon the discovery at Harvard that there was no published critical study of Canadian literature, she herself wrote and published Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (Anansi, 1971), which created a stir of controversy, but by 1982 it had sold more than 85,000 copies. Since 1973, she has lived with novelist and activist Graeme Gibson, producing one daughter, Eleanor Jess in 1967. Atwood taught and lectured at several Universities across Canada, the US and Australia, including University of British Columbia, University of Alberta, Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) (1967-68) and at York University, Toronto. A selection of her publications include Surfacing (Simon & Schuster, 1972), You Are Happy (Harper & Row, 1974), Selected Poems (Oxford University Press) in 1976, Two-Headed Poems (Simon & Schuster, 1978), True Stories (Oxford University Press, 1981) and Second Words (Anansi, 1982). Her 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (McClelland & Stewart) became one of her most popular and critically acclaimed works. In 1986 she was appointed the Berg Chair at New York University, as well as serving as writer-in-residence at several other Universities. She co-founded and served as chair to the Writer’s Union of Canada in 1982-3, and served as president of the Canadian Centre of International PEN from 1984-6. She has subsequently published dozens of books, including Cat’s Eye (McClelland & Stewart, 1988), The Robber Bride (Doubleday, 1993), Alias Grace (Nan A. Talese, 1996), The Blind Assassin (Nan A. Talese, 2000), Oryx and Crake (2003), The Penelopiad (Canongate, 2005) and The Tent (Bloomsbury, 2006). Along with many other publications of her critical essays, Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing 1970-2005 (Verago) came out in 2005. Her many prizes and honours include the Booker Prize, the E.J. Pratt Medal (1961), The Radcliffe Medal (1980), the Commonwealth Writers Prize (1992), and she is a Companion of the Order of Canada. Atwood continues to work as spokesperson on behalf of human rights and the environment.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\",\"Speaker\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Beissel, Henry, 1929-","Francis, Wynne","Fink, Howard,"],"contributors_names_search":["Beissel, Henry, 1929-","Francis, Wynne","Fink, Howard,"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/5489879/#Beissel,_Henry\",\"name\":\"Beissel, Henry, 1929-\",\"dates\":\"1929-\",\"notes\":\"Identity of this speaker confirmed in oral history interviews by Jason Camlot with Henry Beissel (over zoom), conducted on 2020-03-27 and 2020-05-05.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/77926194\",\"name\":\"Francis, Wynne\",\"dates\":\"1918-2000\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Presenter\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/6332801\",\"name\":\"Fink, Howard, \",\"dates\":\"1934-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Series organizer\",\"Speaker\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Beissel, Henry, 1929-","Francis, Wynne"],"Series_organizer_name":["Francis, Wynne","Fink, Howard, "],"Speaker_name":["Fink, Howard, "],"Performance_Date":[1974],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"Notes on tape box include: CENTRE FOR INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY; Prod. No: 5789; Professor/Initiator H. Fink; DEPT. English; venue noted is Weisman Gallery; Op. [operator or recordist] G Uadnay [?]; check box indicates this is MASTER of the recording (not a copy); \",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"Scotch\",\"generations\":\"Master\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"Cardboard tape box\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1974 10 18\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"Date written on the front of the tape's box. This date was confirmed in. the Oct 18, 1974 issue of The Georgian.\",\"source\":\"Accompanying Material\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Weismann Art Gallery\",\"notes\":\"Location written on the front of the tape's box indicates the venue was the Weisman Gallery.\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Weismann Art Gallery"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Margaret Atwood reads from You Are Happy (Oxford University Press, 1974) and Power Politics (Anansi, 1971). Atwood also answers audience questions about her work. "],"contents":["margaret_atwood_i006-11-008.mp3\n\nHenry Beissel\n00:00:00\nOne moment... problem that we have here at Sir George [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q326342]. We did try to get a larger hall but it was impossible. To accommodate the overflow, we have set up loudspeakers in the little gallery here, Howard, and in the other one too?\n \nHoward Fink\n00:00:21\nOutside.\n \nHenry Beissel\n00:00:22\nOutside, there are loudspeakers. So please don't all crowd into the room. If you are going to lean against the paintings, we shall never be able to get this room again for poetry readings. Because this, this is a gallery which belongs to the Fine Arts department, we had great difficulty getting it, these paintings are very precious, particularly to the artists themselves [audience laughter]. I would ask you please to stay away from the paintings. That must have been the artist [audience laughter]. We are also waiting for the arrival of someone else, so please be patient. Howard--[audience laughter] can you ask the security people to turn on the cooling system, the hall is going to be too hot.\n \nUnknown\n00:01:22\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n \nHenry Beissel\n00:01:25\nWe may get 927.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:01:30\nWhat do you mean, we may, I think they're also--okay. What would you like to do? Let us stay here or move?\n \nAudience\n00:01:41\nStay here.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:01:44\nOkay, with the people, there are some people who are at the back of the door, there is some space up here at the front if you'd like to come up.\n \nHenry Beissel\n00:01:54\nNo more than ten.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:01:58\nAbout ten. It'll make more room at the back too...If everybody on the chairs would shift over this way, um, and sit on, sort of as if it were a bench, then some more people can sit on the edges there. Or just move the chairs all that way. Move the rows forward. They're all shifting over anyway. Could you all move your chairs forward to make the rows as close together as possible. Okay, it's alright. \n\nUnknown\n00:03:17\nAmbient Sound [voices].\n\nMargaret Atwood\n00:04:41\nThere are these uhh--woohoo--there are these speakers outside and you might be more comfortable if you went out and listened over the speakers, some of the people are really jammed in there. I don't see any reason why this thing should resemble a steam bath, for all of us. If you're--what? what?...I don't think I can, what is it that they do? [Audience laughter].\n \nWynne Francis\n00:05:19\n[Laughter]. Miss Atwood [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q183492] has just upstaged the introducer. Good evening ladies and gentlemen. It's not often that an artist excels in two medium such as poetry and fiction as our guest tonight does. Miss Atwood's reputation as a superior poet was established in the 60's with her first collections, The Circle Game [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7723073] and The Animals in that Country [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7713834]. And while continuing to write fine poetry, six major collections to date, she's given  us two novels in the last five years, The Edible Woman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7731579] and Surfacing. With the second novel, published late in 1972, within a few months of a controversial work of criticism, Margaret Atwood became one of Canada's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] best known literary artists. The hypothesis of Survival, a study of patterns in Canadian lit is that Canadians see themselves as victims. I was remind of Survival recently when I came across a nineteenth-century curiosity written by one John McTaggart [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q463553]. It was a book published in London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84] in 19-- excuse me--1829. McTaggart wrote \"There's a melancholy which is peculiar to Canadians which must be combatted. People who labor under it must be encouraged, the soothing language, good treatment and now and then as circumstances require, a little assistance gratis as a stimulant.\" McTaggart's third point about the helpful effects of a little assistance as a recent theory has been taken up by the Canada Council [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2993809], to whom we are in part indebted for her appearance tonight. Margaret Atwood's work constitutes an exploration of what it means to be a Canadian, to be a woman and to be a human being. She writes about our totems, our tapestry of manners, our progressive insanities. She taught at Sir George in 67-68, and it's a great pleasure to have her return to us tonight. After her reading, she'll be open to questions from the audience. Ladies and gentlemen, Margaret Atwood.\n\nAudience\n00:07:27\nApplause [cuts out briefly].\n\nMargaret Atwood\n00:07:38\nLet's see now, if the mic starts to get funny, let me know...Too loud?...Not too loud, I'm afraid it isn't a very good mic and also I'm afraid I'm going to have to hold it the whole time which is a bore...I don't think it'll work very well, is that better? Does that work? Higher? Lower? Okay, how's that? Okay, I'm going to read entirely from my new book which is called \"This is\"--oh, what is it called? [audience laughter]. It's called You Are Happy. Somebody who has been photographing me says that a friend of hers was in a bookstore and picked out this book and thought at first that this was one of these \"I'm Okay, You're Okay\" books. Until I saw who wrote it. [Audience laughter]. But it has a happy ending, you'll be pleased to know. And I'm going to begin at the beginning and end at the end. Skipping portions along the way. I'm also going to make this reading fairly short because we are all in this rather constricted situation. I used to tell people when people in the States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] used to ask me “do you live in an igloo” and other questions like that, I used to think to myself that being a Canadian was sort of like living in a chicken coop in the middle of the desert. That everybody was all together in one place but there are these huge spaces around. I wish that  we had been provided with one of them. [Audience laughter]. I have a chicken coop, and you're nicer. But there are more of you. I think we will all have to be very, very patient, unlike the chickens. I'm going to begin by reading a poem called \"Newsreel: Man and Firing Squad\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:10:04\nReads \"Newsreel: Man and Firing Squad\" from You Are Happy.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:11:42\nReads \"Useless\" from You Are Happy.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:12:35\nThis is--the image in this next poem comes from, begins with the fact that I have a sheep and one of them died. The poem is called \"November\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:12:48\nReads \"November\" from You Are Happy.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:13:52\nReads \"Repent\" from You Are Happy.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:14:47\n\"Tricks with Mirrors\". How are you doing? Is it hot and steamy? Has anybody died yet?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:15:05\nReads \"Tricks with Mirrors\" from You Are Happy.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:17:45\nThis is the title poem, \"You Are Happy\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:17:50\nReads \"You are Happy\" from You Are Happy.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:18:48\nReads \"First Prayer\" from You Are Happy.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:20:25\n\"Is / Not: 1\". Oh boy, is it ever hot in here. I can't stand it. Light. I wonder if we could--well, then I can't see, you see. I wonder if we could turn off--would it be better if we turn off those lights that are grilling you over there...I could what?...Where's the light switch anyway? Howard, turn off the lights?...Well, maybe in a few minutes the lights will go off. Where did…\n\nUnknown\n00:21:36\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \n\nMargaret Atwood\n00:21:37\nHooray, wonderful. Actually, there's a light under here. It's like the Saturday movies [audience laughter]. No, I can read with this, yeah. Maybe I'll just read a little something else here, because it's the Saturday Movies.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:22:18\nReads [\"You take my hand\" from Power Politics; audience laughter throughout].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:23:13\nAnd since we were talking about the war between Superman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79015] and Captain Marvel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q534153] at dinner, my favourite was Plastic Man [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q746838], but that was an esoteric taste. I'll read this one.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:23:28\nReads \"They Eat Out\" [from Power Politics].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:24:44\nI go to--I can't resist this. This is from the new book, it's called \"Siren Song\". Students of Seventeenth Century Literature are always asking themselves and each other, what song the sirens sang, and this is the ultimate answer.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:25:06\nReads \"Siren Song\" from You Are Happy.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:26:12\nThe imminent critic, Allen Pearson, who was once known when he lived in Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340] as the Montreal Poet, now that he lives in Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172], he's probably known as the Toronto Poet, says the following: \"Siren Song tells how boring it is for a woman to be obliged to attract men by appealing to them for help\". [Audience laughter]. Um, since I'm on the subject of people in capes and costumes, I'll read...\n \nUnknown\n00:26:56\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nAnnotation\n00:26:57\nReads [untitled poem from the “Circle/Mud Poems” section in You Are Happy].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:28:20\nReads \"Is / Not\" from You Are Happy.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:30:37\nI think I'd better read just three more poems, before we all die. The first one is called \"There is Only One of Everything\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:30:54\nReads \"There is Only One of Everything\" from You Are Happy.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:32:30\nReads \"Late August\" from You Are Happy.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:33:26\nThis is the last poem, called \"Book of Ancestors\".\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:33:33\nReads \"Book of Ancestors\" from You Are Happy. \n \nAudience\n00:36:31\nApplause [cuts out briefly].\n\nWynne Francis\n00:36:47\nThank you, it's really not so hot if you sit still. Miss Atwood is prepared to discuss, for a little while.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:37:04\nIf you would like to, uh, I can't see a thing of course, I can sort of see hands if you stick them up and wave them around. Would that be better than turning back on the lights which I'd prefer not to do?\n \nWynne Francis\n00:37:22\nThere's no way we can get mics in the audience, so please speak loudly.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:37:23\nI see a hand.\n \nAudience Member 1\n00:37:28\nHow did your nickname of a witch get originated?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:37:30\nHow did my nickname of a witch? Are you referring to the speech I gave the other night at Loyola? Oh, it's, I was talking about a couple of reviews, that seemed to credit me with having these supernatural powers, you know, the ability to hypnotize my readers and things like that, and what I was saying was that in fact I don't in fact possess the powers of hypnotism or I'd use them on my bank manager and be quite rich. Um, I was talking about a pattern that seems to crop up from time to time in a certain kind of review usually written by men. [Audience laughter]. I heard that there were a couple of people in the audience at Loyola who before the speech, were convinced that I was a witch and that I was going to talk about witchcraft, and when I said that I wasn't one, they left. [Audience laughter]. You see, if I were a witch, I wouldn't be able to wear the cross. So that's how you can tell I'm not. Wards off vampires. Um, yes?\n \nAudience Member 2\n00:38:54\nUm, [unintelligible] and as well as the Edible Woman, I seem to get this idea of an emergence from greyness, or darkness and I was wondering if it's through this emergence from greyness that you have any reference to Blake [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513] in his emergence from chaos.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:39:17\nI'll be very flattered, if I did. I'm afraid I suffer by the comparison. I think that you're right in spotting it, I think I would say that it's more like this, that if you want to think in terms of colour, that you start with a grey, and then you go down. Down into, well, it depends on the poem or the book or whatever of what's happening in your life. And, but you have to go down before you come up again otherwise you stay just in the grey part. If you want a real pattern for this, it's Dante's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1067] Inferno [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4509219], where the man starts in a wandering wood, you know he starts in a kind of state of being lost, and then he goes down into hell. The further down he goes the more tortured souls he sees, but when he gets right to the bottom he finds that he's going up again. And then he comes out the other side.