P.K. Page

Patricia Kathleen Page, CC, OBC, FRSC (November 23, 1916 - January 14, 2010), commonly known as P.K. Page, was a Canadian poet. She was the author of over 30 published books: of poetry, fiction, travel diaries, essays, children's books, and an autobiography.

By special resolution of the United Nations, in 2001 Page's poem "Planet Earth" was read simultaneously in New York, the Antarctic, and the South Pacific to celebrate the International Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations.

She was also known as a visual artist, who exhibited her work as P.K. Irwin at a number of venues in and out of Canada. Her works are in permanent collections of National Gallery of Canada and Art Gallery of Ontario.

Life
P.K. Page was born in Swanage, Dorset, England and moved with her family to Canada in 1919. Page's parents moved her to Red Deer, Alberta in 1919, when she was only 3, and later to Calgary and Winnipeg. Page said her parents were creative, encouraging non-conformists who loved the arts, recited poetry and read to her. She credited her early interest in poetry to the rhythms she unconsciously imbibed as a child. A year in England when she was 17 opened her eyes to galleries, ballets and concerts.

Page "later moved to St. John, New Brunswick, "where she worked as a shop assistant and radio actress during the late 1930s."

In 1941 Page moved to Montreal and came into contact with the Montreal Group of poets, which included A.M. Klein and F.R. Scott.

She became a founding member of Patrick Anderson's Preview magazine in 1942, and of its successor, Northern Review, in 1945. Some of her poetry appeared in the modernist anthology, Unit of Five, in 1944, along with poems by Louis Dudek, Ronald Hambleton, Raymond Souster, and James Wreford.

In 1944 she published a romantic novel, The Sun and the Moon, under the pseudonym Judith Cape. (The novel was reprinted in 1973, along with some of her short stories from the 1940s, as The Sun and the Moon and Other Fictions.)

Later she became a scriptwriter at Canada's National Film Board, where she met W. Arthur Irwin, a former editor of Maclean's magazine, whom she married in 1950. Following her marriage, "Page devoted her time to writing the poetry collection The Metal and the Flower (1954), for which she received a Governor General's Award."

Page travelled with her husband on his diplomatic postings to Australia, Brazil, Mexico and Guatemala. In Brazil and Mexico, not hearing the rhythms of spoken English, she said, "I had a long dry spell, so I started painting and keeping a journal," published as Brazilian Journal and illustrated with her own paintings. She began writing poetry again following her return to Canada in the mid 1960s.

Her visual art, under her married name as P. K. Irwin, is in galleries and private collections, including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

She spent the last years of her life in Victoria, British Columbia.

Writing
Page's career can be divided into two periods: the first being the 1940s and 1950s, and the second starting with her return to Canada in the 1960s.

Her early poems "were inward-looking, imaginary biographies," which "rely heavily on suggestive imagery and the detailed depiction of concrete situations to express social concerns and transcendental themes ... such poems as 'The Stenographers' and 'The Landlady' focus on isolated individuals who futilely search for meaning and a sense of belonging. 'Photos of a Salt Mine' considered one of Page's best early poems, examines how art both conceals and reveals reality"

Northrop Frye wrote about her 1954 volume, The Metal and the Flower, that "if there is anything such as 'pure poetry,' this must be it: a lively mind seizing on almost any experience and turning it into witty verse.... Miss Page's work has a competent elegance about it that makes even the undistinguished poems still satisfying to look at."

Her later works showed "a new austerity in form and a reduction in the number of images presented." As well, there is a difference in type of image: "her later poems are often set abroad and suggest a path of liberation for the isolated, alienated individual.... Such poems as 'Bark Drawing' and 'Cook's Mountains' contain images outside the self as does 'Cry Ararat!' - a poem concerning the reconciliation of internal and external worlds, in which Mount Ararat symbolizes a place of rest [in] between." Critic George Woodcock has said that Page's "most recent poems are more sharply and intensely visual than ever in their sensuous evocation of shape and color and space; their imagery takes us magically beyond any ordinary seeing into a realm of imagining in which the normal world is shaken like a vast kaleidoscope and revealed in unexpected and luminous relationships."

Recognition
Page won the Governor General's Award in 1954 for The Metal and the Flower, and the Canadian Authors Association Award in 1985 for The Glass Air.

In 1977 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion of the Order in 1998.

B.C. Lt. Gov. Iona Campagnolo awarded her the first Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence in 2004, calling Page "a true Renaissance woman."

Page's poems have been translated into other languages. A symposium on her work, "Extraordinary Presence: The Worlds of P.K. Page", was held in 2002 at Trent University.

