Dorothy Livesay
Encyclopedia
- Livesay redirects here. Or see Livesay (disambiguation).
Dorothy Kathleen May Livesay, (October 12, 1909 – December 29, 1996) was a Canadian poet
Canadian poetry
- Beginnings:The earliest works of poetry, mainly written by visitors, described the new territories in optimistic terms, mainly targeted at a European audience...
who twice won the Governor General`s Award in the 1940s, and was "senior woman writer in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
" during the 1970s and 1980s.
Life
Livesay was born in WinnipegWinnipeg
Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...
, Manitoba
Manitoba
Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...
. Her mother, Florence Randal Livesay, was a poet and journalist; her father, J.F.B. Livesay was the General Manager of Canadian Press
Canadian Press
Canadian Press Enterprises Inc. is the entity which "will take over the operations of the Canadian Press" according to a November 26, 2010 article in the Toronto Star...
.
Livesay moved to Toronto, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, with her family in 1920. She graduated with a BA
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in 1931 from Trinity College
University of Trinity College
The University of Trinity College, informally referred to as Trin, is a college of the University of Toronto, founded in 1851 by Bishop John Strachan. Trinity was intended by Strachan as a college of strong Anglican alignment, after the University of Toronto severed its ties with the Church of...
in the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
and received a diploma from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Social Work in 1934. She also studied at the University of British Columbia
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...
and the Sorbonne
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
.
In 1931 in Paris, Livesay became a committed Communist. She joined the Communist Party of Canada
Communist Party of Canada
The Communist Party of Canada is a communist political party in Canada. Although is it currently a minor or small political party without representation in the Federal Parliament or in provincial legislatures, historically the Party has elected representatives in Federal Parliament, Ontario...
in 1933, and was active in a number of its front organizations: the Canadian Labour Defense League, the Canadian League Against War and Fascism, Friends of the Soviet Union, and the Workers’ Unity League.
In 1937 she married Duncan Macnair, they had two children Peter Macnair
Peter Macnair
Peter Livesay Macnair, Canadian Anthropologist Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, the son of Dorothy Livesay and Duncan Macnair.From 1965 until 1996 Macnair was the Curator of Ethnology at the Royal British Columbia Museum...
and Marcia.
In the early 1940s Livesay suggested to Anne Marriott
Anne Marriott
Anne Marriott was a Canadian writer who won the Governor General’s Award for her book Calling Adventurers! "She was renowned especially for the narrative poem The Wind, Our Enemy," which she wrote while still in her twenties.-Life:Because of The Wind Our Enemy, Marriott is often thought to be...
, Floris McLaren, and Doris Ferne that they start a poetry magazine which would serve as a vehicle for poets outside the somewhat closed Montreal circle. Alan Crawley agreed to edit the magazine, and the first issue of Contemporary Verse appeared in September 1941,
After Macnair died in 1959, Livesay worked for UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and then in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia
Zambia
Zambia , officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west....
) as a field worker from 1960 to 1963.
Between 1951 and 1984, she was an instructor and a writer-in-residence at many Canadian universities, including the University of British Columbia (1951–53 and 1966–68), University of New Brunswick
University of New Brunswick
The University of New Brunswick is a Canadian university located in the province of New Brunswick. UNB is the oldest English language university in Canada and among the first public universities in North America. The university has two main campuses: the original campus founded in 1785 in...
(1966–1968), University of Alberta
University of Alberta
The University of Alberta is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta and Henry Marshall Tory, its first president, it is widely recognized as one of the best universities in Canada...
(1968–1971), University of Victoria
University of Victoria
The University of Victoria, often referred to as UVic, is the second oldest public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It is a research intensive university located in Saanich and Oak Bay, about northeast of downtown Victoria. The University's annual enrollment is about 20,000 students...