\n \nAudience Member 2\n00:40:19\nYeah, but, in this other side-ness in the Edible Woman you come up through colours, a very [unintelligible] of colours and I was wondering if this is the complete emergence of man?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:40:29\nNot complete--I would say no, no beginning.\n \nAudience Member 2\n00:40:32\n[Unintelligible] complete--into his universal aspect, but into an emergence of man. Into the colours of life.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:40:39\nYour choice of the word 'man' is interesting. Since the heroine is a woman. [Audience laughter and applause]. Um, I think you have the pattern right. I wouldn't like to attach any sort of universal meaning to it.\n \nAudience Member 2\n00:40:56\nNo I'm not attaching a universal meaning, I'm attaching more or less a universal meaning to the colour of darkness or greyness.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:41:04\nNo, that's right, you're correct. Yes.\n \nAudience Member 2\n00:41:07\nI'm not trying to express a universal meaning into these colours, this is where you're taking it wrong.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:41:14\nWell, I'm not too sure what we're talking about  to tell you the truth. You've spotted a correct pattern and I'm not too sure how one interprets it because I don't like to be the critic of  my own work in a way if you know what I mean. Yes.\n \nAudience Member 3\n00:41:34\nI know you're writing a screenplay for [unintelligible]. Will it ever become a film?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:41:39\nWill it ever? Let's see now, I finished it at the end of July. Now, what is--the stages of making a film are these: first somebody takes out an option on it, which means they pay you X dollars to have the sole right to try to make the movie for a certain period of time. If they fail to make it to renew the option or to require the rights at the end of that period, you get it back and you can then sell it to anybody else or back to them if you want. That's different from buying the rights which means they've got it. And you can't get it back. An option has been taken out, a script has been written. They are now doing whatever it is they do, who knows. To try to put together what is called a package, that is, they try to interest a director or they pick out a director and they try to put a director together with a script together with some money. And that's all going on, I don't know what's happening with it because they don't tell. Yes.\n \nAudience Member 4\n00:42:42\nAre those people American or Canadian?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:42:47\nThese people are. [Audience laughter]. Once upon a time there was an English Canadian film industry. Not very hard. I mean it's trying very hard but not many results are being had. And I wanted very much to make Surfacing in Canada with Canadian everything, but I was about two years too late. And also Canadians are quite timmerus about this book because they said “well, it'll never be able to sell a film in the States” because of all that strange American symbolism in it. They--the two people I'm working with are two American independent producers, not to be confused with MGM [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q179200], who want to make the book as it is, that is, they like the book, they want to be faithful to it, they don't want to transport it to Maine [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q724] or wherever and make it into an American film, which of course you couldn't do without ruining the symbolic pattern. They want to make it in Canada, they want to put in all that stuff because they say “wow, dynamite”. [Audience laughter]. They're not worried about selling it in the States. So that's how we're proceeding right now and we have not yet had a falling out on any of the crucial matters such as what's in the screenplay. And so that's been fine. They would like to make it here. And what stage they're at right now I don't know. Now if they don't put it together, then I get it back and then I have another go. And I'll try it ‘round Canada again, once more, and I'll probably with the same results--\n \nAudience Member 4\n00:44:26\nYou have tried?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:44:30\nOh yes, everybody tries. I've written four or five screenplays, none of them have been made. They've all been for Canadians. One thing has happened, I got one television play done, but of course everything you do for the CBC [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q461761] pretty well gets done. [Audience laughter]. As you know. I wrote a screenplay for Edible Woman that didn't get done. I wrote one for Marie-Claire Blais [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q298358], Mad Shadows, we had high hopes for that, that was a Canadian director, Canadian producer all the rest of it. No deal. Film development corporations said it wasn't commercial enough. I mean, you don't go outside before you've been through it for a while. It's a problem that novelists used to face when trying to get their novels published here.\n \nWynne Francis\n00:45:22\nI'd like to ask a question, and I can't see what competition I've got, I can't see anything out there. On Wednesday at Loyola, you gave comic tags to some of your critical opponents taken from Koestler [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q78494], Yogis and Komisars are critics that are formalists and culturally and politically aware and I wondered, do you see the ideal critic or type of criticism as combining these two?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:45:51\nWell, I think that people have certain talents, you know, and they should exercise what talents they have, and that all kinds of criticism should be available to the reader. I don't think that every critic has to do everything, I think that would be asking a singer to be a dancer. \n \nWynne Francis\n00:46:08\nI remember you saying it was good to have both kinds, I wondered if you think they could be combined?\n \nAudience Member 5\n00:46:16\nIs it possible that the body of knowledge turns into the knowing body?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:46:20\nIs it possible that the body of knowledge turns into the knowing body? Um, I'll let you answer that. If such a person could do it, I'd like to see it, I've never seen anybody who could do both at the same time. Frye [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q354256], for instance, does one kind in one book and then another kind in another book, but he usually doesn't usually do them both in the same book. I would say that Yogi-ism is necessary to be able to read a poem, just period pure and simple. To see what is happening in it. But Komasarism is necessary to place it in a larger context. Why not do both? Yes, I see. Back there, you\n \nAudience Member 6\n00:47:08\nDo you think that Quebec [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q176] is a part of Canada?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:47:09\nOh that's such a good question.\n \nAudience Member 6\n00:47:11\nDo you think that a Quebecois is a Canadian?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:47:15\nI think I'll leave that to the Quebecois to decide for themselves. They're the people concerned. [Audience applause]. I was talking with one not so long ago, Marie-Claire Blais, and I asked her that question. I said, “well, what do you think of yourself as? Do you think of yourself as a Quebecoise? or a Canadian? or a North-American, or part of Western European culture or a universalist?” And she said, “I am from Quebec”. [Audience laughter]. Does that answer your question? Yes.\n \nAudience Member  7\n00:47:58\nWhat is your opinion of the introductions in the New Canadian Library [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16998703] Series?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:48:03\nWell, they vary. [Audience laughter]. Do you mean the one? Well, I thought that it was, it was like a, well, the only thing I can think of is something fairly vulgar, um, but I don't mean that I think it was bad. I mean that I think it was quite a ponderous organization, being brought to bear on what I consider to be a fairly light piece of writing. That is, at the front of my book, I have a quotation from the Joy of Cooking which tells how to make puff pastry. And then I have you know, critical sort of, really big critical apparatus coming in and talking about the symbolic structuring and the this and the that, and I think it's nice, I'm glad to know about those things, but [audience laughter] it's somehow, I thought my novel was a bit more comic than that. If you know what I mean.\n \nAudience Member 8\n00:49:09\nYeah, I wanted to ask a question. Yeah, I was wondering to what degree you consider yourself to be an ironist because you're talking about [unintelligible] irony, it seems to me that irony is the point I’m most attracted to in your work anyway.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:49:22\nYeah, well, you can have both of course, as a matter of fact you usually do.\n \nAudience Member 8\n00:49:31\nYou were talking about anger, and \"permit me the present tense\" kind of thing, seems to me that that was ironic.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:49:41\nAmbigu--it has a double meaning. But that's not always irony, I think irony has been...Well, somebody defined irony as a kind of literature in which the reader knows more about what's going on with the character than the character knows himself, shall we say. So, yes, of course, I think that happens in an awful lot of modern literature. Yes.\n \nAudience Member 9\n00:50:14\nI understand you're working on Survival Two?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:50:16\nNot working, exactly.\n \nAudience Member 9\n00:50:22\nI was wondering whether you could, or would like to elaborate on that.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:50:25\nYeah, okay. There was to have been something called Survival Two, which was to have been this really dynamite anthology. Which would have incorporated many of the short pieces mentioned in Survival, plus other ones that were appropriate and we did assemble this and then we had it priced as to how much it would cost for permissions and how much it would cost us to print it and it was just astronomically expensive. So we had to shelf that, and that was what Survival Two was to have been. Now I'll probably publish the proposed table of contents sometime and you can see what would have been in it. [Audience laughter]. You know, but a small publisher cannot afford to do this kind of thing. However, I am, I won't say working on because I'm working on it in the same sense that I'm working on my Ph.D. thesis, what I'm really doing is writing a novel. But I will, should I live that long, write a second edition of Survival, in which I hope to have five new chapters and additions to the ones that already exist. I think the thing about Survival that sometimes gets forgotten was that it was based on what was available in paperback at the time. A lot more things are available in paperback now, we have General Publishing coming on the scene, with Paper Jacks,  and New Canadian Library expanding itself and Macmillan's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2108217] paperbacks expanding. So there's just a lot more around that you can put in and also new books have been published that I would like to talk about and I've discovered older ones that I didn't know about before. So, all of these things, plus a new introduction and maybe a few things at the back, I would like to do. However, I'm not quite ready to do it yet. I took a kind of holiday after I finished Survival One, and I'm still in that, it's a holiday devoted to writing other things. Yes,\n \nAudience Member 10\n00:52:30\nWho are your favourite poets?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:52:33\nI tend to have favourite poems, rather than favourite poets, but I can tell you the names of some people who've written some of my favourite poems. One of them is Margaret Avison [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6759152], one of them is P.K. Page [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2755960], they're poems by all kinds of people that I really like, for instance, I really like some of A.M. Klein's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2778027] poems. I think they're just super. And more modern people, for instance, Michael Ondaatje [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q313593], I like his work, Al Purdy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4704621] I was reading in the early to middle Sixties, Doug Jones [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5203595] at that time. It covers a very wide range. I'm a kind of omnivorous reader, I'll read anything, including the backs of Cornflake boxes, so that you just never know, and it also changes, you know, because you read somebody for a while and then you've done that so you go and read somebody else.\n\nAudience Member 10\n00:53:31\n[Unintelligible].\n\nMargaret Atwood\n00:53:33\nOh yeah, I get various little magazines come floating in through the mail to me, for some reason. And right now, for instance, I'm reading a lot of Adrienne Rich [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q270705], because I'm about to write a review of her latest book. This kind of thing, I mean it varies from month to month. If you ask me the same question in January the question would be different...Yeah.\n \nAudience Member 11\n00:54:02\n[Unintelligible] Is Surfacing more than vaguely autobiographical?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:54:11\nIt's vaguely, if you're talking about the plot--no. The setting, yes, and this is generally true of fiction, that people write from a setting that they know. They generally create characters out of some people that they've known plus they throw things in and invent them and make mosaics out of various things and the characters are fictional. The plot is usually a total invention. I mean, my parents are still alive and well, all of that. No, I have never been a paranoid schizophrenic with amnesia. [Audience laughter]. And as for the Edible Woman, I've never gone off food, but all kinds of other people have. You know, they come up to me and say, “Gee, how did you know the story of my life” and “that's happened to me and let me tell you it was awful, I used to throw up on busses”. I was kind of shocked, actually, I thought it was all a big comic invention of my own. I see one waving at the back.\n \nAudience Member 12\n00:55:20\nUm, excuse me, would you say that you base your characters on some type of psychological background?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:55:25\nUm, I try to make them believable insofar as it will fit the plot. That is, I try to make what they do believable to myself, but they have to do what they do if you see what I mean. Yes.\n \nAudience Member 13\n00:55:46\nWould you say the Edible Woman is a comical invention of your own?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:55:49\nI said I thought it was, yeah.\n \nAudience Member 13\n00:55:51\nWell, how would you define that, as a comedy?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:55:54\nOh, okay, if you wanna be technical. Um, the Edible Woman is actually an anti-comedy. Because a comedy is a form in which usually a young couple goes through a series of misadventures and blokings and gets married at the end. Now in the Edible Woman, a young couple goes through a series of misadventures and blokings and somebody else gets married at the end. [Audience laughter]. Yes. \n \nAudience Member 14\n00:56:24\nCould you tell us anything about the novel you're writing now?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:56:26\nNot a thing, that's my one superstition--well, it's one of my superstitions. I can't talk about work that I'm doing, it uses up the energy. It's true. Yeah.\n \nAudience Member 15\n00:56:41\nI read the Edible Woman right after reading a book by Robertson Davies [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q545375], about [unintelligible].\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:56:49\nOkay, the question is I read the Edible Woman right after reading a book by Robertson Davies, Fifth Business [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5447489]?\n \nAudience Member 15\n00:56:58\nNo, an earlier book.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:57:00\nManticore [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7750230]?\n \nAudience Member 15\n00:57:00\nIt was a comedy\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:57:01\nOh, okay.\n \nAudience Member 15\n00:57:02\nAbout a couple in a town [unintelligible] resolve it and they get married. And I wondered why he wasn't mentioned in Survival at all.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:57:15\nWell, I think probably because I wasn't doing humour and I wasn't doing magic. But since I am doing humour and magic in the next two chapters, then he will be in those. Samuel Marchbanks [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7412104] will be in under humour and Fifth Business and Manticore will be in under magic. I find the magician figure in Fifth Business very interesting from this particular advantage point. Why do Canadian magicians have to disguise themselves as foreigners in order to be thought of as magic. [Audience laughter.] You find this in Gwen MacEwen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4276487] too. Specifically in the book called No Man.\n \nAudience Member 16\n00:58:04\nIs that a novel?\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:58:04\nIt is a series of short stories, but there's sort of a central one in which you have the same pattern. Okay, let's have one more if there is one more. There isn't one more, there's one more.\n \nAudience Member 17\n00:58:22\nUm, the poems that you read tonight, would you consider those the best or the most significant ones from your collection, and if neither of those things, why did you select the ones that you read? The reason that I've asked that is because I've read your latest book quite carefully and I think that you read the, some of the best poems from it. I was wondering if you thought they were some of the best poems.