Irving Layton

Irving Layton OC (March 12, 1912 – January 4, 2006) was a Canadian poet.

Biography

Born Israel Pincu Lazarovitch in Tirgul Neamt, a small village in Romania, to Jewish parents, his family emigrated to Montreal, Quebec in 1913 and was forced to live in the poor St. Urbain Street neighborhood, later made famous by Mordecai Richler's novels. There Layton and his family faced daily struggles with, among others, the Montreal French Canadians, who were uncomfortable with the growing numbers of Jewish newcomers. Layton graduated from Alexandra Elementary School and attended Baron Byng High School, where his life was changed becasue he was introduced to such poets as Alfred Lord Tennyson, Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelly; the novelists Jane Austen and George Eliot; the essayists Francis Bacon, Oliver Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson, and Jonathan Swift; and also William Shakespeare and Charles Darwin. He became very interested in politics and social theory and began reading Karl Marx and Nietzsche and also became politically active in socialist politics --so much so that he became a threat to the admnistration of the Baron Byng High School and was asked to leave before graduating. In light of his limited educational opportunities due to the fact that he did not graduate, and also due to his limited finances, he enrolled in Macdonald College in 1934 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture.

While in college, he was well known in artistic circles for his anti-bourgeois attitudes and his criticisms of politics. He quickly found that his true interest was poetry, and so he pursued a career as a poet and became friends with the emerging young poets of his day, including fellow Canadian poets John Sutherland, Raymond Souster, and Louis Dudek. In the 1940s, Layton and his fellow Canadian poets rejected the older generation of poets, including Northrop Frye, and their efforts helped define the tone of the post-war generation poets in Canada. Essentially, they argued that modern poetry should set its own style, independent of British styles and influences, and should reflect the social realities of the day.

In 1936, Layton met Faye Lynch, whom he married in 1938. When Layton graduated from MacDonald College in 1939, he moved with Faye to Halifax where Layton worked odd jobs, including working as a Fuller Brush Man. Soon disenchanted with his life, Layton decided, one evening, to return to Montreal. He began teaching English to recent immigrants to make ends meet and continued for many years. Indecisive about his future and enraged by Hitler's violence toward Jews and destruction of European culture, Layton enlisted in the Canadian army in 1942. While serving as a Brigade Commander at Petawawa, Layton met Betty Sutherland, an accomplished painter (and later poet). Layton soon after divorced Faye and married Betty. They had two children together: Maxwell Rubin (1946) and Naomi Parker (1950). 1943, Layton was given an honorable discharge from the army and returned to Montreal for good.

Layton eventually became a teacher, first at a Montreal Jewish High School, and then as a political science professor at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) and as a tenured professor of English at York University. Layton had become a strong socialist while at high school and joined the Young People's Socialist League. Later, he became active in the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. Because of this activity he was blacklisted and banned from entering the United States for the next two decades.

Layton's activism and poetry had made him an internationally known celebrity by the 1950s and he was a fixture on early Canadian television after the publication of a collection of poems called The Black Huntsmen. He became a staple on the CBC televised debating program "Fighting Words," where he earned a reputation as a formidable debater.

In 1946, after receiving his M.A. in political science with a thesis on Harold Laski, Layton considered teaching as a career. In 1949, Layton began teaching English, history, and political science at the Jewish parochial high school, Herzliah. He was an influential teacher and many of his students became poets, writers, and artists. Among his students were poet/songwriter Leonard Cohen and television magnate Moses Znaimer. Layton would continue to teach for the greater part of his life: as a teacher of modern English and American poetry at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) and as a tenured professor at York University in the 1970s, as well as delivering many lectures and readings throughout Canada. Layton would pursue his Ph.D. in 1948 though he would abandon it due to the demands of his already hectic professional life.

In the late 1950s, at the height of his career, friends introduced Layton to Aviva Cantor, and Layton later made her his third wife. The two had a son, David, in 1964. Over the next few years, Layton's demanding schedule became the dominating force in his life and resulted in Layton's and Aviva's decision to separate.

In the late 1970s, Layton befriended Harriet Bernstein, once a student of his and, after a whirlwind courtship, they married and in 1981 a daughter, Samantha Clara, was born. The marriage was short-lived, however, and Layton would soon meet Anna (Annette) Pottier, an aspiring painter and poet, who became his fifth and last wife. They would live in the middle-class Notre Dame de Grace neighbourhood of Montreal from 1983 until the mid 1990s when they separated and divorced.

Throughout the 1950s on to the 1980s, Layton travelled widely abroad and became especially popular in South Korea and Italy, and in 1981 these two nations nominated him for the Nobel Prize for Literature. (The prize that year was instead awarded to novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez.) Among his many awards during his career was the Governor-General's Award for A Red Carpet for the Sun in 1959 and in 1976 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

In 1995 Layton was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. He died at the Maimonides Geriatric Centre in Montreal at the age of 93 on January 4, 2006.

Works

Now Is The Place - 1948
The Black Huntsmen: Poems - 1951
Love the Conqueror Worm - 1953
The Long Pea-Shooter - 1954
In the Midst of My Fever - 1954
The Blue Propeller - 1955
The Cold Green Element - 1955
The Bull Calf and Other Poems - 1956
The Improved Binoculars: Selected Poems - 1956
Music on a Kazoo - 1956
A Laughter in the Mind - 1959
A Red Carpet for the Sun - 1960
The Swinging Flesh - 1961
Balls for a One-Armed Juggler - 1963
The Laughing Rooster - 1964
Collected Poems - 1965
Periods of the Moon: Poems - 1967
The Shattered Plinths - 1968
Selected Poems - 1969
The Whole Bloody Bird - 1969
Poems to Color - 1970
Nailpolish - 1971
The Collected Poems of Irving Layton - 1971
Lovers and Lesser Men - 1972
The Pole-Vaulter - 1974
Seventy-five Greek Poems, 1951-1974 - 1974
The Darkening Fire: Selected Poems, 1945-1968 - 1975
The Unwavering Eye: Selected Poems, 1969-1975 - 1975
The Uncollected Poems of Irving Layton: 1936-59 - 1976
For my Brother Jesus - 1976
The Selected Poems of Irving Layton - 1977
The Covenant - 1977
The Tightrope Dancer - 1979
Droppings from Heaven - 1979
The Tamed Puma - 1979
For My Neighbours in Hell - 1980
Europe And Other Bad News - 1981
A Wild Peculiar Joy: Selected Poems, 1945-82 - 1982
Shadows on the Ground: A Portfolio - 1982
The Gucci Bag - 1983
The Love Poems of Irving Layton: With Reverence & Delight - 1984
Fortunate Exile - 1987
Final Reckoning: Poems, 1982-1986 - 1987
Dance With Desire: Selected Love Poems - 1992
Celebration: Famous Canadian Poets CD Canadian Poetry Association - 1999

References

Deveau, Scott. "Canadian poet Irving Layton dies at 93", The Globe and Mail. January 4, 2006.

External links

Order of Canada Citation
Irving Layton's Home Page maintained by the University of Toronto
Biography (University of Toronto)