(1972–1974), University of Manitoba
University of Manitoba
The University of Manitoba , in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, is the largest university in the province of Manitoba. It is Manitoba's most comprehensive and only research-intensive post-secondary educational institution. It was founded in 1877, making it Western Canada’s first university. It placed...
(1974–76), Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University is a Canadian public research university in British Columbia with its main campus on Burnaby Mountain in Burnaby, and satellite campuses in Vancouver and Surrey. The main campus in Burnaby, located from downtown Vancouver, was established in 1965 and has more than 34,000...
(1980–82), and University of Toronto (1983–84).
In 1975 Livesay founded the journal Contemporary Verse 2 (CVII).
She died in Victoria
Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
.
Writing
Livesay's first collection of poetry, Green Pitcher, was published in 1928, when she was only nineteen. The Encyclopedia of Literature says, "these were well-crafted poems that not only showed skilled use of the imagist technique but prefigured Margaret Atwood's condemnations of exploitative and fearful attitudes to the Canadian landscape." The book "later disappointed Livesay by its failure to deal openly with social issues."She published her first short story, "Heat," in the Canadian Mercury at the same age (in January, 1929).
Her second book of poems, Signpost (1932), "showed the increasing sophistication of her imagist skills, as in ‘Green rain’, and an original sense of feminine sexuality."
When her Selected Poems were published in 1956, Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye
Northrop Frye
Herman Northrop Frye, was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century....
said of them:
- Miss Livesay is an imagist who started off, in Green Pitcher (1929), in the Amy Lowell idiom.... With Day and Night (1944) a social passion begins to fuse the diction, tighten the rhythm, and concentrate the imagery.... From "Prelude for Spring" on, the original imagist texture gradually returns.... The basis of Miss Livesay's imagery is the association between winter and the human death-impulse and between spring and the human capacity for life. Cutting across this is the irony of the fact that spring tends to obliterate the memory of winter, whereas human beings enjoying love and peace retain an uneasy sense of the horrors of hatred and war....
- The dangers of imagism are facility and slackness, and one reads through this book with mixed feelings. But it is one of the few rewards of writing poetry that the poet takes his ranking from his best work. Miss Livesay's most distinctive quality, I think, is her power of observing how other people observe, especially children. Too often her own observation goes out of focus, making the love poems elusive and the descriptive ones prolix, but in the gentle humour of 'The Traveller,' in 'The Child Looks Out,' in 'On Seeing,' in the nursery-rhyme rhythm of 'Abracadabra,' and in many other places, we can see what Professor [Desmond
Pacey] means by "a voice we delight to hear."
Livesay "was a tireless contributor to periodical publications her whole life, but beginning in the 1960s she contributed to the burgeoning critical discussion of Canadian literature through her writing as well as her affiliations with numerous academic institutions and magazines. She offered a theory that Canadian literature favoured a mode she called 'documentary poetry,' long narrative poems that comment on particular social topics and that 'are a conscious attempt to create a dialectic between the objective facts and the subjective feelings of the poet' ("The Documentary Poem: A Canadian Genre,"). Call My People Home (1950) — about the mistreatment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War — and The Documentaries (1968) are examples of her own work in this genre."
In 1975 she founded the literary quarterly CVII (Contemporary Verse 2
Contemporary Verse 2
Contemporary Verse 2 is a Canadian magazine which focuses on the art of poetry as well as Contemporary poets and the issues. CV2 also publishes essays, interviews, articles and reviews regarding various poetic works...
).
"Livesay is best known as a strong, sensitive poet dealing as capably with public and political issues as with personal and intimate emotion and reflection. She was senior woman writer in Canada during active and productive years in the 1970s and 1980s."
Recognition
Livesay won the Governor General's Award, Canada's top poetry honour, twice: in 19441944 Governor General's Awards
In Canada, the 1944 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit were the eighth such awards. The awards in this period had no monetary prize and were just an honour for the authors.-Winners:*Fiction: Gwethalyn Graham, Earth and High Heaven....
for Day and Night, and in 1947
1947 Governor General's Awards
In Canada, the 1947 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit were the eleventh such awards. The awards in this period had no monetary prize but were an honour for the authors.-Winners:*Fiction: Gabrielle Roy, The Tin Flute....
for Poems for People.