\n \nMargaret Atwood\n00:58:45\nYeah. I think that one of the best things in it is section number three, but that consists of twenty four poems, which seem to me to be too long. I read some of them that I like quite a lot, yes, this is true, but I left out some others that I also like quite a lot because it seemed to me that they were too long and at this particular night anyway I felt that I should get through as quickly as possible because we were all stifling to death. Um, and with that I think that I will now end the question period and we can all go out and have a drink of water. \n\nAudience\n00:59:24\nApplause [cuts out briefly].\n \nWynne Francis\n00:59:38\nI'd just like to thank Margaret Atwood very much for being with us tonight--\n\nAudience\n00:59:40\nLaughter.\n \nEND\n00:59:46\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nIn 1974, Atwood was living in Alliston, Ontario and had finished a year as the writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto. You Are Happy came out in 1974, and she was working on collecting her Selected Poems which were published in 1976.\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections:\\n\\nAtwood became an important award-winning poet and critic in Canada by the late 60‘s. Sir George Williams’ English Department hired Atwood in 1967 as an English lecturer, after she had graduated from Harvard. \",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Additional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"Cataloguer\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"http://margaretatwood.ca/index.php>\",\"citation\":\"Atwood, Margaret.  Margaret Atwood Website. June 29, 2010. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-poems/oclc/977851868&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Atwood, Margaret. Selected Poems. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1977.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-poems-1965-1975/oclc/455883593&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Atwood, Margaret. Selected poems, 1965-1975. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1976. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/the-circle-game/oclc/1007821877&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Atwood, Margaret. The Circle Game. Toronto: House of Anansi, 1966. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/power-politics/oclc/1043970047&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Atwood, Margaret. Power Politics. Toronto: Anansi, 1971. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/you-are-happy/oclc/878900780&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Atwood, Margaret. You are Happy. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1974.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/contemporary-canadian-poem-anthology/oclc/802667762&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Bowering, George, ed. The Contemporary Canadian Poem Anthology. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1984. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-volume-1/oclc/636622714&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Findley, Timothy. “Atwood, Margaret (1939-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial         Literatures in English. Benson, Eugene; L.W. Connolly (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 vols.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/15-canadian-poets-times-2/oclc/622296707&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Geddes, Gary (ed). Fifteen Canadian Poets Times Two. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1988.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/poets-of-contemporary-canada-1960-1970-edited-and-with-an-introduction-by-eli-mandel/oclc/1202953921&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Mandel, Eli (ed). Poets of Contemporary Canada 1960-1970. Montreal: McClelland and Stewart, 1972. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-the-novel/oclc/807436716&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Rowland, Susan. “Margaret Atwood 1939- (Canadian)”. Encyclopedia of the Novel. Schellinger, Paul (ed.); Christopher Hudson, Marijke Rijsberman (asst. eds.). Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1998. 2 vols. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=waYtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=u58FAAAAIBAJ&pg=7250,4345207&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry&hl=en\",\"citation\":\"Stephens, Anna. “Poetry- Anywhere, Anytime”. Montreal: The Gazette. 20 October 1967, page 10. \"},{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Kibble, Matthew. “Atwood, Margaret Eleanor, 1939-”. Literature Online biography. Proquest Information and Learning Company, H.W. Wilson Company, 2006. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548644560896,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.264Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006-11-0008_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006-11-0008_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Margaret Atwood Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006-11-0008_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006-11-0008_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"Margaret Atwood Tape Box - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0006-11-0008_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"My Drive>Sir George Williams TIme-Stamped Transcripts>Spokenweb Tape Case Photos taken by Drew Bernet\",\"filename\":\"I0006-11-0008_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Margaret Atwood Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/margaret_atwood_i006-11-008.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"margaret_atwood_i006-11-008.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"00:59:46\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"143.5 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"margaret_atwood_i006-11-008.mp3\\n\\nHenry Beissel\\n00:00:00\\nOne moment... problem that we have here at Sir George [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q326342]. We did try to get a larger hall but it was impossible. To accommodate the overflow, we have set up loudspeakers in the little gallery here, Howard, and in the other one too?\\n \\nHoward Fink\\n00:00:21\\nOutside.\\n \\nHenry Beissel\\n00:00:22\\nOutside, there are loudspeakers. So please don't all crowd into the room. If you are going to lean against the paintings, we shall never be able to get this room again for poetry readings. Because this, this is a gallery which belongs to the Fine Arts department, we had great difficulty getting it, these paintings are very precious, particularly to the artists themselves [audience laughter]. I would ask you please to stay away from the paintings. That must have been the artist [audience laughter]. We are also waiting for the arrival of someone else, so please be patient. Howard--[audience laughter] can you ask the security people to turn on the cooling system, the hall is going to be too hot.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:01:22\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n \\nHenry Beissel\\n00:01:25\\nWe may get 927.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:01:30\\nWhat do you mean, we may, I think they're also--okay. What would you like to do? Let us stay here or move?\\n \\nAudience\\n00:01:41\\nStay here.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:01:44\\nOkay, with the people, there are some people who are at the back of the door, there is some space up here at the front if you'd like to come up.\\n \\nHenry Beissel\\n00:01:54\\nNo more than ten.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:01:58\\nAbout ten. It'll make more room at the back too...If everybody on the chairs would shift over this way, um, and sit on, sort of as if it were a bench, then some more people can sit on the edges there. Or just move the chairs all that way. Move the rows forward. They're all shifting over anyway. Could you all move your chairs forward to make the rows as close together as possible. Okay, it's alright. \\n\\nUnknown\\n00:03:17\\nAmbient Sound [voices].\\n\\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:04:41\\nThere are these uhh--woohoo--there are these speakers outside and you might be more comfortable if you went out and listened over the speakers, some of the people are really jammed in there. I don't see any reason why this thing should resemble a steam bath, for all of us. If you're--what? what?...I don't think I can, what is it that they do? [Audience laughter].\\n \\nWynne Francis\\n00:05:19\\n[Laughter]. Miss Atwood [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q183492] has just upstaged the introducer. Good evening ladies and gentlemen. It's not often that an artist excels in two medium such as poetry and fiction as our guest tonight does. Miss Atwood's reputation as a superior poet was established in the 60's with her first collections, The Circle Game [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7723073] and The Animals in that Country [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7713834]. And while continuing to write fine poetry, six major collections to date, she's given  us two novels in the last five years, The Edible Woman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7731579] and Surfacing. With the second novel, published late in 1972, within a few months of a controversial work of criticism, Margaret Atwood became one of Canada's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16] best known literary artists. The hypothesis of Survival, a study of patterns in Canadian lit is that Canadians see themselves as victims. I was remind of Survival recently when I came across a nineteenth-century curiosity written by one John McTaggart [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q463553]. It was a book published in London [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84] in 19-- excuse me--1829. McTaggart wrote \\\"There's a melancholy which is peculiar to Canadians which must be combatted. People who labor under it must be encouraged, the soothing language, good treatment and now and then as circumstances require, a little assistance gratis as a stimulant.\\\" McTaggart's third point about the helpful effects of a little assistance as a recent theory has been taken up by the Canada Council [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2993809], to whom we are in part indebted for her appearance tonight. Margaret Atwood's work constitutes an exploration of what it means to be a Canadian, to be a woman and to be a human being. She writes about our totems, our tapestry of manners, our progressive insanities. She taught at Sir George in 67-68, and it's a great pleasure to have her return to us tonight. After her reading, she'll be open to questions from the audience. Ladies and gentlemen, Margaret Atwood.\\n\\nAudience\\n00:07:27\\nApplause [cuts out briefly].\\n\\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:07:38\\nLet's see now, if the mic starts to get funny, let me know...Too loud?...Not too loud, I'm afraid it isn't a very good mic and also I'm afraid I'm going to have to hold it the whole time which is a bore...I don't think it'll work very well, is that better? Does that work? Higher? Lower? Okay, how's that? Okay, I'm going to read entirely from my new book which is called \\\"This is\\\"--oh, what is it called? [audience laughter]. It's called You Are Happy. Somebody who has been photographing me says that a friend of hers was in a bookstore and picked out this book and thought at first that this was one of these \\\"I'm Okay, You're Okay\\\" books. Until I saw who wrote it. [Audience laughter]. But it has a happy ending, you'll be pleased to know. And I'm going to begin at the beginning and end at the end. Skipping portions along the way. I'm also going to make this reading fairly short because we are all in this rather constricted situation. I used to tell people when people in the States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30] used to ask me “do you live in an igloo” and other questions like that, I used to think to myself that being a Canadian was sort of like living in a chicken coop in the middle of the desert. That everybody was all together in one place but there are these huge spaces around. I wish that  we had been provided with one of them. [Audience laughter]. I have a chicken coop, and you're nicer. But there are more of you. I think we will all have to be very, very patient, unlike the chickens. I'm going to begin by reading a poem called \\\"Newsreel: Man and Firing Squad\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:10:04\\nReads \\\"Newsreel: Man and Firing Squad\\\" from You Are Happy.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:11:42\\nReads \\\"Useless\\\" from You Are Happy.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:12:35\\nThis is--the image in this next poem comes from, begins with the fact that I have a sheep and one of them died. The poem is called \\\"November\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:12:48\\nReads \\\"November\\\" from You Are Happy.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:13:52\\nReads \\\"Repent\\\" from You Are Happy.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:14:47\\n\\\"Tricks with Mirrors\\\". How are you doing? Is it hot and steamy? Has anybody died yet?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:15:05\\nReads \\\"Tricks with Mirrors\\\" from You Are Happy.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:17:45\\nThis is the title poem, \\\"You Are Happy\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:17:50\\nReads \\\"You are Happy\\\" from You Are Happy.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:18:48\\nReads \\\"First Prayer\\\" from You Are Happy.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:20:25\\n\\\"Is / Not: 1\\\". Oh boy, is it ever hot in here. I can't stand it. Light. I wonder if we could--well, then I can't see, you see. I wonder if we could turn off--would it be better if we turn off those lights that are grilling you over there...I could what?...Where's the light switch anyway? Howard, turn off the lights?...Well, maybe in a few minutes the lights will go off. Where did…\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:21:36\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. \\n\\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:21:37\\nHooray, wonderful. Actually, there's a light under here. It's like the Saturday movies [audience laughter]. No, I can read with this, yeah. Maybe I'll just read a little something else here, because it's the Saturday Movies.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:22:18\\nReads [\\\"You take my hand\\\" from Power Politics; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:23:13\\nAnd since we were talking about the war between Superman [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79015] and Captain Marvel [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q534153] at dinner, my favourite was Plastic Man [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q746838], but that was an esoteric taste. I'll read this one.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:23:28\\nReads \\\"They Eat Out\\\" [from Power Politics].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:24:44\\nI go to--I can't resist this. This is from the new book, it's called \\\"Siren Song\\\". Students of Seventeenth Century Literature are always asking themselves and each other, what song the sirens sang, and this is the ultimate answer.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:25:06\\nReads \\\"Siren Song\\\" from You Are Happy.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:26:12\\nThe imminent critic, Allen Pearson, who was once known when he lived in Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340] as the Montreal Poet, now that he lives in Toronto [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q172], he's probably known as the Toronto Poet, says the following: \\\"Siren Song tells how boring it is for a woman to be obliged to attract men by appealing to them for help\\\". [Audience laughter]. Um, since I'm on the subject of people in capes and costumes, I'll read...\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:26:56\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nAnnotation\\n00:26:57\\nReads [untitled poem from the “Circle/Mud Poems” section in You Are Happy].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:28:20\\nReads \\\"Is / Not\\\" from You Are Happy.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:30:37\\nI think I'd better read just three more poems, before we all die. The first one is called \\\"There is Only One of Everything\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:30:54\\nReads \\\"There is Only One of Everything\\\" from You Are Happy.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:32:30\\nReads \\\"Late August\\\" from You Are Happy.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:33:26\\nThis is the last poem, called \\\"Book of Ancestors\\\".\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:33:33\\nReads \\\"Book of Ancestors\\\" from You Are Happy. \\n \\nAudience\\n00:36:31\\nApplause [cuts out briefly].\\n\\nWynne Francis\\n00:36:47\\nThank you, it's really not so hot if you sit still. Miss Atwood is prepared to discuss, for a little while.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:37:04\\nIf you would like to, uh, I can't see a thing of course, I can sort of see hands if you stick them up and wave them around. Would that be better than turning back on the lights which I'd prefer not to do?\\n \\nWynne Francis\\n00:37:22\\nThere's no way we can get mics in the audience, so please speak loudly.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:37:23\\nI see a hand.\\n \\nAudience Member 1\\n00:37:28\\nHow did your nickname of a witch get originated?