Room of One's Own: A Feminist Journal of Literature and Criticism

84 Pages·1977·18.485 MB·English

by  Laura Lippert, Gayla Reid, Gail van Varseveld and Eleanor Wachtel,  Mary Anderson, Jane Evans, Enid Harrop, Jo Sleigh

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A ter11inisl Jcit1r11al of l .. ile,. .a lt1re.··z11iel ~.C.,ilicis111
Miriam ~addington
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Room of One's Own is published quarterly by the Growing
Room Collective. Letters and unpublished manuscripts should
be sent to Room ofO ne's Own, 1918 Waterloo St., Vancouver,
B.C. V6R 3G6. Please enclose a stamped, self-addressed en
velope for return of manuscripts. Material submitted from
outside Canada should be accompanied by International Reply
Coupons, not stamps.
Subscriptions to Room of One's Own are available through
the above address and are $6.00 per year in Canada, $7 .00
per year outside Canada. The institutional rate is $10.00 per
year. Back issues available: Vol. I, Nos. 1 & 2, $2.00 each;
Nos. 3 & 4, $1.50 each; Vol. II, No. 1, $2.00; Vol. II, No. 2/3,
$3.50; Vol. II, No. 4, $2.00. Single copies to points outside
Canada, add $.25 per copy.
This issue was produced by Laura Lippert, Gayla Reid, Gail
van Varseveld and Eleanor Wachtel, with a little help from
Mary Anderson, Jane Evans, Enid Harrop, and Jo Sleigh.
Room of One 's Own is published with the assistance of the
Canada Council.
Cover Photo of Miriam Waddington by Helen Parker.
Cover Design by Gloria Mundi.
Member of the Canadian Periodical Publishers' Association.
Printed by Morriss Printing Company, Victoria, B.C.
ISSN 0316-1609 Second Class Mail Registration No. 3544
© 1977 by the Growing Room Collective.
Contents
Miriam Waddington in Vancouver, Eleanor Wachtel . . . .. . 2
Two Poems, Miriam Waddington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Poetry
Betsy Warland-Van Hom . ..................... 11
Patricia Kelly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Sparling Mills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
M.H.T. Orr ....................... .. .. . .. . .. 16
Marlene Wildeman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Judy Harvey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Nancy Brizendine .......................... . . 21
Adventures of Stephen Between Wars,
J o~n Mason Hurley ................. . . . . ·. . . . . . 22
Women's Sexuality in Bronte and Eliot,
Virginia Watson Rouslin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Poetry
Judi Morton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3
Joanne de Longchamps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Sharon Nelson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 8
In Case of Accident, Jardine Gibb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Feminist Literary Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
By Women Writ ... ................... . .......... 7 3
Editorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....... . ... . .. · · · · 7 6
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 8
Miriam Waddington
in Vancouver
Eleanor Wachtel
"It's no career to be a poet," she said. "I knew I could
never earn a living as one, and I knew it didn't enhance my
value as a woman."
Perhaps that is why although she started writing at 10
and some of her work was published before her teens, it
wasn't until Miriam Waddington was 40 that she began to
think of herself as a poet. Now, almost 20 years later, a Books
in Canada critic describes her latest collection as the best
book of poetry to be published in Canada in 1976, and Satur
day Night editor Robert Fulford described Waddington as the
one person who deserved to be called Mother in our contem
porary literary family.
Room of One's Own - 2
Miriam Waddington was born in Winnipeg of Russian
parents. These two elements, enhanced by growing up in the
Prairies and a later visit to the Soviet Union, seep through
her life and surface in her poetry. "That far terribly /northern
city/I see when/I close my eyes/is it Winnipeg/or Leningrad?"
· Her family moved east when she was 13, and it was in the
central Canadian triangle of Ottawa-Montreal-Toronto that
she continued to write poetry and win school prizes. "Still
it was not a thing you showed your friends or anyone you
knew, for that matter."
Upon graduating from the University of Toronto, she
tried to get a job in publishing, couldn't, and so got married.
"There were other factors too, of course, but yes and so I
got married." She studied social work and worked in slums
and prisons. These experiences showed her the resilience of
people and influenced her emotional development but offered
nothing intellectually. This lack eventually prompted her to
leave it.
