Did you read all these books?

Did you read all these books?

“ I began to collect books when I started writing poetry at the age of 16.  I was reading the City Lights Books from San Francisco: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti et.al. – and various other books I’d get from Evelyn De Mille’s independent bookshop on First Street and 8th Avenue in the centre of downtown Calgary. I was inspired to write after hearing T.S. Eliot read on CBC radio.  I had no clue about what he was saying, but the rhythm and seriousness captured me and I brashly thought: I can do this too! Apropos of Eliot’s formal and religious tone, I was reading Norman Mailer’s Deaths for the Ladies Man (and Other Disasters) – quick, quirky, funny poems as reactions pricking at the social world. I can do this too!  My other important reading source was the Safeway Dictionary that came in cheap installments with grocery purchases (a dollar a section, I think). My mom would bring the various sections (grouped ABC...DEF...etc) home with our groceries, and I would then slot them into its huge fake leather covered three ring binder that would grow and expand over the months – finally to XYZ and its full bulk of six or eight inches. I would open the dictionary randomly, read it daily with fascination - this world of words and books to become a prime source for a young poet starting out in the craft so long to learne.  I carried these early books with me in boxes, suitcases, and trunks from Calgary, to Montréal, Vancouver and eventually prince George.  They still take a big space on my shelves - books to study and reread with pleasure these 58 years later. When I got to prince George in 1969 to teach at The College of New Caledonia, Joy and I bought an old heritage home that gave us a sense of stability and permanence: the roving university and one bedroom apartment days were over.  I now had  a job, two kids on the way (Claire and Jesse),  and these 1420 Gorse Street rooms to fill with more books. (…)”