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:37:30\\nHow did my nickname of a witch? Are you referring to the speech I gave the other night at Loyola? Oh, it's, I was talking about a couple of reviews, that seemed to credit me with having these supernatural powers, you know, the ability to hypnotize my readers and things like that, and what I was saying was that in fact I don't in fact possess the powers of hypnotism or I'd use them on my bank manager and be quite rich. Um, I was talking about a pattern that seems to crop up from time to time in a certain kind of review usually written by men. [Audience laughter]. I heard that there were a couple of people in the audience at Loyola who before the speech, were convinced that I was a witch and that I was going to talk about witchcraft, and when I said that I wasn't one, they left. [Audience laughter]. You see, if I were a witch, I wouldn't be able to wear the cross. So that's how you can tell I'm not. Wards off vampires. Um, yes?\\n \\nAudience Member 2\\n00:38:54\\nUm, [unintelligible] and as well as the Edible Woman, I seem to get this idea of an emergence from greyness, or darkness and I was wondering if it's through this emergence from greyness that you have any reference to Blake [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41513] in his emergence from chaos.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:39:17\\nI'll be very flattered, if I did. I'm afraid I suffer by the comparison. I think that you're right in spotting it, I think I would say that it's more like this, that if you want to think in terms of colour, that you start with a grey, and then you go down. Down into, well, it depends on the poem or the book or whatever of what's happening in your life. And, but you have to go down before you come up again otherwise you stay just in the grey part. If you want a real pattern for this, it's Dante's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1067] Inferno [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4509219], where the man starts in a wandering wood, you know he starts in a kind of state of being lost, and then he goes down into hell. The further down he goes the more tortured souls he sees, but when he gets right to the bottom he finds that he's going up again. And then he comes out the other side.\\n \\nAudience Member 2\\n00:40:19\\nYeah, but, in this other side-ness in the Edible Woman you come up through colours, a very [unintelligible] of colours and I was wondering if this is the complete emergence of man?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:40:29\\nNot complete--I would say no, no beginning.\\n \\nAudience Member 2\\n00:40:32\\n[Unintelligible] complete--into his universal aspect, but into an emergence of man. Into the colours of life.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:40:39\\nYour choice of the word 'man' is interesting. Since the heroine is a woman. [Audience laughter and applause]. Um, I think you have the pattern right. I wouldn't like to attach any sort of universal meaning to it.\\n \\nAudience Member 2\\n00:40:56\\nNo I'm not attaching a universal meaning, I'm attaching more or less a universal meaning to the colour of darkness or greyness.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:41:04\\nNo, that's right, you're correct. Yes.\\n \\nAudience Member 2\\n00:41:07\\nI'm not trying to express a universal meaning into these colours, this is where you're taking it wrong.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:41:14\\nWell, I'm not too sure what we're talking about  to tell you the truth. You've spotted a correct pattern and I'm not too sure how one interprets it because I don't like to be the critic of  my own work in a way if you know what I mean. Yes.\\n \\nAudience Member 3\\n00:41:34\\nI know you're writing a screenplay for [unintelligible]. Will it ever become a film?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:41:39\\nWill it ever? Let's see now, I finished it at the end of July. Now, what is--the stages of making a film are these: first somebody takes out an option on it, which means they pay you X dollars to have the sole right to try to make the movie for a certain period of time. If they fail to make it to renew the option or to require the rights at the end of that period, you get it back and you can then sell it to anybody else or back to them if you want. That's different from buying the rights which means they've got it. And you can't get it back. An option has been taken out, a script has been written. They are now doing whatever it is they do, who knows. To try to put together what is called a package, that is, they try to interest a director or they pick out a director and they try to put a director together with a script together with some money. And that's all going on, I don't know what's happening with it because they don't tell. Yes.\\n \\nAudience Member 4\\n00:42:42\\nAre those people American or Canadian?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:42:47\\nThese people are. [Audience laughter]. Once upon a time there was an English Canadian film industry. Not very hard. I mean it's trying very hard but not many results are being had. And I wanted very much to make Surfacing in Canada with Canadian everything, but I was about two years too late. And also Canadians are quite timmerus about this book because they said “well, it'll never be able to sell a film in the States” because of all that strange American symbolism in it. They--the two people I'm working with are two American independent producers, not to be confused with MGM [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q179200], who want to make the book as it is, that is, they like the book, they want to be faithful to it, they don't want to transport it to Maine [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q724] or wherever and make it into an American film, which of course you couldn't do without ruining the symbolic pattern. They want to make it in Canada, they want to put in all that stuff because they say “wow, dynamite”. [Audience laughter]. They're not worried about selling it in the States. So that's how we're proceeding right now and we have not yet had a falling out on any of the crucial matters such as what's in the screenplay. And so that's been fine. They would like to make it here. And what stage they're at right now I don't know. Now if they don't put it together, then I get it back and then I have another go. And I'll try it ‘round Canada again, once more, and I'll probably with the same results--\\n \\nAudience Member 4\\n00:44:26\\nYou have tried?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:44:30\\nOh yes, everybody tries. I've written four or five screenplays, none of them have been made. They've all been for Canadians. One thing has happened, I got one television play done, but of course everything you do for the CBC [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q461761] pretty well gets done. [Audience laughter]. As you know. I wrote a screenplay for Edible Woman that didn't get done. I wrote one for Marie-Claire Blais [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q298358], Mad Shadows, we had high hopes for that, that was a Canadian director, Canadian producer all the rest of it. No deal. Film development corporations said it wasn't commercial enough. I mean, you don't go outside before you've been through it for a while. It's a problem that novelists used to face when trying to get their novels published here.\\n \\nWynne Francis\\n00:45:22\\nI'd like to ask a question, and I can't see what competition I've got, I can't see anything out there. On Wednesday at Loyola, you gave comic tags to some of your critical opponents taken from Koestler [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q78494], Yogis and Komisars are critics that are formalists and culturally and politically aware and I wondered, do you see the ideal critic or type of criticism as combining these two?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:45:51\\nWell, I think that people have certain talents, you know, and they should exercise what talents they have, and that all kinds of criticism should be available to the reader. I don't think that every critic has to do everything, I think that would be asking a singer to be a dancer. \\n \\nWynne Francis\\n00:46:08\\nI remember you saying it was good to have both kinds, I wondered if you think they could be combined?\\n \\nAudience Member 5\\n00:46:16\\nIs it possible that the body of knowledge turns into the knowing body?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:46:20\\nIs it possible that the body of knowledge turns into the knowing body? Um, I'll let you answer that. If such a person could do it, I'd like to see it, I've never seen anybody who could do both at the same time. Frye [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q354256], for instance, does one kind in one book and then another kind in another book, but he usually doesn't usually do them both in the same book. I would say that Yogi-ism is necessary to be able to read a poem, just period pure and simple. To see what is happening in it. But Komasarism is necessary to place it in a larger context. Why not do both? Yes, I see. Back there, you\\n \\nAudience Member 6\\n00:47:08\\nDo you think that Quebec [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q176] is a part of Canada?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:47:09\\nOh that's such a good question.\\n \\nAudience Member 6\\n00:47:11\\nDo you think that a Quebecois is a Canadian?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:47:15\\nI think I'll leave that to the Quebecois to decide for themselves. They're the people concerned. [Audience applause]. I was talking with one not so long ago, Marie-Claire Blais, and I asked her that question. I said, “well, what do you think of yourself as? Do you think of yourself as a Quebecoise? or a Canadian? or a North-American, or part of Western European culture or a universalist?” And she said, “I am from Quebec”. [Audience laughter]. Does that answer your question? Yes.\\n \\nAudience Member  7\\n00:47:58\\nWhat is your opinion of the introductions in the New Canadian Library [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16998703] Series?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:48:03\\nWell, they vary. [Audience laughter]. Do you mean the one? Well, I thought that it was, it was like a, well, the only thing I can think of is something fairly vulgar, um, but I don't mean that I think it was bad. I mean that I think it was quite a ponderous organization, being brought to bear on what I consider to be a fairly light piece of writing. That is, at the front of my book, I have a quotation from the Joy of Cooking which tells how to make puff pastry. And then I have you know, critical sort of, really big critical apparatus coming in and talking about the symbolic structuring and the this and the that, and I think it's nice, I'm glad to know about those things, but [audience laughter] it's somehow, I thought my novel was a bit more comic than that. If you know what I mean.\\n \\nAudience Member 8\\n00:49:09\\nYeah, I wanted to ask a question. Yeah, I was wondering to what degree you consider yourself to be an ironist because you're talking about [unintelligible] irony, it seems to me that irony is the point I’m most attracted to in your work anyway.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:49:22\\nYeah, well, you can have both of course, as a matter of fact you usually do.\\n \\nAudience Member 8\\n00:49:31\\nYou were talking about anger, and \\\"permit me the present tense\\\" kind of thing, seems to me that that was ironic.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:49:41\\nAmbigu--it has a double meaning. But that's not always irony, I think irony has been...Well, somebody defined irony as a kind of literature in which the reader knows more about what's going on with the character than the character knows himself, shall we say. So, yes, of course, I think that happens in an awful lot of modern literature. Yes.\\n \\nAudience Member 9\\n00:50:14\\nI understand you're working on Survival Two?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:50:16\\nNot working, exactly.\\n \\nAudience Member 9\\n00:50:22\\nI was wondering whether you could, or would like to elaborate on that.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:50:25\\nYeah, okay. There was to have been something called Survival Two, which was to have been this really dynamite anthology. Which would have incorporated many of the short pieces mentioned in Survival, plus other ones that were appropriate and we did assemble this and then we had it priced as to how much it would cost for permissions and how much it would cost us to print it and it was just astronomically expensive. So we had to shelf that, and that was what Survival Two was to have been. Now I'll probably publish the proposed table of contents sometime and you can see what would have been in it. [Audience laughter]. You know, but a small publisher cannot afford to do this kind of thing. However, I am, I won't say working on because I'm working on it in the same sense that I'm working on my Ph.D. thesis, what I'm really doing is writing a novel. But I will, should I live that long, write a second edition of Survival, in which I hope to have five new chapters and additions to the ones that already exist. I think the thing about Survival that sometimes gets forgotten was that it was based on what was available in paperback at the time. A lot more things are available in paperback now, we have General Publishing coming on the scene, with Paper Jacks,  and New Canadian Library expanding itself and Macmillan's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2108217] paperbacks expanding. So there's just a lot more around that you can put in and also new books have been published that I would like to talk about and I've discovered older ones that I didn't know about before. So, all of these things, plus a new introduction and maybe a few things at the back, I would like to do. However, I'm not quite ready to do it yet. I took a kind of holiday after I finished Survival One, and I'm still in that, it's a holiday devoted to writing other things. Yes,\\n \\nAudience Member 10\\n00:52:30\\nWho are your favourite poets?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:52:33\\nI tend to have favourite poems, rather than favourite poets, but I can tell you the names of some people who've written some of my favourite poems. One of them is Margaret Avison [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6759152], one of them is P.K. Page [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2755960], they're poems by all kinds of people that I really like, for instance, I really like some of A.M. Klein's [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2778027] poems. I think they're just super. And more modern people, for instance, Michael Ondaatje [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q313593], I like his work, Al Purdy [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4704621] I was reading in the early to middle Sixties, Doug Jones [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5203595] at that time. It covers a very wide range. I'm a kind of omnivorous reader, I'll read anything, including the backs of Cornflake boxes, so that you just never know, and it also changes, you know, because you read somebody for a while and then you've done that so you go and read somebody else.\\n\\nAudience Member 10\\n00:53:31\\n[Unintelligible].\\n\\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:53:33\\nOh yeah, I get various little magazines come floating in through the mail to me, for some reason. And right now, for instance, I'm reading a lot of Adrienne Rich [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q270705], because I'm about to write a review of her latest book. This kind of thing, I mean it varies from month to month. If you ask me the same question in January the question would be different...Yeah.\\n \\nAudience Member 11\\n00:54:02\\n[Unintelligible] Is Surfacing more than vaguely autobiographical?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:54:11\\nIt's vaguely, if you're talking about the plot--no. The setting, yes, and this is generally true of fiction, that people write from a setting that they know. They generally create characters out of some people that they've known plus they throw things in and invent them and make mosaics out of various things and the characters are fictional. The plot is usually a total invention. I mean, my parents are still alive and well, all of that. No, I have never been a paranoid schizophrenic with amnesia. [Audience laughter]. And as for the Edible Woman, I've never gone off food, but all kinds of other people have. You know, they come up to me and say, “Gee, how did you know the story of my life” and “that's happened to me and let me tell you it was awful, I used to throw up on busses”. I was kind of shocked, actually, I thought it was all a big comic invention of my own. I see one waving at the back.\\n \\nAudience Member 12\\n00:55:20\\nUm, excuse me, would you say that you base your characters on some type of psychological background?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:55:25\\nUm, I try to make them believable insofar as it will fit the plot. That is, I try to make what they do believable to myself, but they have to do what they do if you see what I mean. Yes.\\n \\nAudience Member 13\\n00:55:46\\nWould you say the Edible Woman is a comical invention of your own?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:55:49\\nI said I thought it was, yeah.\\n \\nAudience Member 13\\n00:55:51\\nWell, how would you define that, as a comedy?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:55:54\\nOh, okay, if you wanna be technical. Um, the Edible Woman is actually an anti-comedy. Because a comedy is a form in which usually a young couple goes through a series of misadventures and blokings and gets married at the end. Now in the Edible Woman, a young couple goes through a series of misadventures and blokings and somebody else gets married at the end. [Audience laughter]. Yes. \\n \\nAudience Member 14\\n00:56:24\\nCould you tell us anything about the novel you're writing now?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:56:26\\nNot a thing, that's my one superstition--well, it's one of my superstitions. I can't talk about work that I'm doing, it uses up the energy. It's true. Yeah.