The Canadian poetry scene at that time was very spare.
There were a few people at universities, a press club where
writers might meet and read. Dorothy Livesay was active,
always energetic, and "when she came to Toronto in 1942
she looked me up since she'd published a few of my poems in
her journal, Contemporary Verse. It was such a small com
munity in those days that people sought each other out and
became friends. There were so few, and we were young, and
that makes a difference." She smiled and repeated, "It does,
you know.''
Despite her long association with poetry she doesn't iden
tify herself with any group or circle of poets. As a "romantic
realist" she is outsidethemainstream. "Idon'tgoforarchetypes,
myths, which are very stylish now. Myths are everywhere."
Waddington feels her separateness, exploits her own
defensiveness in her poetry . .I n "Sad winter in the land of Can.
lit." she laments:
I must learn to
write about dead
horses with myths
in my mouth, dead
Room of One's Own - 3
birds and frogs
that I shot with
tears in my eyes
but compassion in
my heart just
because I'm human
and was born to
original sin.
Driving Home, 1972
Miriam Waddington was not raised with a sense of inborn
sin; rather, she was nurtured on a sense of ethics and morality
and indignation. The contemporary Canadian literary scene is
dominated by men: male editors who include in their antho
logies only those women who fit the masculine psychology;
men who control the media in a great family compact.
"The great writers haven't done badly for women. It's
the punk macho Canadian writers like Richler and Layton
where women are either whores or mothers.
"If Fulford wants to give me a compliment he says I'm a
mother. I don't feel like a mother; maybe a sister. Mothers
don't come off too well in this world."
As a middle child and the only girl, Miriam enjoyed a
favored position in her family. She was granted intellectual
equality and independence, felt no discontent in her role,
nor wished she was a man. She recounts how her husband used
to say, "Miriam, you talk to men as if you were adressing
your equals."
"Feminism was nothing new to me. Our house always
had people sleeping over en route to lecture tours, socialists
with leaflets who would talk to my mother about women's
oppression. And she, who was a conscientious wife and
mother, would rebel for the day, would go for long walks
and not cook.
"There were plenty of role models then: career women,
teachers, union organizers; women who were single or divor
ced; mannish women with short hair. And women, like my
mother, who were rebellious but unwilling or unable to do
anything about it.
"Later I wrote a poem about a prostitute who used to
Room of One's Own - 4
come into my father's deli in Ottawa where my mother helped
out, a woman whom I felt my mother somehow envied be
cause she was 'free', she didn't have to answer to anyone.
Like Adele Wiseman's (literary prostitute in Crackpot) who
owns her own life."
The personal life is very important. Being married, having
children, it absorbs everything. Not wanting to miss out on
any central experience, Miriam wanted to have children and
does not regret that decision. But there is a genuine conflict,
especially when you look back- "since ever time began/and
Adam was a man and Eve/was also ran." ("Friends", in The
Price of Gold, 1976.)
Yet women's rights is not a battle where you could look
forward to easy victories. Individual action seemed useless,
ineffectual. Waddington is in sympathy with causes, feminism
and socialism, but is soft politically. She wishes she could
write poems of greater social import and consciousness, but
her territory is relationships and landscapes, simplicity and
humour, lightness peppered with an occasional bitterness
that surprises even herself.
The face is lively, the body small, her voice a bit gravelly
from a week of readings. You can never feel old if you 're a
middle child; certainly not old enough to be a literary mother.
"Childhood is a continuing world, not a past," she ex
plains. "The Prairies had a deep effect on me. It is very hard
to be dishonest if you're born on the Prairies, everything
shows." Perhaps a clue to her disassociation from literary
trends is her assertion that "You couldn't have masks there."
I long for
the transplanted
European village
the one
that became
my prairie city.
The north winds
lived there
they always
whistled me
Room of One's Own - 5
clean
with a blow
of white polar
.
air.
"Where the North Winds Live,"
in Price of Gold, 1976
ON HOW SHE STARTED WRITING POETRY:
When I was about 10 or 11. It's not very romantic-not
like I've always been writing ever since I was in the nursery.
