Incubator escapee wiki

Gwendolyn MacEwen

Article Discussion

Template:Short description Template:Use Canadian English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox writer Gwendolyn Margaret MacEwen (1 September 1941 – 29 November 1987) was a Canadian poet and novelist.<ref name=nndb>"Gwendolyn MacEwen," NNDB.com Web, 24 April 2011.</ref> A "sophisticated, wide-ranging and thoughtful writer,"<ref name=canadian/> she published more than 20 books in her life. "A sense of magic and mystery from her own interests in the Gnostics, Ancient Egypt and magic itself, and from her wonderment at life and death, makes her writing unique.... She's still regarded by most as one of Canada's greatest poets."<ref name=young/>

LifeEdit

MacEwen was born in Toronto, Ontario.<ref name="UofT CanPoetry">"Gwendolyn MacEwen: Biography Template:Webarchive", Canadian Poetry Online, Web, 23 April 2011.</ref><ref name="gwendolynmacewen" /> Her mother, Elsie, spent much of her life as a patient in mental health institutions. Her father, Alick, suffered from alcoholism.<ref name="UofT CanPoetry Comments">"Gwendolyn MacEwen: Comments by Writers and Critics Template:Webarchive," Canadian Poetry Online, Web, 24 April 2011.</ref> Gwendolyn MacEwen grew up in the High Park area of the city, and attended Western Technical-Commercial School.<ref name=akimbo/>

MacEwan's first poem was published in The Canadian Forum when she was only 17, and she left school at 18 to pursue a writing career.<ref name="UofT CanPoetry"/> By 18 she had written her first novel, Julian the Magician.<ref name=young>John Oughton, "Gwendolyn MacEwen Template:Webarchive," Young Soul Rebels, YoungPoets.ca, Web, 24 April 2011.</ref>

"She was small and slight, with a round pale face, huge blue eyes usually rimmed in kohl (Type of eyeliner and cosmetic), and long dark straight hair."<ref name=young/>

Her first book of poetry, The Drunken Clock, was published in 1961 in Toronto,<ref name=canadian/> then the centre of a literary revival in Canada, encouraged by the editor Robert Weaver and influential teacher Northrop Frye. MacEwen was thus in touch with James Reaney, Margaret Atwood, Dennis Lee, etc. She married poet Milton Acorn, 19 years her senior, in 1962,<ref name="UofT CanPoetry Comments"/> although they divorced two years later.

She published over twenty books, in a variety of genres. She also wrote numerous radio docudramas for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), including a "much-admired radio drama", Terror and Erebus, in 1965 which featured music by Terry Rusling.Template:Citation needed

With her second husband, Greek musician Niko Tsingos, MacEwen opened a Toronto coffeehouse, The Trojan Horse, in 1972. She and Tsingos translated some of the poetry of contemporary Greek writer Yiannis Ritsos (published in her 1981 book Trojan Women).Template:Citation needed

She taught herself to read Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and French, and translated writers from each of those languages.Template:Citation needed In 1978 her translation of Euripides' drama The Trojan Women was first performed in Toronto.<ref name=drama>Michaela Milde, Review of Euripides' Trojan Women, Didaskalia I:1, Web, 22 April 2011.</ref>

File:Gwendolyn MacEwen sculpture, Gwendolyn MacEwen Park..jpg
Sculpture of MacEwen in Gwendolyn MacEwen Park

She served as writer in residence at the University of Western Ontario in 1985, and the University of Toronto in 1986 and 1987.<ref name="UofT CanPoetry"/>

During the last years of her life she was in a relationship with street writer Crad Kilodney (Lou Trifon).<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

MacEwen died in 1987,<ref name="UofT CanPoetry"/> at the age of 46, of health problems related to alcoholism.<ref name="UofT CanPoetry Comments"/> She is buried in Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery.<ref name=rest>"Our Poets at Rest: Gwendolyn MacEwen," Arc, 15 November 2010, Web, 22 April 2011.</ref>

WritingEdit

"A sophisticated, wide-ranging and thoughtful writer," says The Canadian Encyclopedia, MacEwen "displayed a commanding interest in magic and history as well as an elaborate and penetrating dexterity in her versecraft."<ref name=canadian>"MacEwen, Gwendolyn," Canadian Encyclopedia (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1988), 1264.</ref>

Her two novels – Julian the Magician, dealing with the ambiguous relationship between the hermetic philosophies of the early Renaissance and Christianity; and King of Egypt, King of Dreams, which imaginatively reconstructed the life and religious reformation of Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaton – blend fantasy and history.Template:Citation needed

RecognitionEdit

MacEwen won the Governor General's Award in 1969 for her poetry collection The Shadow Maker.<ref name=canadian/> She was awarded a second Governor General's Award posthumously in 1987 for Afterworlds.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Other awards and prizes MacEwen won include the CBC New Canadian Writing Contest for poetry in 1965; the A.J.M. Smith Poetry Award in 1973; the Borestone Mountain Poetry Award in 1983; the CBC Literary Competition, for short story in 1983; and the Du Maurier Awards, gold and silver for poetry, in 1983.<ref name=awards>"Gendolyn MacEwen: Awards and Honours Template:Webarchive," Canadian Poetry Online, 24 April 2011.</ref>

Her writing has been translated into many languages including Chinese, French, German, and Italian.<ref name=akimbo/>

Rosemary Sullivan published a biography of MacEwen, Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen, in 1995, which itself won the Governor General's Award, for non-fiction in 1995.<ref name="UofT CanPoetry"/>

Fictional tributes to MacEwen have been published by Margaret Atwood (the short story "Isis in Darkness"), and Lorne S. Jones (the novel Mighty Oaks).