\\n \\nAudience Member 15\\n00:56:41\\nI read the Edible Woman right after reading a book by Robertson Davies [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q545375], about [unintelligible].\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:56:49\\nOkay, the question is I read the Edible Woman right after reading a book by Robertson Davies, Fifth Business [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5447489]?\\n \\nAudience Member 15\\n00:56:58\\nNo, an earlier book.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:57:00\\nManticore [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7750230]?\\n \\nAudience Member 15\\n00:57:00\\nIt was a comedy\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:57:01\\nOh, okay.\\n \\nAudience Member 15\\n00:57:02\\nAbout a couple in a town [unintelligible] resolve it and they get married. And I wondered why he wasn't mentioned in Survival at all.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:57:15\\nWell, I think probably because I wasn't doing humour and I wasn't doing magic. But since I am doing humour and magic in the next two chapters, then he will be in those. Samuel Marchbanks [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7412104] will be in under humour and Fifth Business and Manticore will be in under magic. I find the magician figure in Fifth Business very interesting from this particular advantage point. Why do Canadian magicians have to disguise themselves as foreigners in order to be thought of as magic. [Audience laughter.] You find this in Gwen MacEwen [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4276487] too. Specifically in the book called No Man.\\n \\nAudience Member 16\\n00:58:04\\nIs that a novel?\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:58:04\\nIt is a series of short stories, but there's sort of a central one in which you have the same pattern. Okay, let's have one more if there is one more. There isn't one more, there's one more.\\n \\nAudience Member 17\\n00:58:22\\nUm, the poems that you read tonight, would you consider those the best or the most significant ones from your collection, and if neither of those things, why did you select the ones that you read? The reason that I've asked that is because I've read your latest book quite carefully and I think that you read the, some of the best poems from it. I was wondering if you thought they were some of the best poems.\\n \\nMargaret Atwood\\n00:58:45\\nYeah. I think that one of the best things in it is section number three, but that consists of twenty four poems, which seem to me to be too long. I read some of them that I like quite a lot, yes, this is true, but I left out some others that I also like quite a lot because it seemed to me that they were too long and at this particular night anyway I felt that I should get through as quickly as possible because we were all stifling to death. Um, and with that I think that I will now end the question period and we can all go out and have a drink of water. \\n\\nAudience\\n00:59:24\\nApplause [cuts out briefly].\\n \\nWynne Francis\\n00:59:38\\nI'd just like to thank Margaret Atwood very much for being with us tonight--\\n\\nAudience\\n00:59:40\\nLaughter.\\n \\nEND\\n00:59:46\\n\",\"notes\":\"Margaret Atwood reads from You Are Happy (Oxford University Press, 1974) and Power Politics (Anansi, 1971). Atwood also answers audience questions about her work. \\n                                                                                                                                      \\n00:00- Unknown introducer makes an announcement about the room. [INDEX: Sir George Williams University, larger hall, gallery, Howard Fink.]\\n00:21- Howard Fink answers question.\\n00:22- Unknown introducer continues to make announcements. [INDEX: loud speakers outside, paintings, Fine Arts Department, artists, Howard Fink, air conditioning.]\\n01:22- Audience talking\\n01:30- Margaret Atwood talks about room set up, it is recorded by the mic [INDEX: room      change.]\\n01:41- Audience responds, says they want to stay in the same room.\\n01:44- Margaret Atwood tries to arrange people in the room. [INDEX: chairs, bench, people, rows, room.]\\n04:41- Margaret Atwood continues to arrange audience.\\n05:19- Wynne Francis introduces Margaret Atwood. [INDEX: poetry, fiction, poet, 1960’s, The   Circle Game (Anansi, 1966), The Animals in that Country (Oxford University Press, 1968), Edible Woman (McClelland and Stewart, 1973), Surfacing (Anansi, 1971), 1972, controversial work of criticism, patterns in Canadian literature, nineteenth-century curiosity, John McTaggart quote, book published in London in 1829, victim, Canada Council, woman, human being, totems, manners, insanities, taught at Sir George Williams University between 1967-68, audience questions.]\\n07:38- Margaret Atwood introduces “Newsreel, Man and Firing Squad”. [INDEX:    \\tmicrophone, reading entirely from You are Happy (Harper & Row, 1974), photographer,      bookstore, order of reading, United States, what it’s like to live in Canada; from You Are    Happy (Oxford University Press, 1974).]\\n10:04- Reads “Newsreel, Man and Firing Squad”.\\n11:42- Reads “Useless”. [INDEX: from You Are Happy (Oxford University Press, 1974).]\\n12:35- Introduces “November”. [INDEX: image, sheep that died; from You Are Happy (Oxford University Press, 1974)]\\n12:48- Reads “November”.\\n13:52- Reads “Repent”. [INDEX: from You Are Happy (Oxford University Press, 1974).]\\n14:47- Introduces “Tricks with Mirrors”. [INDEX: from You Are Happy (Oxford University \\tPress, 1974).]\\n15:05- Reads “Tricks with Mirrors”.\\n17:45- Reads “You are Happy”. [INDEX: from You Are Happy (Oxford University Press,     1974).]\\n18:48- Reads “First Prayer”. [INDEX: from You Are Happy (Oxford University Press, 1974).]\\n20:25- Introduces “Is/Not” (but does not read it). [INDEX: hot in rom, Howard Fink. light,     Saturday movies; from You Are Happy (Oxford University Press, 1974).]\\n22:18- Reads unknown poem, first line “You take my hand and I’m suddenly in a bad movie...”.\\n23:13- Introduces “They Eat Out”. [INDEX: war between Superman and Captain Marvel,     dinner, Plastic Man, esoteric taste; from Selected poems, 1965-1975 (Oxford University    Press, 1976).]\\n23:28- Reads “They Eat Out”.\\n24:44- Introduces “Siren Song”. [INDEX: new book, students of seventeenth-century literature, answer; from Selected poems, 1965-1975 (Oxford University Press, 1976).]\\n25:06- Reads “Siren Song”.\\n26:12- Introduces “Circe/Mud Poems”, which is cut mid-sentence “The heads of eagles no longer interest me...”[INDEX: critic Allen Pearson, Montreal, Montreal Poet, Toronto,   Toronto Poet, “Siren Song”, woman, attract men, capes, costumes; from Selected poems, 1965-1975 (Oxford University Press, 1976)]\\n26:57- Recording is CUT, repeats, begins mid-sentence reading unknown poem, which is cut mid-sentence “The heads of eagles no longer interest me...”, last line “They would rather be trees”.\\n28:20- Reads “It is Not”. [INDEX: perhaps “IS/Not”; from You are Happy (Oxford University Press, 1974) and Selected poems, 1965-1975 (Oxford University Press, 1976).]\\n30:37- Introduces “There is Only One of Everything”. [INDEX: three last poems, heat; from You are Happy (Oxford University Press, 1974) and Selected poems, 1965-1975 (Oxford University Press, 1976).]\\n30:54- Reads “There is Only One of Everything”.\\n32:20- Reads “Late August”. [INDEX: from You are Happy (Oxford University Press, 1974) \\tand Selected poems, 1965-1975 (Oxford University Press, 1976).]\\n33:26- Introduces “Book of Ancestors”. [INDEX: last poem of the night; from You are Happy (Oxford University Press, 1974) and Selected poems, 1965-1975 (Oxford University Press, 1976).]\\n33:33- Reads “Book of Ancestors”.\\n36:47- Wynne Francis thanks Margaret Atwood and opens the floor to discussion.\\n37:04- Atwood asks for questions.\\n37:28- Audience #1 (female) asks first question about Atwood’s nickname ‘witch’. [INDEX: nickname “witch”]\\n37:30- Atwood answers question. [INDEX: speech given recently at Loyola, reviews,   \\tsupernatural powers, hypnotize readers, reviews written by men, witchcraft, cross,     \\tvampires.]\\n38:54- Audience #2 (male) asks question about the Edible Woman’s symbology of colours. [INDEX: Edible Woman, grayness, William Blake reference, emergence from chaos.]\\n39:17- Margaret Atwood answers question. [INDEX: comparison, colour, descending, poem, book, life, grey, pattern, Dante’s Inferno, wood, state of being lost, hell, tortured souls.]\\n40:19- Audience #2 (male) asks another question. [INDEX: Edible Woman, colours, complete emergence of man.]\\n40:29- Margaret Atwood responds. [INDEX: not complete, beginning.]\\n40:32- Audience #2 (male) responds. [INDEX: complete, universal aspect, emergence of man, colours, life.]\\n40:39- Margaret Atwood responds. [INDEX: man, female heroine, pattern, universal meaning.]\\n40:56- Audience #2 (male) responds. [INDEX: universal meaning, colour of darkness, greyness.]\\n41:04- Margaret Atwood responds. [INDEX: correct.]\\n41:07- Audience #2 (male) responds. [INDEX: universal meaning, colours, wrong.]\\n41:14- Margaret Atwood responds. [INDEX: truth, correct pattern, critic of her own work,        interpretation.]\\n41:34- Audience #3 (male) asks question about a screenplay. [INDEX: screen play, film.]\\n41:39- Margaret Atwood responds [INDEX: finished in July, stages of making films, taking out   an auction [option?], payment, movie, rights, sell, script, written, package, director, money.]\\n42:42- Audience #4 (female) asks question about film producers’ nationalities. [INDEX: American or Canadian]\\n42:46- Margaret Atwood responds to question. [INDEX: English Canadian film industry, struggle, book, American symbolism, American independent producers, not MGM,       \\tfaithful to the book, Maine, American film, ruining the symbolic pattern, Canada.]\\n44:26- Audience #4 (female) asks another question. [INDEX: attempt to sell script in Canada.]\\n44:30- Margaret Atwood responds to question. [INDEX: four or five screen plays which haven’t been made, Canadian, television play, CBC, screenplay for Edible Woman, Marie Clarie Blais, “Mad Shadows”, Canadian director and producer, film development corporations, commercial, novelists, publishing.]\\n45:22- Wynne Francis asks a question about criticism. [INDEX: question, competition, speech on Wednesday at Loyola, comic tags, critical opponents, Koestler, Yogi [?], Komisars [?], literary critics, formalism, cultural and political awareness, ideal critic or ideal type of criticism.]\\n45:51- Margaret Atwood responds. [INDEX: talents, criticism available to the reader, singer, dancer]\\n46:08- Wynne Francis asks another question. [INDEX: combined talents, formal or cultural criticism]\\n46:16- Audience Member #5 (male) asks question about body and knowledge. [INDEX: body of knowledge]\\n46:20- Margaret Atwood answers question. [INDEX: body of knowledge, [Northrop] Frye, books, Yogi-ism [sp?], reading poetry, Komasar-isim [sp?], context of a poem]\\n47:02- Margaret Atwood calls on audience member to ask question.\\n47:08- Audience #6 (male) asks question about Quebec’s relation to Canada. [INDEX: Quebec, Canada]\\n47:09- Margaret Atwood responds.\\n47:11- Audience #6 (male) asks question about Quebecer’s relation to Canada. [INDEX: Quebecois, Canadian]\\n47:15- Margaret Atwood responds. [INDEX: Quebecois, Marie Claire Blais, identity, Canadian, North-American, Western European culture, universalist]\\n47:58- Audience #7 (female) asks question about the New Canadian Library Series. [INDEX: opinion of the New Canadian Library Series introductions]\\n48:03- Margaret Atwood answers. [INDEX: quotation from the Joy of Cooking, puff pastry, critical apparatus, symbolic structuring, novel, comic]\\n49:09- Audience #8 (female) asks question about irony. [INDEX: ironist, irony]\\n49:22- Margaret Atwood answers question.\\n49:31- Audience #8 (female) asks question about one line of Atwood’s poem. [INDEX: anger, ironic]\\n49:41- Margaret Atwood answers question. [INDEX: double meaning, irony, definition of irony, character, modern literature]\\n50:14- Audience #9 (female) asks question about a second Survival book. [INDEX: Survival 2.]\\n50:16- Margaret Atwood answers question.\\n50:22- Audience #9 (female) asks Atwood to elaborate.\\n50:25- Margaret Atwood answers question. [INDEX: Survival 2, anthology, short pieces, permissions, expensive to produce, publish proposed table of contents, Ph.D. thesis, novel, second edition of Survival, paperback, General Publishing, Paper Jacks [?], New   Canadian Library, McMillan’s, publishing industry in Canada, new introduction]\\n52:30- Audience #10 (male) asks question about favourite poets. [INDEX: favourite poet]\\n52:33- Margaret Atwood answers question. [INDEX: favourite poet, favourite poems, Margaret Avison, P.K. Page, A.M. Klein, Michael Ondaatje, Al Purdy, mid-Sixties, Doug [Gordon] Jones, Cornflake boxes]\\n53:31- Margaret Atwood responds to inaudible question. [INDEX: little magazines, Adrienne Rich, January.]\\n54:02- Audience #11 (female) asks question about Surfacing being autobiographical. [INDEX: Surfacing, autobiographical.]\\n54:11- Margaret Atwood responds. [INDEX: vaguely, plot, fiction, setting, characters, invent part of characters, parents, paranoid schizophrenic, amnesia, Edible Woman, food, reader’s reactions, comic invention.]\\n55:20- Audience #12 (female) asks question about characters. [INDEX: psychological  \\tbackground, characters.]\\n55:25- Margaret Atwood responds to question. [INDEX: believable, plot.]\\n55:46- Audience #13 (male) asks question about Edible Woman. [INDEX: comical invention, Edible Woman.]\\n55:49- Margaret Atwood responds to question.\\n55:51- Audience #13 (male) asks question about the definition of comedy. [INDEX: definition of comedy.]\\n55:54- Margaret Atwood responds to question. [INDEX: technical, Edible Woman, anti-comedy, form, young couple, series of misadventures, marriage, ending.]\\n56:24- Audience #14 (male) asks question about latest writing. [INDEX: novel being written]\\n56:24- Margaret Atwood responds to question. [INDEX: superstition, work in progress.]\\n56:41- Audience #15 (female) asks question about Edible Woman [INDEX: Robinson Davies book.]\\n56:49-57:01- Margaret Atwood and audience try to figure out which book was written by        Robinson Davies. [INDEX: Fifth Busienss, Nanticore, comedy.]\\n57:02- Audience #15 (female) asks about selections in Survival. [INDEX: couple, town, married, Survival.]\\n57:15- Margaret Atwood responds to question. [INDEX: humour, magic, next two chapters of Survival 2, Samuel Marchbanks, Fifth Business, Nanticore, magician figure, Canadian magicians, foreigners, Gwen[dolyn] MacEwen’s book No Man.]\\n58:04- Audience #16 (female) asks question about No Man by Gwendolyn MacEwen. [INDEX: Novel.]\\n58:04- Margaret Atwood responds to question. [INDEX: series of short stories, central story, pattern.]\\n58:22- Audience #17 (male) asks question about selections made in Atwood’s reading [INDEX: poems read, best, most significant from the collection, selection choices.]\\n58:45- Margaret Atwood responds to question. [INDEX: section #3, consists of 24 poems, too long, time constraints.]\\n59:380 Wynne Francis thanks Margaret Atwood.\\n59:46.85- END OF RECORDING.\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/margaret-atwood-and-alden-nowlan-at-sgwu-1967/\"}]"],"score":4.0012383},{"id":"1262","cataloger_name":["Masoumeh,Zaare"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"source_collection_label":["SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds"],"collection_contributing_unit":["Records Management and Archives"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["The fonds consists of some administrative records of the SGWU Department of English and the Concordia Department of English between 1971 and 2000. It also consists of some SGWU Department of English records related to student academic activities in the 1940s and to public readings and lectures, and a few interviews, produced between 1966 and 1972. The fonds mainly includes minutes of departmental meetings and some course timetables. It also includes some student papers in bound volumes and 63 sound recordings (80 audio reels) mainly composed of poetry readings (see the Concordia SpokenWeb project which uses this material) but also a few lectures given at SGWU. There are also loose typed sheets describing some of the SGWU poetry readings."],"collection_source_collection_id":["I086"],"persistent_url":["http://archives.concordia.ca/I086"],"item_title":["Irving Layton at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 18 March 1967"],"item_title_source":["Cataloguer"],"item_title_note":["\"IRVING LAYTON (2 tracks-3 3/4)\" written on sticker on the front of the tape's box and on the reel. \"I086-11-031\" also written on sticker on the reel."],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Documentary recording"],"item_series_title":["The Poetry Series"],"item_subseries_title":["Poetry 1"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"creator_names":["Layton, Irving"],"creator_names_search":["Layton, Irving"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/66482092\",\"name\":\"Layton, Irving\",\"dates\":\"1912-2006\",\"notes\":\"Canadian poet Irving Layton was born Israel Lazarovitch in Romania on March 12, 1913. His parents moved to Montreal when he was an infant. He attended Baron Byng High School, and then received a B.Sc. in agriculture in 1939 at MacDonald College. He completed an M.A. in 1946 in economics and political science at McGill University. At McGill, Layton began publishing his poetry in 1943 in First Statement, joining John Sutherland and Louis Dudek on the editorial board, and was involved with Northern Review from 1945-1956. Irving Layton was a founding member of Contact Press, along with Dudek and Raymond Souster in 1952. Layton’s first collection of poems began with Here and now (First Statement, 1945), followed by Now is the place (First Statement, 1948), The black huntsman (Contact Press [?], 1951), Love the conqueror worm (Contact Press, 1953), In the midst of my fever (published by Robert Creeley for Divers Press in 1954), The long pea-shooter (Laocoon Press, 1954), The cold green element and The blue propeller (Contact Press, 1955), The bull calf and other poems, Music on a Kazoo and The improved binoculars (published with an introduction by William Carlos Williams, Contact Press and J.Williams Press, 1956), A laughter in the mind (J. Williams, 1958) and A red carpet for the sun (J. Williams, 1959), which won a Governor General’s Award. He was a member of the editorial board of the Black Mountain Review in 1955. Layton also taught part time at Sir George University (now Concordia University) which appointed him poet-in-residence in 1965. Producing an average of one collection of poems per year, Layton published The swinging flesh (1961), Balls for a one-armed juggler (1963), The laughing rooster (1964), Collected poems (1965), Periods of the moon (1967), The shattered plinths (1968), The whole bloody bird: obs, alphs, and poems (1969), Nail polish (1971), Lovers and lesser men (1973), The pole vaulter (1974), For my brother Jesus (1976), The covenant (1977), The tightrope dancer (1978), Droppings from heaven (1979), For my neighbours in hell (Mosaic Press, 1980), Europe and other bad news (1981), The Gucci bag (1983), and Fortunate exile (1987), all published by McClelland and Stewart Press unless otherwise indicated. Layton also published selected poems in The collected poems of Irving Layton (McClelland and Stewart Press, 1971), The darkening fire: selected poems, 1945-68 (McClelland and Stewart Press, 1975), The unwavering eye: selected poems, 1969-75 (McClelland and Stewart Press, 1975), A wild peculiar joy: selected poems 1945-1982 (1982), Final reckoning: poems 1982-1986 (Mosaic Press, 1987), and Fornaluxt: selected poems 1928-1990 (1992). Layton has edited dozens of anthologies of Canadian poems and prose, as well as having his poetry published internationally. Layton ended his teaching career at York University in Toronto. An influential part of Canada’s literary scene, Irving Layton died on January 4, 2006.