In a Jewish home in Winnipeg, we didn't have a nursery. A
primary school teacher said to the class, "Write a poem about
spring." And I found that I could. She read it to the class and
I was thrilled. So I kept at it. It was faster/shorter than writing
it all out in prose. You could finish it in one sitting.
At the beginning, no one encouraged me nor discouraged
me. The first person to take an interest in my work was Ida
Maze. My parents were intellectuals, I suppose, and when we
lived in Ottawa, we used to go to Montreal where there was a
big Yiddish literary circle. Ida Maze had a salon where she
would preside, give food, etc., read my poems. At 15 I spent
my Easter and Christmas vacations at her house. I wrote and
did translations from Yiddish to English.
Ida encouraged me to read Edna St. Vincent Millay and
Sara Teasdale; her taste was towards the sentimental side.
But these were early liberated women, feminists. One of Ida's
friends suggested I write a poem about a woman's life. Me,
when I was 15!
ON THE MODERN WOMEN'S MOVEMENT,
I'm glad there's a revival but it hasn't been effective
because it isn't political enough. There's too much rhetoric;
you can't get anywhere without political action. Some women
seem to be involved to make themselves more attractive, more
interesting to men perhaps. Germaine Greer, for example;
I didn't like her book. Simone deBeauvoir's The Second Sex
?ad the greatest influence on me and on people I knew when
1t came out.
In the literature courses I teach, I find that there is room
for feminist criticism, women's studies. As for female Cana-
Room of One's Own - 6
dian authors, Atwood's women don't help women to under
stand themselves. Marion Engel seems into the Erica Jong,
female macho-style, women have sexual fantasies too. The
women in Alice Munro's stories- maybe; yes, there are some
very good examples there.
ON THE PERSONAL CANDIDNESS OF HER POETRY,
Yes, a woman once came up to me after a reading and
said, "I don't know how you can wear your emotions on your
sleeve like that." If it's a poem the heart isn't on your sleeve.
The form makes a psychological distance. The poem is not
that close to the actual event in any case. (Some poems have
specific references to her family.) l don't feel vulnerable: it
is transformed material, not just self-expression or a diary.
I've worked hard to simplify my work. Language should be
transparent. Poetry is a way of looking at life, of coping with
reality; fashioning it gives you some sense of control.
ON NEW DIRECTIONS, PLANS FOR HERSELF,
Maybe a play. I've done quite a lot of new things which
have gone unnoticed. Call Them Canadians was the first book
of poetry and photography published in Canada. Some of my
poems have been set to music. I'm doing a show in Toronto
with artist Helen Duffy who has incorporated lines from my
poems into her prints. I have yet to do my "big" work. But
I suppose few people feel they've completed their major work.
PUBLISHED BOOKS OF POETRY,
Green World, First Statement Press, 1945.
The Second Silence, Ryerson Press, 1955.
The Season's Lovers, Ryerson Press, 1958.
The Glass Trumpet, Oxford University Press, 1966.
Call Them Canadians, National film Board, Queen's Printer,
1968 (poems as text).
Say Yes, Oxford University Press, 1969.
Driving Home, Oxford University Press, 1972.
Dream Telescope, Anvil Press (Britain), 1972.
The Price of Gold, Oxford University Press, 1976.
Room of One's Own - 7
Tw0Poem5
Miriam Waddington
Running Up and Down Mountains at Changing Speeds
Fifteen years ago
it was my pleasure to
run in sandals up and down
the mountain in Montreal; not
only pleasure but ecstasy,
(and I knew what the word
meant) I used to open my
arms to the wind be embraced
by a huge wave of air then
enclosed in a cape of the
same air with only my head
showing and only my voice
sounding: I used to shout
to the sky: hey look world
world, here I am!
And in those days
the sky did look at me
half-approving and half
disapproving, and the trees
inclined to each other and
whispered: psst there she is!
And the wind shouted back
at me: look who just blew in!
and all of us together
raised our voices in a choir
of hallellujahs singing the
same song to each other and
to the world about the
pleasures of running up
and down mountains.
Room of One's Own - 8