Earle Birney (1904–1995)
Author of Turvey
About the Author
Earle Birney was born in Calgary, Alberta, and raised in rural Alberta and British Columbia. To earn money for college, Birney held a variety of jobs involving manual labor before enrolling at the University of British Columbia in 1922. Clearly, both his studies and his experience in the labor show more force gave to his poetry a wide variety of themes and situations. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1938, Birney accepted a position at the University of Toronto, where he worked until he joined the army in 1942. After serving as a personnel officer during the war, he obtained a professorship in medieval literature at the University of British Columbia, a post from which he retired in 1965. Birney's poetry has received recognition both in Canada and abroad. He is credited with introducing into Canadian poetry a metrics based on everyday speech rather than on artificial cadences. His visual poems are considered the forerunners of concrete poetry and his experiments with sound the forerunners of sound poetry in Canada. Since publishing his first book of poems, David and Other Poems, in 1942, Birney has published 15 more volumes of verse, two novels, and several books of critical writing. In The Cow Jumped over the Moon (1972), he describes about the composition of his own poetry. Earle Birney's works include Spreading Time: Remarks on Canadian Writing and Writers, 1904-1949, Last Makings: Poems. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, and One Muddy Hand: Selected Poems. Earle Birney passed away in September 1995 of a heart attack. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Works by Earle Birney
David, and other poems 3 copies
Strait of Anian: Selected Poems 3 copies
Twentieth century Canadian poetry, an anthology; — Editor — 3 copies
Selected Poems. 1940-1966 3 copies
Selected Poems 1940-1966 1 copy
Now is time 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Birney, Alfred Earle
- Birthdate
- 1904-05-13
- Date of death
- 1995-08-27
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- Canada (birth)
- Birthplace
- Calgary, Alberta, Canada
- Places of residence
- Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Creston, British Columbia, Canada
Banff, Alberta, Canada
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada - Education
- University of British Columbia
University of Toronto
University of California - Occupations
- Teacher of English (Toronto University ∙ 1936-1942)
poet
novelist - Organizations
- University of Toronto
- Awards and honors
- Order of Canada (Officer, 1970)
Lorne Pierce Medal (1953)
Members
Reviews
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 32
- Also by
- 4
- Members
- 216
- Popularity
- #103,224
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 1
- ISBNs
- 36
- Languages
- 1
And why does that stuff appeal so much to me, but when we make the big cross over into text, and it's all characteristic tics of the era like "&" and spelling Celts with a K, why is that so monumentally lame? I guess visual people see visual cliches.
Anyway, if you can ignore the fact that Birney's all Canada Counciling around the world feeling sad and mad and bad about nuclear subs and the like, and calling Vancouver a carcinoma (compared to Cleveland? Like, we're supposed to exist back east and walk really fast and say "Have I gotta deal for you!" but as soon as we come out west THAT's when we're killing the Indians? Colonial dilettante), and then all on about his friend's (Australian) aboriginal maid and "a bachelor's cuisine" and all this TV dinner junk - I guess you can't expect people to be better than they are, but the sixties literary counterculture was sure self-righteous based on not more than the slightest deviation from prime - Ifff, I say, you can ignore all that there's obvs some talent here. I like it when he gets weird, not all "let me evoke this place, let me describe landscape and end my poem "Perth, 1968," because that's what poets do I've heard, let me rail against a timid WASPy Canada that is already dead dead dead if only I could see it - nottt that, but a poem about the poles that hold up mannequins so they don't shudder when you brush them like the real boys. That is practically Max Cannon shit, right there. Like how peole in the sixties talked about sex - and Birney do too - like it was a physical creature separate from the people you're doing it with. Sex is in the room! like the Cohen poem about cancer, only sex is better and isn't it fine to be youngish and poetish and pissedoffish and openish to an understanding of life's beauties in an era where Sex can take solid form and a trip to Australia is still something. We're more civilized now, but also jaded, and going back a ways with a guide committed to the resolute urgency of now, which is to say then, is a minor history lesson and an invigorating splash with the cold water of our ancestry. Nice to be able to look back and see Birney and "Beowulf" in the same frame like that. Every moment is subtly different, and it's not that time repeats as farce (or at all) - it's that the tragedy is always the present and the farce is when you try to make the present the past.
NB Not the real cover - just a image that vaguely evokes the same sensations, because I don't have a camera these days to take a picture of the real one.… (more)