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Dorothy Livesay Remembered (1996)
Friends and family gathered on January 25th to honour the memory of Dorothy ('Dee') Livesay, the social activist who was designated by George Woodcock in 1980 as "the best poet writing in Canada today, and for the past two decades as well."; The memorial gathering was held at the Greater Victoria Art Gallery in a room filled with the paintings of Emily Carr. The Three Emilys, which Livesay wrote when she was a young wife and mother, was often selected by anthologists over Livesay's later poems. In it, she evoked her literary foremothers - Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte and Emily Carr - all solitary figures. Comparing herself to them she wrote, "I yet possess another kingdom, barred / To them, these three, this Emily. / I move as mother in a frame, / My arteries / Flow the immemorial way / Towards the child, the man.";
The program, presided over by Rev. Felix Lion, provided ample testimony to Livesay's possession of that other "kingdom."; Three of her grandsons offered loving tributes, one reading from the collection Green Pitcher which Livesay published at age 19, another performing one of her poems which he had set to music, and a third reading his own poem. Her granddaughter, Martha, was absent because she was travelling in the Ukraine - a detail with its own resonance since Livesay's mother was, besides being a poet and journalist, an important translator of Ukrainian literature. In her instructions for a memorial service, Livesay specified that a woman could read a positive poem of hers such as "Inter Rim"; - which Mona Fertig did. Linda Rogers read the much anthologized "Bartok and the Geranium";. The audience stirred noticeably when Milnor Alexander, of the Voice of Women, stepped to the microphone to read the familiar lines from Livesay's signature poem: 'The woman I am / is not what you see.'
Peter Macnair dispelled any undue solemnity with his humorous recollections of family life. He spoke of his mother as an 'interesting' cook whose presentations tasted better than they looked. The crusts of her lemon meringue pies were forgettable, the meringue didn't rise, but the flavour was delicious. The fact that January 25th was Robert Burns' Day reminded him of the family's adventures and misadventures in cooking haggis, a tradition observed by his Glaswegian father. While critics were inclined to say that family obligations got in the way of his mother's writing, Macnair thought he and his sister helped it. From the age of ten, he did the family laundry and hung it out to dry - a source of glee to the neighborhood girls. He noted wryly that he aired only his mother's clean linen. On a more serious note, Peter Macnair recalled his mother's political conscience - expressed not only in writing but in involvement. He referred to her documentary poem "Call My People Home"; about the internment of Japanese Canadians, noting that after the war their home was a refuge for Japanese Canadians. He also remembered his mother raising hell at a local bank when a young First Nations woman was turned down after she applied for a job. Macnair recalled Dorothy Livesay's staunch support of other poets and thanked P.K. Page for allowing her poem "But We Rhyme in Heaven"; to be printed in the program. It was, he said, a reminder that Dee had an acerbic dimension. The poem commemorated the 'tangles and snares' that so often sprang up between the two poets when they met, in spite of their admiration for each other.
When the throng spilled out and milled around the tea table, memories flowed freely. The older generation of poets - represented by Miriam Waddington, P.K. Page and Phyllis Webb -remembered Livesay for her passionate commitment to the causes she championed and as a fierce adversary in arguments. "We had a prickly relationship that went on for 100 years,"; said P.K.Page. "She was such a passionate person. I felt she was an extreme caricature of me - I was left wing; she was a Communist. I was a feminist; she was more so. I would never go as far as she thought I should.";
Robert Kroetsch, who knew Livesay when she was writer in residence in Winnipeg, recalled that she clinched an argument by pounding him on the chest with both fists. "She won that one,"; he said. Daphne Marlatt, who met Livesay in the early '60s, was astonished when Dee proceeded to instruct her on how she should and shouldn't read her own poetry. "For me she was courage and love,"; said Linda Rogers. "I loved the way Dorothy kicked ass,"; said Cathy Ford, B.C. representative for the League of Canadian Poets, of which Livesay was a founding member. Mona Fertig, who was eighteen when she met Livesay, said, "I think of her as the grandmother of Canadian poetry."; At the open microphone session, many spoke of Livesay as a mentor and read poems they had written for and about her. Fertig, noting the price to be paid by all trailblazers, read "All Heroes Must Walk Alone"; which she had composed the night before. Cathy Ford passed around a basket containing copies of a poem she had written. Rhonda Batchelor Lillard read her poem "For Dorothy on the Way to Oz.";
The crowd of more than 200 people included publishers, booksellers, writers, Aboriginal Canadians, Japanese Canadians, the congregation of her Unitarian church and members of various political organizations. As the crowd dispersed, many hurrying to catch the ferries back to Saltspring, Galiano and Vancouver, it was hard to single out one unified impression of Dorothy Livesay. Her life had almost spanned the twentieth century. She was shaped by most of its crucial events. Her life, at the end of the day, seemed a decisive refutation of early discouragement she felt when she had compared herself with the reclusive Emilys: "And so the whole that I possess / Is still much less- / They move triumphant through my head: / I am the one / Uncomforted.";
[BCBW 1997]
The program, presided over by Rev. Felix Lion, provided ample testimony to Livesay's possession of that other "kingdom."; Three of her grandsons offered loving tributes, one reading from the collection Green Pitcher which Livesay published at age 19, another performing one of her poems which he had set to music, and a third reading his own poem. Her granddaughter, Martha, was absent because she was travelling in the Ukraine - a detail with its own resonance since Livesay's mother was, besides being a poet and journalist, an important translator of Ukrainian literature. In her instructions for a memorial service, Livesay specified that a woman could read a positive poem of hers such as "Inter Rim"; - which Mona Fertig did. Linda Rogers read the much anthologized "Bartok and the Geranium";. The audience stirred noticeably when Milnor Alexander, of the Voice of Women, stepped to the microphone to read the familiar lines from Livesay's signature poem: 'The woman I am / is not what you see.'