The Royal Society of Canada
Royal Society of Canada
The Royal Society of Canada , may also operate under the more descriptive name RSC: The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada , is the oldest association of scientists and scholars in Canada...
elected her as a Fellow, and awarded her its Lorne Pierce Medal
Lorne Pierce Medal
The Lorne Pierce Medal is awarded every two years by the Royal Society of Canada to recognize achievement of special significance and conspicuous merit in imaginative or critical literature written in either English or French...
, in 1947.
Livesay also won the Queen's Canada Medal in 1977, and the Persons Case Award for the Status of Women in 1984.
In 1983 she was made a Doctor of Athabasca University
Athabasca University
Athabasca University is a Canadian university in Athabasca, Alberta. It is an accredited research institution which also offers distance education courses and programs. Courses are offered primarily in English with some French offerings. Each year, 32,000 students attend the university. It offers...
.
In 1987 she became an Officer of the Order of Canada
Order of Canada
The Order of Canada is a Canadian national order, admission into which is, within the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, the second highest honour for merit...
.
In 1992 she was awarded the Order of British Columbia
Order of British Columbia
The Order of British Columbia is a civilian honour for merit in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Instituted in 1989 by Lieutenant Governor David Lam, on the advice of the Cabinet under Premier Bill Vander Zalm, the order is administered by the Governor-in-Council and is intended to honour...
.
The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize
Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize
The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, established in 1986, is awarded annually to the best collection of poetry by a resident of British Columbia, Canada.One of the B.C. Book Prizes, the award was originally known as the B.C. Prize for Poetry...
is a category of the BC Book Prizes
BC Book Prizes
The BC Book Prizes, established in 1985, celebrate the achievements of British Columbia writers and publishers.The seven Prizes, plus The Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence, are presented annually at the Lieutenant Governor’s BC Book Prize Gala in April.The Prizes are administered...
that is awarded to authors of the best work of poetry in a given year, where those authors are British Columbia or Yukon residents, or have been for three of the last five years. Originally known as the B.C. Prize for Poetry, in 1989 it was named after Livesay.
Poetry
- Green Pitcher. Toronto: Macmillan, 19281928 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Russian poets Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky found OBERIU , an avant-garde grouping of Russian post-Futurist poets in the 1920s-1930s* American poets Charles Reznikoff, George Oppen and Louis...
. - Signpost. Toronto: Macmillan, 19321932 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*W. B. Yeats rents a house in Dublin....
. - Day and Night. Toronto: Ryerson, 19441944 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The first and second lines of Paul Verlaine's 1866 poem Chanson d'automne were broadcast by the Allies over Radio Londres this year as a message in code to the...
. - Poems for People. Toronto: Ryerson, 19471947 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Dorothy Parker divorces Alan Campbell for the first time....
. - Call My People Home. Toronto: Ryerson, 19501950 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*Charles Olson publishes his seminal essay, Projective Verse. In this, he called for a poetry of "open field" composition to replace traditional closed poetic forms with an improvised form that should...
. - New Poems. Toronto: Emblem Books, 19551955 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The Group, a British poetry movement, starts meeting in London with gatherings taking place once a week, on Friday evenings, at first at Hobsbaum's flat and later at the house of Edward Lucie-Smith...
. - Selected Poems, 1926-1956. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 19571957 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Howl obscenity trial in San Francisco brings significant attention to beat poetry, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg...
. - The Colour of God's Face. 19641964 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Among the many books of poetry published this year, Robert Lowell's For the Union Dead is greeted with particular acclaim...
. - The Unquiet Bed. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 19671967 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*Cecil Day-Lewis is selected as the new Poet Laureate of the UK....
