Earle Birney



Alfred Earle Birney, OC, FRSC (May 13, 1904 – September 3, 1995) was a Canadian poet and novelist, who twice won the Governor General's Award, Canada's top literary honor, for his poetry.

Life
Birney was born in Calgary, Alberta. Raised on a farm in Erickson (near Creston), British Columbia, his childhood was somewhat isolated. After working as a farm hand, a bank clerk, and a park ranger, Birney went on to college to study chemical engineering but graduated with a degree in English. He studied at the University of British Columbia, University of Toronto, University of California, Berkeley and University of London.

Through a brief and quickly annulled marriage to Sylvia Johnston, he was introduced to Trotskyism. In the 1930s he was an active Trotskyist in Canada and Britain, and was the leading figure in the Socialist Workers League but drifted away from the movement during World War II. During the war he served as a personnel officer in the Canadian Army (an experiences that he used in his 1949 novel, Turvey).

In 1946 Birney began teaching at the University of British Columbia, "where he founded and directed the first Canadian creative writing programme." His work led to the establishment of Canada's first Department of Creative Writing at UBC.

In 1995 Birney died in Toronto of a heart attack.

Fiction
Birney's World War II experiences inspired the creation of the title character of his comic military novel, Turvey (1949), a saga of one hapless soldier's struggle to get to 'the sharp end' of the fighting in Holland and Germany during 1944-45. The character of Turvey is a fascinating melange of country boy innocent, common sense utilitarian and town fool, and seems to have been fashioned as a foil to the eccentrically pseudo-sophisticated Canadian military life as illustrated in the novel. The book has been described as "uproariously ribald", winning the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. Turvey was a hit in Canada, selling 30,000 copies.

Birney published his second novel, Down the Long Table, a Marxist novel about the Great Depression, in 1955. It did not match the first novel's success.

Poetry
"Beginning with David and Other Poems (1942), Birney's poetry consistently explored the resources of language with passionate and playful curiosity." That first volume won Birney a Governor General's Award in 1942. The title work, "a poem about euthanasia, became quite a controversial poem, frequently anthologized and taught in Canadian literature courses." "A generation of Canadian schoolchildren and university students has grown up knowing the story," Al Purdy wrote in 1974. "At one time or another in the last 25 years, David has been required reading for high schools and universities in every Canadian province."

His second book of poetry, Now Is Time, won Birney a second Governor General's Award in 1945.

By the time of Birney's Trial of a City and other Verse in 1952, literary critic Northrop Frye was calling him one of "Canada's two leading poets" (the other being E.J. Pratt).

The Royal Society of Canada awarded Birney its Lorne Pierce Medal for literature in 1953.

Birney's typography became increasingly more experimental during the 1960s, and in his 1966 Selected Poems he revised many of his older poems, dropping punctuation and sentence structure. He explained his reasoning in the preface to that book:


 * Our intricate system of speckles between words evolved comparatively recently and merely to ensure that prose became beautifully unambiguous -- Instant Communication. For a while the poets went along with this, even though what they were shooting at was the art of indefinitely delayed communication -- Indefinite Ambiguity. Belatedly but willingly influenced by contemporary trends, I've come to surround my pauses with space rather than with typographical spatter, and to take advantage of the new printing processes to free my work occasionally from the tyranny of one-direction linotype.

In 1970 Birney was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

In 1974, Birney was still being called "one of the two best poets in Canada," this time by Al Purdy (the other being Irving Layton).

In 1982 Birney recorded Nexus & Earle Birney, a triple-album collaboration with avant-garde percussion group Nexus. The Canadian Encyclopedia sums up: "In long poems and lyrics, sight poems, sound poems and found poems, whether on the page or in his collection of recorded poems with the percussion ensemble NEXUS (1982), Birney demonstrated his deep commitment to making language have meaning in every possible and eloquent way."

Poetry

 * David, and other poems. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1942.
 * Now Is Time. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1945.
 * The Strait of Anian. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1948.
 * Trial of a City, and other verse. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1952.
 * Ice Cod Bell or Stone. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1962.
 * Near False Creek Mouth. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1964.
 * Two Poems. Halifax, 1964.
 * Selected Poems, 1940-1966. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1966.
 * Memory No Servant: Poems, 1947-1967. Trumansburg, NY: New Books, 1968..
 * The Poems of Earle Birney: A New Canadian Library selection. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart (New Canadian Library N06), 1969.
 * pnomes jukollages & other stunzas. Toronto: Ganglia Press, 1969.
 * Rag & Bone Shop. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1970.
 * The Bear on the Delhi Road: Selected poems. London: Chatto & Windus, 1973.
 * what's so big about GREEN?. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1973.
 * The Collected Poems of Earle Birney. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1975.
 * Alphabeings, and other seasyours. London, ON: Pikadilly Press, 1976.
 * The Rugging and the Moving Times: Poems new and uncollected, 1976. Coatsworth, ON: Black Moss Press, 1976.
 * Ghost in the Wheels: Selected poems. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1977.
 * Fall by Fury, and other makings. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1978.
 * The Mammoth Corridors. Okemos, MI: Stone Press, 1980.
 * Copernican Fix. Toronto: ECW Press, 1985.
 * Last Makings: Poems. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1991.
 * One Muddy Hand: Selected poems (edited by Sam Solecki). Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2006.
 * The Essential Earle Birney (selected by Jim Johnstone). Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill, 2014.

Fiction

 * Turvey: A military picaresque. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1949.
 * Down the Long Table. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1955.
 * Big Bird in the Bush: Selected stories and sketches. Oakville, ON: Mosaic Press, 1978.

Non-fiction

 * The Creative Writer. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1966.
 * The Cow Jumped Over the Moon: The writing and reading of poetry. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1972.
 * Essays on Chaucerian Irony. Toronto & Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 1985.
 * Spreading Time: Remarks on Canadian writing and writers, 1904-1949. Montreal: Vehicule Press, 1989.

Plays

 * The Damnation of Vancouver. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart (New Canadian Library N0111), 1977.
 * Words on Waves: Selected radio plays of Earle Birney. Kingston, ON: Quarry Press / CBC Enterprises, 1985.

Edited

 * Twentieth Century Canadian Poetry. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1953.
 * Four Parts Sand: New Canadian poets. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1972.

Except where noted, bibliographic information courtesy University of Toronto.

Discography

 * Nexus & Earle Birney. Norland, ON: Nexus, 1982.
 * Celebration: Famous Canadian Poets on CD (with Irving Layton). Canadian Poetry Association 2001. ISBN 1-55253-029-9

Filmography

 * Writer (4 titles)
 * 1995: Trawna Tuh Belvul
 * 1993: David (short) (poem)
 * 1983: Aloud (short) (poem)
 * 1970: Espolio (short) (poem)
 * Actor (1 title)
 * 1983: Aloud (short) Reciter
 * Self (3 titles)
 * 1993: View from the Typewriter; Himself
 * 1981: Earle Birney: Portrait of a Poet; Himself
 * 1965: Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen (documentary)(uncredited)

Except where noted, film information from Internet Movie Database.