A one-woman play by Linda Griffiths, Alien Creature: A Visitation from Gwendolyn MacEwen, won the Dora Mavor Moore Award and the Chalmers Award in 2000.<ref name=griffiths>"Alien Creature: A Visitation from Gwendolyn MacEwen," LindaGriffiths.ca, Web, 24 April 2011.</ref>

Her book of poems written in 1969 called The Shadow-Maker was set to music by Dutch/Canadian composer Rudi Martinus van Dijk in 1977. As a result, one of the highlights of the 1978-79 season of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra included the world premiere of Van Dijk's The Shadow-Maker under the direction of Mario Bernardi and featuring Canadian baritone Victor Braun. It was performed at Massey Hall in Toronto, October 1978. Gwendolyn MacEwan attended the Massey Hall performances and was deeply struck by the music's setting of her work. The biographer of MacEwan, Rosemary Sullivan, quotes the composer Van Dijk in her book: "What attracted me to the poetry was the substance behind the subject matter - namely the dream. The poetry attempts, it seems to me, to lift the veil of 'Maya' (illusion). Is our sensuous experience reality or illusion? MacEwan has something in common with Strindberg and D.H. Lawrence, as an explorer of these dark corners of the soul that most of us shut out conveniently, in order to create a safe but illusory reality." As Dutch musicologist Maarten Brandt wrote, "The bold and expressionistic side of Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg is found in van Dijk’s setting of Gwendolyn MacEwan's The Shadow-Maker for baritone and large orchestra, written in 1977. Yet, as in every single composition by van Dijk, tonal references are present here as well, demonstrating a kinship not only with Alban Berg, but also with Benjamin Britten, Hans Werner Henze, Michael Tippett and Frank Martin; all of them composers who have not simply exploited the resources available to them, but rather were grateful ‘inhabitants’ of a rich and saturated musical landscape."

Twenty years later a documentary film by Brenda Longfellow, Shadow Maker: Gwendolyn MacEwen, Poet, was made in 1998 and won the Genie Award for Best Short Documentary.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Gwendolyn MacEwen ParketteEdit

Template:Infobox park The former Walmer Road Parkette, in The Annex neighbourhood of Toronto, was renamed Gwendolyn MacEwen Parkette in her honor in 1994.

On 9 September 2006, a bronze bust of MacEwen by her friend, sculptor John McCombe Reynolds, was unveiled in the parkette.<ref name=akimbo>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The park had been a grassy traffic circle in the middle of Walmer Road<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> at Lowther Avenue, but a $300,000 makeover in 2010, expanded the park and narrowed the surrounding roads.<ref name=ysm>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The unique redesigned greenspace reopened 21 July 2010, and writer Claudia Dey read one of MacEwen's poems.<ref name=chbooks>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Template:Commons category-inline

PublicationsEdit

PoetryEdit

  • Selah. Toronto: Aleph Press, 1961.
  • The Drunken Clock. Toronto: Aleph Press, 1961.
  • The Rising Fire. Toronto: Contact Press, 1963.
  • Terror and Erebus (1965)
  • A Breakfast for Barbarians<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1966.

FictionEdit

Non-fictionEdit

  • Mermaids and Ikons: A Greek Summer. Toronto: House of Anansi, 1978. Template:ISBN

Children's booksEdit

DramaEdit

  • Trojan Women after the play by Euripides (includes poems Helen and Oristos by Yannis Ritsos, translated by MacEwen and Niko Tsingos). Toronto: Exile Editions. 2009 [1994, 1981].Template:Citation needed 978-1-55096-123-2
  • The Birds after the play by Aristophanes. Toronto: Exile Editions. 1993 [1983].Template:Citation needed 978-1-55096-065-5

Except where noted, bibliographic information courtesy of Brock University.<ref name=gwendolynmacewen>"Gwendolyn MacEwen," Canadian Women Poets, BrockU.ca, Web, 22 April 2001.</ref>

DiscographyEdit

See alsoEdit

Template:Portal

ReferencesEdit

BooksEdit

  • Jan Bartley. Invocations: the poetry and prose of Gwendolyn MacEwen. 1983.
  • Mª Luz González-Rodríguez. Bajo el Signo del Dios Mercurio: dicotomía del ser y fusión de los opuestos en Gwendolyn MacEwen. Ph. Thesis. Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana, Universidad de La Laguna, 2003, Template:ISBN. http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/9951
  • Rosemary Sullivan. Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1995.
  • Linda Weiland: «Unravelling». C.G. Jungs Individuations- und Archetypenlehre im Werk Gwendolyn MacEwens. Peter Lang, Berne 2013 Template:ISBN (In German)