In 2006, she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She held honorary degrees from University of Victoria (1985), University of Calgary (1989), University of Guelph (1990), Simon Fraser University (1990), University of Toronto (1998), University of Winnipeg (2001), Trent University (2004) and the University of British Columbia (2005).

Page was a "true Canadian literary and artistic icon," according to B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell. "As an author, poet, teacher, scriptwriter and painter, P. K. Page was an extraordinary and varied force in promoting and developing Canadian culture. Her efforts helped to set the stage for decades of cultural growth in our nation.... It is the passion of people like Patricia that forged our country's cultural and artistic identity."

Her last collection, Coal and Roses, was posthumously shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize.

The National Film Board of Canada dedicated a 38-minute documentary to her career (Still Waters, directed by Donald Winkler).

P.K. Page Founders' Award for Poetry
A $1,000 poetry prize is awarded annually by the Malahat Review in Page's name. Its editor, Marilyn Bowering, said, "[Her] accomplishments have been an inspiration to several generations of writers," and declared that the award, called the P.K. Page Founders' Award for Poetry, would formalize Page's "long association with the Malahat Review."

Poetry

 * Unit of five: Louis Dudek, Ronald Hambleton, P.K. Page, Raymond Souster, James Wreford. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1944.
 * As ten, as twenty. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1946.
 * The Metal and the Flower. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1954.
 * Cook's Mountains – 1967
 * Cry Ararat!: poems new and selected. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1967.
 * P.K. Page: Poems Selected and New. Toronto: Anansi, 1974. ISBN 0887841325
 * Planes: poems. Toronto: Seripress, 1975 (with artist Doyle, Mike, 1928-). (limited edition of 50 numbered copies, signed by author and artist)
 * Five Poems, Toronto: League of Canadian Poets, 1980.
 * Evening Dance of the Grey Flies. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1981. ISBN 0195403819
 * The Glass Air: poems selected and new. Toronto: Oxford University Press, (1985, 1991). ISBN 0195405064, ISBN 0195408403.
 * Two Poems. Comox, B.C.: Nemo Press. 1988. (limited edition of 150 copies)
 * Hologram: a Book of Glosas. London, Ont.: Brick Books, 1994. ISBN 0919626726 (contains poems: Hologram, The Gold Sun, Autumn, Poor Bird, Inebriate, In Memoriam, Presences, Planet Earth, Love's Pavilion, Alone, A Bagatelle, Exile, The Answer, The End)
 * The Hidden Room, Vol. 1, Erin, Ont.: The Porcupine's Quill, 1997. ISBN 088984190X.
 * The Hidden Room, Vol. 2, Erin, Ont.: The Porcupine's Quill, 1997. ISBN 0889841934
 * And Once More Saw the Stars – 2001
 * A Kind of Fiction – 2001
 * Schizophrenic
 * This Heavy Craft'
 * Planet earth: poems selected and new. Edited, and with an introduction by Eric Ormsby. Erin, Ont. : Porcupine's Quill, 2002.
 * Hand Luggage – 2006
 * Coal and Roses – 2009 (shortlisted for the 2010 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize)
 * The Golden Lilies, Poems by PK Page – 2009
 * Cullen. Outlaw Editions, 2009.

Prose

 * The Sun and the Moon [as Judith Cape] – 1944
 * The Sun and the Moon and Other Fictions. Toronto: Anansi, 1973. ISBN 0887843271 (contents: The Sun and the Moon, The Neighbour, The Green Bird, The Woman, The Lord's Plan, Miracles, As One Remembers a Dream, George, The Glass Box)
 * To Say the Least: Canadian Poets from A to Z. Toronto: Press Porcepic, 1979. ISBN 0888781741
 * Brazilian Journal Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1988. ISBN 0886191661.

Children's books

 * A Flask of Sea Water Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1989 (illustrated by Gal, Laszlo). ISBN 0195407040
 * The Travelling Musicians. Toronto: Kids Can Press, 1991 (illustrated by Denton, Kady MacDonald). ISBN 1550740393 (adaptation of J. Grimm's (1785-1863) The musicians of Bremen (Bremer Stadtmusikanten))
 * The Goat that Flew Victoria, B.C.: Beach Holme, 1994 (illustrated by Gal, Marika). ISBN 0888783345 (sequel to A Flask of Sea Water)
 * A Grain of Sand (2003)
 * A Brazilian Alphabet for the Young Reader (2005)
 * Jake, the Baker, Makes a Cake (2008)
 * The Old Woman and the Hen (2008)
 * There Once Was a Camel (2008)
 * The Sky Tree Oolichon Books, 2009.

Edited

 * To Say the Least: Canadian Poets from A to Z (1981)