\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Author\",\"Performer\"]}]"],"contributors_names":["Fink, Howard,"],"contributors_names_search":["Fink, Howard,"],"contributors":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/6332801\",\"name\":\"Fink, Howard, \",\"dates\":\"1934-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Presenter\",\"Series organizer\"]}]"],"Presenter_name":["Fink, Howard, "],"Series_organizer_name":["Fink, Howard, "],"Performance_Date":[1967],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/4 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"BASF\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Mono\",\"playing_speed\":\"3 3/4 ips\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"00:60:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Reel to Reel\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"\",\"other_physical_description\":\"\"}]"],"material_designations":["Reel to Reel"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Mono"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1967 3 18\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"Previous researcher\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570\",\"venue\":\"Hall Building Basement Theatre\",\"notes\":\"Previous researcher\",\"address\":\"1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"45.4972758\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57893043\"}]"],"Address":["1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada"],"Venue":["Hall Building Basement Theatre"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Irving Layton reads from Collected Poems (McClelland & Stewart, 1965) and Periods of the Moon (McClelland &Stewart, 1967). "],"contents":["irving_layton_i086-11-031.mp3\n\nHoward Fink\n00:00:00\n...Irving Layton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1673289] to this stage again tonight, this time to read his poetry. The last time he was up here was to introduce Robert Creeley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q918620], and what was said then clearly explained the close relations between Mr. Layton and the Black Mountain Group [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2905420] in the 50's, so I won't go into that again, but I'll only add that Mr. Layton was a member of the editorial board of Black Mountain Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2905420] from 1955 on. Of course he's been publishing poetry since the 40's and was associated during those years with the First Statement Press, which became the Northern Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15757902] in 1949, and all this time studying at McGill University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201492] where he received the M.A. in Political Science and Economics in 1946. It's impossible to list all of his appearances in periodicals and little magazines, and I'll mention only a few of his two dozen or so volumes of poetry, anyway that's what it seemed like to me when I looked at that page in the new one. A Red Carpet for the Sun in 1959, with the well-known introduction by William Carlos Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106] which acknowledged, American recognition of Mr. Layton's reputation. A Red Carpet, like all of Mr. Layton's subsequent books was published by McClelland and Stewart [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6800322]. Then, a book of short stories and poems, The Swinging Flesh, which came out in 1961, Balls for a One-armed Juggler in 1963, The Laughing Rooster in 1964, Collected Poems in 1965 and his latest work, just published this winter, Periods of the Moon. And I should say the ones that I have mentioned are the ones which are still in stock and able to be bought. Among Mr. Layton's other frenetic activities, poetry readings in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30], Germany [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q183] and elsewhere, television appearances, controversial ones and so on, he finds time to communicate with students as well as Poet in Residence of this university [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q326342]. I'd like to present Mr. Irving Layton.\n\nAudience\n00:02:21\nApplause.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:02:30\nThank you Howard, for your kind introduction. I'm glad that you did not introduce me as a letter writer. I'm very glad to see so large a turn out this evening. I am very heartened by it, very moved, and I'm very glad to see so many of my friends and former students in the audience. I like beginning my reading with a poem \"There Are No Signs\" because if any one poem expresses what I try to say, and all the poems and stories that I have written, is that modern man, pretty well, has to find out where he is going, by just going. Now the old sign posts are down, and that he must make his sign posts as he goes along.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:04:00\nReads \"There Are No Signs\" [published as “There Were No Signs in Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:04:51\n\"The Swimmer\", my symbol for the poet, condemned to live in two realms, and happy to live in neither of them. The realm of actuality and the realm of the imagination. Here I compare the poet to the swimmer.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:05:15\nReads \"The Swimmer\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:06:38\nSeveral years ago I taught at the Jewish Library, one of my students was a Mrs. Fornheim, who had lived in Vienna [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1741], and left Vienna when that city fell to the Nazis. She went to Paris [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q90], and left Paris for Spain [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29], when the Vichy government was formed. From Spain, she went to Portugal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q45] and then came to Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340], where I taught her English. She died of cancer, this is my poem for her. \"Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:07:19\nReads \"Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:08:12\n\"Gothic Landscape\", or what it means to be a Jewish boy growing up in a hostile neighbourhood of French Canadians and Italians who are convinced that you have lately murdered Christ. And where you are entranced by the church bells every Sunday, because of the ecstatic music over the sky, over the rooftops, and yet, in that ecstatic music of the bells, a sound of menace, something alien and frightening.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:09:00\nReads \"Gothic Landscape\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:10:19\n\"The Black Huntsmen\". This was written at a time when Jewish skin was made into lampshades. Or, the song of innocence becoming the song of experience.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:10:42\nReads \"The Black Huntsmen\" [from Collected Poems].\n\nUnknown\n00:12:07\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\n\nIrving Layton\n00:12:08\nThis is how the fringes of a prayer shawl, a sheitel is a wig. If you are an Orthodox, Jewess as my mother was, you have to cut your hair very short and wear a wig so that you are no longer attractive so to speak, to any other man but your husband. Peculiar way of looking at it.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:12:43\nReads \"Archetypes\" [from Collected Poems].\n\nIrving Layton\n00:13:38\nReads \"Soleil de Noces\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:14:15\n\"De Bullion Street\". I don't suppose De Bullion Street has the reputation that it had when I was a boy. I suppose the present administration has cleaned up things, and anyway harlots now are more peripatetic. So this, in a sense, is an old fashioned poem.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:14:40\nReads \"De Bullion Street\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:16:10\n\"On My Way To School\" or the changes that come. I wasn't the most punctual of students, and it's a great comfort to me therefore when I was late to find a sign on a Baptist church \"Jesus Saves\". Many years, I returned and found some change had taken place and this poem celebrates the change, or records it.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:16:44\nReads \"On My Way To School\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:17:20\nReads \"Love the Conqueror Worm\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:18:31\n\"Vexata Quaestio\". Western man is the product we are told, of two traditions, the Greek, and the Hebrew. The Greek, pagan, believing that all experience is worth having, and man should refuse no experience. The Hebrew believing that the proper life, salvation is to be found in obedience to God's will. The two traditions are quite contradictory and can never be reconciled. It is our unfortunate destiny to try to reconcile them. I do not think we have been successful at it because the task cannot be done, it's impossible. So I've written this poem, \"Vexata Quaestio\" and what I'm saying is that each and every one of us in the West is a sort of compromise between these two traditions. Here I use the tree, a tall tree, as a symbol for the Hebraic, the Maccabean and the sun becomes a symbol for the pagan, and you'll see what happens to both the tree and the sun.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:20:11\nReads \"Vexata Quaestio\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:21:19\n\"Cemetery in August\". Only humans of course are aware of death, and even in August, when you feel the flush and thrill and intensity of life, you are aware of the autumn and the winter and when you are in a cemetery, the macabre juxtaposition of life and death becomes even more intense. So I wrote this poem, \"Cemetery in August\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:21:54\nReads \"Cemetery in August\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:24:20\n\"To the Girls of my Graduating Class\". This was a graduating class, not at Sir George Williams, but my high school I taught several years ago. And I was very fortunate one year in having six very, very lovely, nubile adolescents, very attractive, and very, very well aware of precisely where attractions lay [audience laughter]. And very often when I was in the middle of a serious lecture in history, one of them would make some provocative gesture that would drive my thoughts from the lecture to something far more interesting [audience laughter].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:25:15\nReads \"To the Girls of my Graduating Class\" [from Collected Poems].\n\nAudience\n00:26:30\nLaughter.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:26:33\nAnd what you see when you are in the tavern, the kind of dreams you have about pleasure and about the strange, the strange dance that all of us lead. And this very queer life and journey of ours. And I call this \"Bacchanal\", and it's a rather unusual Bacchanal, because it's a rather sad one, or shall I say a prayerful one.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:27:10\nReads \"Bacchanal\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:28:18\nThis one is for my son, \"Maxie\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:28:24\nReads \"Maxie\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:30:03\nAnd I suppose all teachers of literature have had the experience of giving an inspired lecture on Shakespeare [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q692] or John Donne [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q140412], and finding some hand at the back waving furiously as you're getting to the home stretch and your peroration is the most resounding thing that you've ever thought about but this hand out there, very insistent, you know, and finally you stop in the middle of the peroration and you say \"Yes, yes what is it?\" and the student says, \"Sir, will this be on the exam?\" [audience laughter].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:30:57\nReads \"Seven o'Clock Lecture\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:34:07\n\"The Birth of Tragedy\". The title is taken from one of the earliest books of Nietzsche [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9358], the gods here that I speak about in the poem, are the gods of Dream and Dance, of Reason and Ecstasy, Apollo and Dionysus, Nietzsche held that tragedy came from the union of both dream and dance, intellect and impulse.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:34:44\nReads \"The Birth of Tragedy\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:36:44\nAnd I suppose no Layton reading would be quite complete without this poem, \"Misunderstanding\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:36:54\nReads \"Misunderstanding\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:37:16\n\"The Cold Green Element\". This is about life, death, nature, and poetry. It's really a meditation, and, I hope, a passionate meditation on art and life. Like Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213], I am very concerned with the necessary antinomies or contradictions of life. Like Yeats, I believe that great art results from the happy, the miraculous fusion of the two.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:38:04\nReads \"The Cold Green Element\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:40:20\n\"The Improved Binoculars\", my symbol for science. It is truism to say that unless man's moral development, his capacity for sympathy, keeps space, or this development in science and technology he's in danger of blowing himself off the face of this earth. This poem is an apocalyptic poem, it is a vision of the future, such as I hope will never be realized. But in one of my more despairing moments, or one of my more savage and bitter moments, I wrote this poem, \"The Improved Binoculars\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:41:05\nReads \"The Improved Binoculars\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:42:25\nReads [“Orpheus” from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:44:11\nReads \"Death of a Construction Worker\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:45:08\nReads “Theology” [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:45:47\nReads “For Louise, Age 17” [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:47:14\n\"Song for Naomi\". Naomi's my daughter. Several years ago we were out in the country, I was appalled to find that while she was by the bank of the lake, I couldn't see her because the weeds and the flowers were taller than she was. If she fell into the lake, neither I nor my wife might see it. But nothing happened. Just a day before we were to pack up to leave, I noticed my daughter down by the lake, and this time, her dear little head was peeping just above the weeds and the flowers and this gave me the idea for this poem, which I wrote, while of course my wife did the packing.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:48:12\nReads \"Song for Naomi\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:49:47\nHere's a rather erotic poem, called \"Gathering of Poets\", to be taken of course with a grain of salt.\n \nUnknown\n00:49:59\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:50:00\n...to be taken, of course, with a grain of salt. Just a short thing.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:50:08\nReads \"Gathering of Poets\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:50:40\nReads \"The Bull Calf\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:53:19\nAnd here's a lighter poem called \"Bargain\".\n \nIrving Layton\n00:53:22\nReads \"Bargain\" [from Collected Poems].\n\nAudience\n00:53:46\nLaughter.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:53:58\nThis next poem is for my mother, who died at the age of 89. She was a very remarkable woman, I'd like to tell you a great deal about her, she certainly merits it, she was a most remarkable character with a tremendous joie-de-vivre and a wonderful gift of vituperation, which it is said I have inherited [audience laughter]. Certainly I learned the cadence of poetry from my mother's cursing. My mother would start cursing as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning and wouldn't stop cursing until I closed them at night when I went to bed. But the cadence was what interested me [audience laughter] and I didn't pay any attention to words. Occasionally I would get the drift, of course, of what the curses were intended to say, and I must say it did me a wonderful lot of good because later on when I got knocked my critics and so on, it was like so much water off a duck's back after my mother's cursing. Nothing the critics say could possibly make any impression upon me whatsoever [audience laughter]. She was extremely vain of her black eyebrows. When she was 85, I was taking her somewhere and we stopped for a red light. I noticed a very lovely girl standing on the curb, and of course, I looked very intently at her. My mother caught my intent gaze and said, sighing, \"Yes, she's very beautiful, but has she got my black eyebrows?