. - The Documentaries. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 19681968 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The Belfast Group, a grouping of poets in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which was started in 1963 in poetry, lapsed in 1966 when founder Philip Hobsbaum left for Glasgow, is reconstituted this year by...
. - Plainsongs. Fredericton, NB: Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 19711971 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* This Magazine founded by Robert Grenier and Barrett Watten...
. - Plainsongs Extended. Fredericton, NB: Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 19711971 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* This Magazine founded by Robert Grenier and Barrett Watten...
- Disasters of the Sun. Burnaby, BC: Blackfish Press, 19711971 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* This Magazine founded by Robert Grenier and Barrett Watten...
. - Collected Poems: The Two Seasons. Toronto: Mcgraw-Hill Ryerson, 19721972 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* John Betjeman becomes Poet Laureate...
. - Nine Poems of Farewell. Windsor, ON: Black Moss Press, 19731973 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Canadian poet and author, Michael Ondaatje adapts his 1970 book of poetry, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, into a play which this year is first produced in Stratford, Ontario; it will appear in...
. - Ice Age. Erin, ON: Porcepic, 19751975 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* With the 1974, fall of the dictatorship in Greece, poets, authors and intellectuals who had fled after the coup of 1967 returned, and this year many began publishing in that country.* Brick Books, a...
. - Right Hand Left Hand. Erin, ON: Porcepic, 19771977 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January – James Dickey, composed a poem he read at new United States President Jimmy Carter’s inaugural gala although not at the inauguration itself.* British publication Gay News successfully...
. - The Raw Edges: Voices from Our Time. Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 19811981 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Jane Greer launched Plains Poetry Journal, an advance guard of the New Formalism movement....
. - The Phases of Love. Toronto: Coach House, 19831983 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The Frogmore Press founded by Andre Evans and Jeremy Page at the Frogmore tea-rooms in Folkestone...
. - Feeling the Worlds: New Poems. Fredericton: Goose Lane, 19841984 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*December 19 - Philip Larkin turns down the British Poet Laureateship, and Ted Hughes becomes Poet Laureate....
. - Beyond War: The Poetry. 19851985 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The term "New Formalism" was first used in the article "The Yuppie Poet" in the May 1985 issue of the AWP Newsletter in an attack on the poetry movement...
- The Self-Completing Tree: Selected Poems. Victoria: Porcepic, 19861986 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* New American Writing, an annual literary magazine concentrating on poetry, is founded in Chicago, Illinois....
. - Beginnings. Winnipeg: Peguis, 19881988 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The first annual The Best American Poetry volume is published this year....
. - The Woman I Am. Montreal: Guernica, 19911991 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Forward Poetry Prize created...
. - Archive for Our Times: Previously Uncollected and Unpublished Poems of Dorothy Livesay, Irvine Dean ed. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 19981998 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Samizdat poetry magazine founded in Chicago .* Skanky Possum poetry magazine founded in Austin, Texas....
.
Memoirs
- A Winnipeg Childhood (1973)
- Right hand left hand: a true life of the thirties (1977)
- Journey With My Selves: A Memoir, 1909-1963 (1991)
Except where otherwise noted, bibliographic information courtesy Brock University.
Discography
- Celebration: Famous Canadian Poets CD Canadian Poetry AssociationCanadian Poetry AssociationThe Canadian Poetry Association began as a grass-roots organization dedicated to promoting the reading, writing, publishing and preservation of poetry in Canada through the individual efforts of members; promoting communication among poets, publishers and the general public; encouraging leadership...
— 2001 ISBN 1-55253-031-0 (CD#2) (with Eli MandelEli MandelEli Mandel was a Canadian poet, editor of many Canadian anthologies, and literary academic.-Biography:...
)
External links
- Order of Canada Citation
- Dorothy Livesay's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia
- Archive for Our Times
- Dorothy Livesay fonds at Queen's University Archives
- Dorothy Livesay fonds at University of Victoria, Special Collections