Peter Macnair dispelled any undue solemnity with his humorous recollections of family life. He spoke of his mother as an 'interesting' cook whose presentations tasted better than they looked. The crusts of her lemon meringue pies were forgettable, the meringue didn't rise, but the flavour was delicious. The fact that January 25th was Robert Burns' Day reminded him of the family's adventures and misadventures in cooking haggis, a tradition observed by his Glaswegian father. While critics were inclined to say that family obligations got in the way of his mother's writing, Macnair thought he and his sister helped it. From the age of ten, he did the family laundry and hung it out to dry - a source of glee to the neighborhood girls. He noted wryly that he aired only his mother's clean linen. On a more serious note, Peter Macnair recalled his mother's political conscience - expressed not only in writing but in involvement. He referred to her documentary poem "Call My People Home"; about the internment of Japanese Canadians, noting that after the war their home was a refuge for Japanese Canadians. He also remembered his mother raising hell at a local bank when a young First Nations woman was turned down after she applied for a job. Macnair recalled Dorothy Livesay's staunch support of other poets and thanked P.K. Page for allowing her poem "But We Rhyme in Heaven"; to be printed in the program. It was, he said, a reminder that Dee had an acerbic dimension. The poem commemorated the 'tangles and snares' that so often sprang up between the two poets when they met, in spite of their admiration for each other.
When the throng spilled out and milled around the tea table, memories flowed freely. The older generation of poets - represented by Miriam Waddington, P.K. Page and Phyllis Webb -remembered Livesay for her passionate commitment to the causes she championed and as a fierce adversary in arguments. "We had a prickly relationship that went on for 100 years,"; said P.K.Page. "She was such a passionate person. I felt she was an extreme caricature of me - I was left wing; she was a Communist. I was a feminist; she was more so. I would never go as far as she thought I should.";
Robert Kroetsch, who knew Livesay when she was writer in residence in Winnipeg, recalled that she clinched an argument by pounding him on the chest with both fists. "She won that one,"; he said. Daphne Marlatt, who met Livesay in the early '60s, was astonished when Dee proceeded to instruct her on how she should and shouldn't read her own poetry. "For me she was courage and love,"; said Linda Rogers. "I loved the way Dorothy kicked ass,"; said Cathy Ford, B.C. representative for the League of Canadian Poets, of which Livesay was a founding member. Mona Fertig, who was eighteen when she met Livesay, said, "I think of her as the grandmother of Canadian poetry."; At the open microphone session, many spoke of Livesay as a mentor and read poems they had written for and about her. Fertig, noting the price to be paid by all trailblazers, read "All Heroes Must Walk Alone"; which she had composed the night before. Cathy Ford passed around a basket containing copies of a poem she had written. Rhonda Batchelor Lillard read her poem "For Dorothy on the Way to Oz.";
The crowd of more than 200 people included publishers, booksellers, writers, Aboriginal Canadians, Japanese Canadians, the congregation of her Unitarian church and members of various political organizations. As the crowd dispersed, many hurrying to catch the ferries back to Saltspring, Galiano and Vancouver, it was hard to single out one unified impression of Dorothy Livesay. Her life had almost spanned the twentieth century. She was shaped by most of its crucial events. Her life, at the end of the day, seemed a decisive refutation of early discouragement she felt when she had compared herself with the reclusive Emilys: "And so the whole that I possess / Is still much less- / They move triumphant through my head: / I am the one / Uncomforted.";
[BCBW 1997]
Submitted on August 12, 2003 in By David.