\" [audience laughter]. She wore earrings that were made of old Romanian coins, she wore an amber necklace, which I remember playing with when I was a child. But it was her immense vitality and joie-de-vivre, coupled with an immense discontent that always fascinated me about my mother. She was a very Orthodox woman, reverencing God, but often giving me the impression that she might have made a much better job of creation than God himself. So this is my tribute to my very, very remarkable mother.\n \nIrving Layton\n00:56:56\nReads \"Keine Lazarovitch, 1870-1959\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:59:16\nReads \"The Well-Wrought Urn\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n00:59:57\nSome time ago, I went down to the church at Notre Dame, and you know, you have halos lighting up over the head of your favourite saint, or the Virgin Mary, if you drop the requisite number of coins. There's nobody else in that vast gloomy church, except another man and myself, and he went over to the little machine and he dropped some coins, and he waited for the halo to light up and it didn't. And that nettled him a great deal, and he waited, and it still didn't light up so he gave the machine a kick, nothing happened. But he said something and I went home and I wrote this poem.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:01:01\nReads \"This Machine Age\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:02:09\nThis next poem of mine is also based on an actual experience, I'm sure that most of you have heard of Djilas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q153909], the very courageous Yugoslav writer who's imprisoned by his erstwhile comrade and companion in arms, Tito. He's imprisoned for writing and publishing outside of the country, Conversations with Stalin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5166446]. That was several years ago, he's just been released. Well I thought a brave man like that deserves some kind of support, especially from and by writers, and so I decided to go up to Ottawa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1930] and demonstrate in front of the Yugoslav Embassy. I took my wife with me, and one or two of the local poets, we made some signs and we drove up to Ottawa. We got out of the car, and the sign read, of course, \"Free Djilas\", and I was amazed and delighted to find that a considerable crowd gathered around me and the sign. Until I realized just what was happening. And so I wrote this poem, called \"Free Djilas\".\n \nIrving Layton\n01:03:31\nReads \"Free Djilas\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:04:29\nThis one, in a more serious vein, \"The Predator\".\n \nIrving Layton\n01:04:36\nReads \"The Predator\" [from Collected Poems].\n\nIrving Layton\n01:06:41\nReads \"Plaza de Toros\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:09:13\nReads \"At the Alhambra\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:10:20\nReads \"For My Green Old Age\" [from Collected Poems].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:11:44\nNow I want to read a few poems from my most recent book, Periods of the Moon. \"Castles on the Rhine\".\n \nIrving Layton\n01:12:01\nReads \"Castles on the Rhine\" [published as “Rhine Boat Trip in Periods of the Moon].\n \nIrving Layton\n01:12:54\nReads \"Mutability\" from Periods of the Moon.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:14:19\nReads \"Time's Velvet Tongue\" from Periods of the Moon.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:15:20\nReads \"Gratitude\" from Periods of the Moon.\n\nAudience\n01:16:00\nLaughter \n\nIrving Layton\n01:16:04\nMy contribution to the centennial year, “Confederation Ode”.\n\nIrving Layton\n01:16:10\nReads \"Confederation Ode\" from Periods of the Moon [audience laughter throughout].\n\nAudience\n01:17:23\nLaughter and Applause.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:17:34\nReads \"The Beautiful Unknown Girl\" from Periods of the Moon.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:18:55\nAnd this one, \"For Musia's Grandchildren\".\n \nIrving Layton\n01:19:09\nReads \"For Musia's Grandchildren\" from Periods of the Moon.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:20:59\nReads \"Look Homeward, Angel\" from Periods of the Moon.\n \nIrving Layton\n01:21:45\nAnd this last one, \"Family Portrait\".\n \nIrving Layton\n01:21:54\nReads \"Family Portrait\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\n\nAudience\n01:22:59\nLaughter and Applause.\n \nEND\n01:23:43\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Year-Specific Information:\\n\\nHis collection of poetry Periods of the Moon was published in 1967, and he participated in several other readings at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal, among other places. His poetry was anthologized in Modern Canadian Verse: In English and French (Oxford University Press), edited by F.R. Scott and A.J.M. Smith, The Blasted Pine: An Anthology of Satire, also edited by F.R. Scott and A.J.M. Smith in 1967 (Macmillan). Layton was poet-in-residence at Sir George Williams University.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Local Connections: \\n\\nLayton’s meeting with Louis Dudek and John Sutherland culminated in the very influential First Statement magazine and press in 1942. His poetry is widely-read and has been awarded generously. Layton has also become a well-known figure in Montreal, and caught the attention of many critics--for better or for worse. Layton and Dudek helped Aileen Collins found the magazine CIV/n, and with Raymond Souster founded Contact Press in 1952, which both published many young Canadian poets like Margaret Atwood, Phyllis Webb, Eli Mandel, D.G. Jones, Alden Nowlan, Gwendolyn MacEwen, George Bowering, Frank Davey and John Newlove. Through Raymond Souster, he began correspondence with Robert Creeley in 1953, and continued to prove to American poets that Canadian poets had something interesting to say. Layton, Dudek and F.R. Scott promoted and mentored the newer generation of Canadian poets. He has become a Montreal icon, as he spent most of his life in the city.\\n\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones\\n\\nAdditional research and edits by Ali Barillaro\",\"type\":\"General\"},{\"note\":\"Reel-to-reel tape>2 CDs>digital file\",\"type\":\"Preservation\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-companion-to-canadian-literature/oclc/605246871&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. \\\"Layton, Irving\\\". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press 2001. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/from-there-to-here-a-guide-to-english-canadian-literature-since-1960-ii-our-nature-our-voices/oclc/878901819&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Davey, Frank. From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature Since 1960, Our Nature-Our Voices II. Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1974.\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/collected-poems-irving-layton/oclc/460183130&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Layton, Irving. Collected Poems. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1965. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/periods-of-the-moon-poems/oclc/907399867&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Layton, Irving. Periods of the Moon. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1967. \"},{\"url\":\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/encyclopedia-of-post-colonial-literatures-in-english-vol2/oclc/1156824609&referer=brief_results\",\"citation\":\"Lynch, Gerald. “Layton, Irving (1912-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly, (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2 Vols. \\n\"},{\"url\":\"https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/concordia/offices/archives/docs/postgrad/Postgrad-1967-Spring.pdf\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Readings”. Post-Grad. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, Spring 1967, page 13. \"},{\"url\":\"http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=O5UtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4p8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3951,6182119&dq=sir+george+williams+poetry &hl=en\",\"citation\":\"“Poetry Series Coming Up At University”. Montreal; The Gazette. 31 December 1966, page 39. \"}]"],"_version_":1853670548809187328,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.477Z","digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0031_back.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0031_back.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Irving Layton Tape Box - Back\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0031_front.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0031_front.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Irving Layton Tape Box - Front\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/I0086_11_0031_tape.jpg\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"I0086_11_0031_tape.jpg\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0cAe1GF8xZsc62jpUDXwgvyCd6ZmvSw\",\"title\":\"Irving Layton Tape Box - Reel\",\"credit\":\"Drew Bernet\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Photograph\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/irving_layton_i086-11-031.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3\",\"filename\":\"irving_layton_i086-11-031.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"\",\"duration\":\"01:23:43\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"200.9 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"Howard Fink\\n00:00:00\\n...Irving Layton [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1673289] to this stage again tonight, this time to read his poetry. The last time he was up here was to introduce Robert Creeley [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q918620], and what was said then clearly explained the close relations between Mr. Layton and the Black Mountain Group [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2905420] in the 50's, so I won't go into that again, but I'll only add that Mr. Layton was a member of the editorial board of Black Mountain Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2905420] from 1955 on. Of course he's been publishing poetry since the 40's and was associated during those years with the First Statement Press, which became the Northern Review [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15757902] in 1949, and all this time studying at McGill University [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201492] where he received the M.A. in Political Science and Economics in 1946. It's impossible to list all of his appearances in periodicals and little magazines, and I'll mention only a few of his two dozen or so volumes of poetry, anyway that's what it seemed like to me when I looked at that page in the new one. A Red Carpet for the Sun in 1959, with the well-known introduction by William Carlos Williams [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178106] which acknowledged, American recognition of Mr. Layton's reputation. A Red Carpet, like all of Mr. Layton's subsequent books was published by McClelland and Stewart [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6800322]. Then, a book of short stories and poems, The Swinging Flesh, which came out in 1961, Balls for a One-armed Juggler in 1963, The Laughing Rooster in 1964, Collected Poems in 1965 and his latest work, just published this winter, Periods of the Moon. And I should say the ones that I have mentioned are the ones which are still in stock and able to be bought. Among Mr. Layton's other frenetic activities, poetry readings in Canada [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16], United States [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30], Germany [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q183] and elsewhere, television appearances, controversial ones and so on, he finds time to communicate with students as well as Poet in Residence of this university [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q326342]. I'd like to present Mr. Irving Layton.\\n\\nAudience\\n00:02:21\\nApplause.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:02:30\\nThank you Howard, for your kind introduction. I'm glad that you did not introduce me as a letter writer. I'm very glad to see so large a turn out this evening. I am very heartened by it, very moved, and I'm very glad to see so many of my friends and former students in the audience. I like beginning my reading with a poem \\\"There Are No Signs\\\" because if any one poem expresses what I try to say, and all the poems and stories that I have written, is that modern man, pretty well, has to find out where he is going, by just going. Now the old sign posts are down, and that he must make his sign posts as he goes along.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:04:00\\nReads \\\"There Are No Signs\\\" [published as “There Were No Signs in Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:04:51\\n\\\"The Swimmer\\\", my symbol for the poet, condemned to live in two realms, and happy to live in neither of them. The realm of actuality and the realm of the imagination. Here I compare the poet to the swimmer.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:05:15\\nReads \\\"The Swimmer\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:06:38\\nSeveral years ago I taught at the Jewish Library, one of my students was a Mrs. Fornheim, who had lived in Vienna [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1741], and left Vienna when that city fell to the Nazis. She went to Paris [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q90], and left Paris for Spain [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29], when the Vichy government was formed. From Spain, she went to Portugal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q45] and then came to Montreal [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q340], where I taught her English. She died of cancer, this is my poem for her. \\\"Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:07:19\\nReads \\\"Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:08:12\\n\\\"Gothic Landscape\\\", or what it means to be a Jewish boy growing up in a hostile neighbourhood of French Canadians and Italians who are convinced that you have lately murdered Christ. And where you are entranced by the church bells every Sunday, because of the ecstatic music over the sky, over the rooftops, and yet, in that ecstatic music of the bells, a sound of menace, something alien and frightening.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:09:00\\nReads \\\"Gothic Landscape\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:10:19\\n\\\"The Black Huntsmen\\\". This was written at a time when Jewish skin was made into lampshades. Or, the song of innocence becoming the song of experience.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:10:42\\nReads \\\"The Black Huntsmen\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n\\nUnknown\\n00:12:07\\n[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].\\n\\nIrving Layton\\n00:12:08\\nThis is how the fringes of a prayer shawl, a sheitel is a wig. If you are an Orthodox, Jewess as my mother was, you have to cut your hair very short and wear a wig so that you are no longer attractive so to speak, to any other man but your husband. Peculiar way of looking at it.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:12:43\\nReads \\\"Archetypes\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n\\nIrving Layton\\n00:13:38\\nReads \\\"Soleil de Noces\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:14:15\\n\\\"De Bullion Street\\\". I don't suppose De Bullion Street has the reputation that it had when I was a boy. I suppose the present administration has cleaned up things, and anyway harlots now are more peripatetic. So this, in a sense, is an old fashioned poem.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:14:40\\nReads \\\"De Bullion Street\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:16:10\\n\\\"On My Way To School\\\" or the changes that come. I wasn't the most punctual of students, and it's a great comfort to me therefore when I was late to find a sign on a Baptist church \\\"Jesus Saves\\\". Many years, I returned and found some change had taken place and this poem celebrates the change, or records it.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:16:44\\nReads \\\"On My Way To School\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:17:20\\nReads \\\"Love the Conqueror Worm\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:18:31\\n\\\"Vexata Quaestio\\\". Western man is the product we are told, of two traditions, the Greek, and the Hebrew. The Greek, pagan, believing that all experience is worth having, and man should refuse no experience. The Hebrew believing that the proper life, salvation is to be found in obedience to God's will. The two traditions are quite contradictory and can never be reconciled. It is our unfortunate destiny to try to reconcile them. I do not think we have been successful at it because the task cannot be done, it's impossible. So I've written this poem, \\\"Vexata Quaestio\\\" and what I'm saying is that each and every one of us in the West is a sort of compromise between these two traditions. Here I use the tree, a tall tree, as a symbol for the Hebraic, the Maccabean and the sun becomes a symbol for the pagan, and you'll see what happens to both the tree and the sun.