ArticlesEdit

  • Atwood, Margaret. "MacEwen's Muse." Canadian Literature 45 (1970): 24–32.
  • Barrett, Elizabeth. "A Tour de Force." Evidence 8 (1964): 140–143.
  • Davey, Frank. "Gwendolyn MacEwen: The Secret of Alchemy." Open Letter (second series) 4 (1973): 5–23.
  • Di Michele, Mary. "Gwendolyn MacEwen: 1941-1987." Books in Canada 17.1 (1988): 6.
  • Eso, David. "Perfect Mismatch: Gwendolyn MacEwen and the Flat Earth Society." Studies in Canadian Literature 44.2 (2019): 211–231.
  • Gerry, Thomas M. "Green Yet Free of Seasons: Gwendolyn MacEwen and the Mystical Tradition of Canadian Poetry." Studies in Canadian Literature 16.2 (1991/1992): 147–161.
  • Gillam, Robyn. "The Gaze of a Stranger: Gwendolyn MacEwen's Hieratic Eye." Paragraph 13.2 (1991): 10–13.
  • Godfrey, Dave. "Figments of a Northern Mind." Tamarack Review 31 (1964): 90–91.
  • González-Rodríguez, Mª Luz. "Caronte y la Luna: arquetipos míticos en The Armies of the Moon de Gwendolyn MacEwen." Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 48 (2004): 179–192.
  • González-Rodríguez, Mª Luz. "El camino arquetípico del héroe: el Mago y el Sumo Sacerdote en las novelas de Gwendolyn MacEwen." Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 39 (1999): 307–321.
  • González-Rodríguez, Mª Luz. "The Presence of Science in Gwendolyn MacEwen's Cosmic Vision: An Ephemeral Creation of Order out of Chaos." Exchanges between Literature and Science from the 1800s to the 2000s. Converging Realms. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017, pp. 90–103. Template:ISBN.
  • Gose, E.B. "They Shall Have Arcana." Canadian Literature 21 (1964): 36–45.
  • Harding Russell, Gillian. "Gwendolyn MacEwen's 'The Nine Arcana of the Kings' as Creative Myth and Paradigm." English Studies in Canada 15.2 (1988): 204–217.
  • Harding Russell, Gillian. "Iconic Mythopoeia in MacEwen's The T.E. Lawrence Poems." Studies in Canadian Literature 9.1 (1984): 95–107.
  • Helwig, Maggie. "The Shadowmaker Confirmed the Poet in Me." Catholic New Times 21.19 (1997): 13,14.
  • Jones, D.G. "Language of Our Time." Canadian Literature 29 (1966): 67–69.
  • Kelly, M. T. "Thoughts From a Friend (Profile of Gwendolyn MacEwen)." Canadian Woman Studies 9.2 (1988): 89.
  • Kemp, Penn. "A Musing I Would Like to have Shared with Gwendolyn MacEwen." Tessera 5 (1988): 49–57.
  • "MacEwen Possessed a Talent that was Fragile, Precocious." Globe and Mail (Metro Edition) 2 December 1987: A10, C5.
  • Marshall, Joyce. "Remembering Gwendolyn MacEwen." Brick 45 (1993): 61–65.
  • Marshall, Tom. "Several Takes on Gwendolyn MacEwen." Quarry 38.1 (1989): 76–83.
  • "Obituary: Author." Gwendolyn MacEwen. Quill and Quire 54.3 (1988): 62.
  • Potvin, Elisabeth. "Gwendolyn MacEwen and Female Spiritual Desire." Canadian Poetry 28 (1991): 18–39.
  • Purdy, Al. "Death in the Family." Saturday Night 103.5 (1988): 65–66.
  • Ringrose, Christopher. "Vision Enveloped in Night." Canadian Literature 53 (1972): 102–104.
  • Sowton, Ian. "To Improvise an Eden." Edge 2 (1964): 119–124.
  • Tsingos, Nikolas. "Poems for Gwendolyn MacEwen." Descant 24.4 (1993/ 1994): 41.
  • Warwick, Ellen D. "To Seek a Single Symmetry." Canadian Literature 71 (1976): 21–34.
  • Wilkinson, Shelagh. "Gwendolyn MacEwen's Trojan Women: Old Myth into New Life." Canadian Woman Studies 8.3 (1987): 81–83.
  • Wood, Brent. "From The Rising Fire to Afterworlds: The Visionary Circle in the Poetry of Gwendolyn MacEwen." Canadian Poetry 47 (2000): 40–69.

NotesEdit

Template:Reflist

External linksEdit

Template:Archival records Template:Sister project

  • {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}

|CitationClass=web }}

  • {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}

  • {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}

Template:Governor General's English poetry Template:Pat Lowther Award Template:Authority control

Retrieved from "https://zalansite.site/mediawiki/index.php?title=Gwendolyn_MacEwen&oldid=569647"