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:20:11\\nReads \\\"Vexata Quaestio\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:21:19\\n\\\"Cemetery in August\\\". Only humans of course are aware of death, and even in August, when you feel the flush and thrill and intensity of life, you are aware of the autumn and the winter and when you are in a cemetery, the macabre juxtaposition of life and death becomes even more intense. So I wrote this poem, \\\"Cemetery in August\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:21:54\\nReads \\\"Cemetery in August\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:24:20\\n\\\"To the Girls of my Graduating Class\\\". This was a graduating class, not at Sir George Williams, but my high school I taught several years ago. And I was very fortunate one year in having six very, very lovely, nubile adolescents, very attractive, and very, very well aware of precisely where attractions lay [audience laughter]. And very often when I was in the middle of a serious lecture in history, one of them would make some provocative gesture that would drive my thoughts from the lecture to something far more interesting [audience laughter].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:25:15\\nReads \\\"To the Girls of my Graduating Class\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:26:30\\nLaughter.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:26:33\\nAnd what you see when you are in the tavern, the kind of dreams you have about pleasure and about the strange, the strange dance that all of us lead. And this very queer life and journey of ours. And I call this \\\"Bacchanal\\\", and it's a rather unusual Bacchanal, because it's a rather sad one, or shall I say a prayerful one.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:27:10\\nReads \\\"Bacchanal\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:28:18\\nThis one is for my son, \\\"Maxie\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:28:24\\nReads \\\"Maxie\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:30:03\\nAnd I suppose all teachers of literature have had the experience of giving an inspired lecture on Shakespeare [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q692] or John Donne [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q140412], and finding some hand at the back waving furiously as you're getting to the home stretch and your peroration is the most resounding thing that you've ever thought about but this hand out there, very insistent, you know, and finally you stop in the middle of the peroration and you say \\\"Yes, yes what is it?\\\" and the student says, \\\"Sir, will this be on the exam?\\\" [audience laughter].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:30:57\\nReads \\\"Seven o'Clock Lecture\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:34:07\\n\\\"The Birth of Tragedy\\\". The title is taken from one of the earliest books of Nietzsche [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9358], the gods here that I speak about in the poem, are the gods of Dream and Dance, of Reason and Ecstasy, Apollo and Dionysus, Nietzsche held that tragedy came from the union of both dream and dance, intellect and impulse.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:34:44\\nReads \\\"The Birth of Tragedy\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:36:44\\nAnd I suppose no Layton reading would be quite complete without this poem, \\\"Misunderstanding\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:36:54\\nReads \\\"Misunderstanding\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:37:16\\n\\\"The Cold Green Element\\\". This is about life, death, nature, and poetry. It's really a meditation, and, I hope, a passionate meditation on art and life. Like Yeats [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213], I am very concerned with the necessary antinomies or contradictions of life. Like Yeats, I believe that great art results from the happy, the miraculous fusion of the two.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:38:04\\nReads \\\"The Cold Green Element\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:40:20\\n\\\"The Improved Binoculars\\\", my symbol for science. It is truism to say that unless man's moral development, his capacity for sympathy, keeps space, or this development in science and technology he's in danger of blowing himself off the face of this earth. This poem is an apocalyptic poem, it is a vision of the future, such as I hope will never be realized. But in one of my more despairing moments, or one of my more savage and bitter moments, I wrote this poem, \\\"The Improved Binoculars\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:41:05\\nReads \\\"The Improved Binoculars\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:42:25\\nReads [“Orpheus” from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:44:11\\nReads \\\"Death of a Construction Worker\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:45:08\\nReads “Theology” [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:45:47\\nReads “For Louise, Age 17” [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:47:14\\n\\\"Song for Naomi\\\". Naomi's my daughter. Several years ago we were out in the country, I was appalled to find that while she was by the bank of the lake, I couldn't see her because the weeds and the flowers were taller than she was. If she fell into the lake, neither I nor my wife might see it. But nothing happened. Just a day before we were to pack up to leave, I noticed my daughter down by the lake, and this time, her dear little head was peeping just above the weeds and the flowers and this gave me the idea for this poem, which I wrote, while of course my wife did the packing.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:48:12\\nReads \\\"Song for Naomi\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:49:47\\nHere's a rather erotic poem, called \\\"Gathering of Poets\\\", to be taken of course with a grain of salt.\\n \\nUnknown\\n00:49:59\\n[Cut or edit made in tape].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:50:00\\n...to be taken, of course, with a grain of salt. Just a short thing.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:50:08\\nReads \\\"Gathering of Poets\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:50:40\\nReads \\\"The Bull Calf\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:53:19\\nAnd here's a lighter poem called \\\"Bargain\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:53:22\\nReads \\\"Bargain\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n\\nAudience\\n00:53:46\\nLaughter.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:53:58\\nThis next poem is for my mother, who died at the age of 89. She was a very remarkable woman, I'd like to tell you a great deal about her, she certainly merits it, she was a most remarkable character with a tremendous joie-de-vivre and a wonderful gift of vituperation, which it is said I have inherited [audience laughter]. Certainly I learned the cadence of poetry from my mother's cursing. My mother would start cursing as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning and wouldn't stop cursing until I closed them at night when I went to bed. But the cadence was what interested me [audience laughter] and I didn't pay any attention to words. Occasionally I would get the drift, of course, of what the curses were intended to say, and I must say it did me a wonderful lot of good because later on when I got knocked my critics and so on, it was like so much water off a duck's back after my mother's cursing. Nothing the critics say could possibly make any impression upon me whatsoever [audience laughter]. She was extremely vain of her black eyebrows. When she was 85, I was taking her somewhere and we stopped for a red light. I noticed a very lovely girl standing on the curb, and of course, I looked very intently at her. My mother caught my intent gaze and said, sighing, \\\"Yes, she's very beautiful, but has she got my black eyebrows?\\\" [audience laughter]. She wore earrings that were made of old Romanian coins, she wore an amber necklace, which I remember playing with when I was a child. But it was her immense vitality and joie-de-vivre, coupled with an immense discontent that always fascinated me about my mother. She was a very Orthodox woman, reverencing God, but often giving me the impression that she might have made a much better job of creation than God himself. So this is my tribute to my very, very remarkable mother.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:56:56\\nReads \\\"Keine Lazarovitch, 1870-1959\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:59:16\\nReads \\\"The Well-Wrought Urn\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n00:59:57\\nSome time ago, I went down to the church at Notre Dame, and you know, you have halos lighting up over the head of your favourite saint, or the Virgin Mary, if you drop the requisite number of coins. There's nobody else in that vast gloomy church, except another man and myself, and he went over to the little machine and he dropped some coins, and he waited for the halo to light up and it didn't. And that nettled him a great deal, and he waited, and it still didn't light up so he gave the machine a kick, nothing happened. But he said something and I went home and I wrote this poem.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:01:01\\nReads \\\"This Machine Age\\\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:02:09\\nThis next poem of mine is also based on an actual experience, I'm sure that most of you have heard of Djilas [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q153909], the very courageous Yugoslav writer who's imprisoned by his erstwhile comrade and companion in arms, Tito. He's imprisoned for writing and publishing outside of the country, Conversations with Stalin [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5166446]. That was several years ago, he's just been released. Well I thought a brave man like that deserves some kind of support, especially from and by writers, and so I decided to go up to Ottawa [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1930] and demonstrate in front of the Yugoslav Embassy. I took my wife with me, and one or two of the local poets, we made some signs and we drove up to Ottawa. We got out of the car, and the sign read, of course, \\\"Free Djilas\\\", and I was amazed and delighted to find that a considerable crowd gathered around me and the sign. Until I realized just what was happening. And so I wrote this poem, called \\\"Free Djilas\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:03:31\\nReads \\\"Free Djilas\\\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:04:29\\nThis one, in a more serious vein, \\\"The Predator\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:04:36\\nReads \\\"The Predator\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n\\nIrving Layton\\n01:06:41\\nReads \\\"Plaza de Toros\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:09:13\\nReads \\\"At the Alhambra\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:10:20\\nReads \\\"For My Green Old Age\\\" [from Collected Poems].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:11:44\\nNow I want to read a few poems from my most recent book, Periods of the Moon. \\\"Castles on the Rhine\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:12:01\\nReads \\\"Castles on the Rhine\\\" [published as “Rhine Boat Trip in Periods of the Moon].\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:12:54\\nReads \\\"Mutability\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:14:19\\nReads \\\"Time's Velvet Tongue\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:15:20\\nReads \\\"Gratitude\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n\\nAudience\\n01:16:00\\nLaughter \\n\\nIrving Layton\\n01:16:04\\nMy contribution to the centennial year, “Confederation Ode”.\\n\\nIrving Layton\\n01:16:10\\nReads \\\"Confederation Ode\\\" from Periods of the Moon [audience laughter throughout].\\n\\nAudience\\n01:17:23\\nLaughter and Applause.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:17:34\\nReads \\\"The Beautiful Unknown Girl\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:18:55\\nAnd this one, \\\"For Musia's Grandchildren\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:19:09\\nReads \\\"For Musia's Grandchildren\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:20:59\\nReads \\\"Look Homeward, Angel\\\" from Periods of the Moon.\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:21:45\\nAnd this last one, \\\"Family Portrait\\\".\\n \\nIrving Layton\\n01:21:54\\nReads \\\"Family Portrait\\\" [from Collected Poems; audience laughter throughout].\\n\\nAudience\\n01:22:59\\nLaughter and Applause.\\n \\nEND\\n01:23:43\\n\",\"notes\":\"Irving Layton reads from Collected Poems (McClelland & Stewart, 1965) and Periods of the Moon (McClelland &Stewart, 1967). \\n\\nI086-11-031.1\\n00:00- Howard Fink introduces Irving Layton [INDEX: Layton introduced Robert Creeley in earlier reading, Black Mountain Poetry Group in 1950’s, Board of Black Mountain      \\tReview in 1955 onwards, First Statement Press- became Northern Review in 1949,  A    red carpet for the sun (1959) with intro by William Carlos Williams, published by       \\tMcClelland and Stewart, The swinging flesh,  Balls for a one-armed juggler (1963),        \\tLaughing Rooster (1964), Collected Poems (1965), Periods of the Moon (1967),    \\tcontroversial T.V. appearances, Poet in Residence at Sir George University 1967]\\n02:30- Irving Layton introduces “There Are No Signs”\\n04:00- Reads “There Are No Signs”\\n04:51- Introduces “The Swimmer” [INDEX: Poet as swimmer symbol; Howard Fink List “The Summer”.]\\n05:15- Reads “The Swimmer”\\n06:38- Introduces “Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee” [INDEX: Jewish Library: teaching English, Mrs. Fornheim: an European refugee from Nazis]\\n07:19- Reads “Mrs. Fornheim, Refugee”\\n08:12- Introduces “Gothic Landscape” [INDEX: Jewish boy living in Christian and Catholic neighborhoods]\\n09:00- Reads “Gothic Landscape”\\n10:19- Introduces “The Black Huntsman”\\n10:40- Reads “The Black Huntsman”\\n12:08- Introduces “Archetypes” [INDEX: Orthodox Judaism]\\n12:43- Reads “Archetypes”\\n13:38- Reads “Soleil de Nos”\\n14:15- Introduces “De Bullion Street”\\n14:40- Reads “De Bullion Street”\\n16:10- Introduces “On My Way To School”\\n16:44- Reads “On My Way To School”\\n17:20- Reads “Love the Conqueror Worm”\\n18:31- Introduces “Exata Christio” [INDEX: Western man: Greek vs. Hebraic Cultures]\\n20:11- Reads “Exata Christio”\\n21:19- Introduces “Cemetery in August”\\n21:54- Reads “Cemetery in August”\\n24:20- Introduces “To The Girls of My Graduating Class”\\n25:15- Reads “To The Girls of My Graduating Class”\\n26:33- Introduces “Bacchanal”\\n27:10- Reads “Bacchanal”\\n28:18- Introduces “Maxie” [INDEX: poem for his son]\\n28:24- Reads “Maxie”\\n30:03- Introduces “Seven O’Clock Lecture”\\n30:57- Reads “Seven O’Clock Lecture”\\n34:07- Introduces “Birth of a Tragedy” [INDEX: Nietzsche]\\n34:44- Reads “Birth of a Tragedy”\\n36:44- Introduces “Misunderstanding”\\n36:54- Reads “Misunderstanding”\\n37:16- Introduces “A Cold Green Element” [INDEX: William Butler Yeats]\\n38:04- Reads “A Cold Green Element”\\n40:20- Introduces “The Improved Binoculars” [INDEX: dangers of science and technology]\\n41:05- Reads “The Improved Binoculars”\\n42:25- Reads first line “Poets of a distant time...”\\n44:11- Reads “Death of a Construction Worker”\\n45:08- Reads “Theology”\\n45:47- Reads “For Louise, Age 17”\\n47:14- Introduces “Song for Naomi”\\n48:12- Reads “Song for Naomi” [INDEX: Poem for Naomi, daughter]\\n49:47- Begins to introduce “Gathering of Poets”\\n49:59.53- END OF RECORDING\\n   \\nHoward Fink List of poems:\\n18/03/67\\nmono, 2 tracks, speed 3 3/4 one one 5” reel, lasting 1 hr 35 min\\n \\n1.  “There Are No Signs”\\n2.  “The Summer”\\n3.  “Mrs. Fornheim, the Refugee”\\n4.  “Gothic Landscape”\\n5.  “The Black Huntsman”\\n6.  “Archetypes”\\n7.  “Soleil de Nos”\\n8.  “DeBullion Street”\\n9.  “On My Way To School”\\n10. “Love the Conquerer Worm”\\n11. “Exata Christio”\\n12. “Cemetary in August”\\n13. “To the Girls (gauls) of My Graduating Class”\\n14. “Bachnal”\\n15. “Maxie”\\n16. “Seven O’clock Lecture”\\n17. “The Birth Of Tragedy”\\n18. “Misunderstanding”\\n19. “The Cold Green Element”\\n20. “The Improved Binoculars”\\n21. first line “Poets of a distant time...”\\n22. “Death of a Construction Worker”\\n23. first line “She came to us...”\\n24. “Song for Naomi”\\n25. “Gathering of Poets”\\n\\nI086-11-031.2\\n00:00- Irving Layton introduces “Gathering of Poets”\\n00:08- Reads “Gathering of Poets”\\n00:40- Reads “The Bull Calf”\\n03:20- Reads “Bargain”\\n03:58- Introduces “Keine Lazarovitch, 1870-1959” [INDEX: Layton’s mother, Keine \\tLazarovitch]\\n06:57- Reads “Keine Lazarovitch, 1870-1959”\\n09:15- Reads “The Wall Watt Urn”\\n09:56- Introduces “This Machine Age”\\n11:01- Reads “This Machine Age”\\n12:09- Introduces “Free Djilas” [INDEX: Milovan Djilas Conversations with Stalin, Tito]\\n13:31- Reads “Free Djilas”\\n14:29- Reads “The Predator”\\n14:36- Reads “Plaza de Toros” [Plaza de Toros in Madrid]\\n19:14- Reads “At The Alhambra”\\n20:20- Reads “For My Green Old Age”\\n21:44- Reads “Castles on the Rhine”, following poems are from Periods of the Moon\\n22:54- Reads “Mutability” [INDEX: The Rhine]\\n24:20- Reads “Time’s Velvet Tongue”\\n25:02- Reads “Gratitude”\\n26:02- Reads “Confederation Ode” [INDEX: Canada’s Centennial Year, Confederation Ode]\\n27:35- Reads “The Beautiful Unknown Girl”\\n28:55- Reads “For Musia’s Grandchildren”\\n31:00- Reads “Look Homeward, Angel”\\n31:45- Reads “Family Portrait”\\n33:43.03- END OF RECORDING\\n\\nHoward Fink list of poems:\\n26.  “The Bull Calf”\\n27.  “Bargain”\\n28.  “Kana (sp??) Laserovich” (Layton’s mom)--Keine Lazarovitch\\n29.  “The Will Watt Van”\\n30.  “This Machine Age”\\n31.  “Free Gilas”\\n32.  “The Predator”\\n33.  “Plaza de Toro’s”\\n34.  first line “I sat where...”\\n35.  “For My Green Old Age”\\nThe following poems are from Layton’s book Periods of the Moon:\\n36.  “Castles On the Rine”\\n37.  “Meutability”\\n38.  “Times Velvet Tongue”\\n39.  “Gratitude”\\n40.  “Confederation Ode”\\n41.  “The Beautiful Unknowen Girl”\\n42.  “For Muska’s Grandchildren”\\n43.  “Look Homeward Angel”\\n44.  “Family Portrait”\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"Yes\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/irving-layton-at-sgwu-1967/\"}]"],"score":4.0012383}]