Remembering John McAuley, 1947 - 2026

Note: My essay "Remembering John McAuley, 1947 - 2026" is now online at Periodicities; thank you rob mclennan for publishing this. Here is the text below.

                      

                        Work for true poems true to you.

                        The rest are Styrofoam and glue.

                                    —John McAuley, "Four Tweets to a Young Poet"

 

 

John McAuley and I were the only members of the Vehicule Poets born in Montreal. John grew up on the West Island and lived most of his life in downtown Montreal, for many years in an apartment at 2151 Lincoln Avenue, just a few blocks from Concordia University where he had been a student and then a faculty member of the English Department from 1978-2018. One evening in the early 2000s my wife, Carolyn Zonailo, and I met John and his wife Ritva for dinner at the Alexis Nihon Plaza, a few blocks from where John and Ritva lived, it was the only time we met Ritva.

 

Before marrying Ritva, before the apartment on Lincoln, in the 1970s, John was married to Diana Brewer, Marie and Griffith Brewer's daughter. John and Diana (or "Lulu") lived at 1206 Seymour Avenue in the Shaughnessy Village, just south of Ste. Catherine Street West; it is a mostly residential downtown neighbourhood and they lived in a Victorian grey stone building (with lots of old books and needing some work) which I believe was the Brewer's family home going back several generations; it is a ten minute walk to Concordia University.

 

Artie Gold loved John's poetry, no Trump-like nickname for John that Artie had for one or two other members of the Vehicule Poets. There is John's poem, "Nine Lives for Artie Gold", written just after Artie died in 2007, and published in John's last book, All I can Say for Sure (2013). Ken Norris reminds me that "Artie once said that John might wind up being the best of all of us", of all of the Vehicule Poets. John writes of Artie,

 

                                    Those who know his books

                                    will delight at absurdities

                                    shadowed by the casual order of things.

All I can Say For Sure might be the best book John published but it received no prizes, few reviews, and little praise; however, here is what Bert Almon, a reviewer for the Montreal Review of Books (spring 2014), wrote about John's book:

 

            John McAuley, one of the Vehicule Poets who were so influential in Montreal circa            1975–80, published four books from 1977–79. His new collection, All I Can Say for             Sure, is so good that the long silence must be regretted.

 

A reviewer for the online Montreal Rampage, wrote the following:

 

            While McAuley’s writing is poetry by form, it seems like musical prose when read aloud. It is difficult to say why a piece of writing works. To use a cliché, but one entirely appropriate, you know good writing when you see it. Or, as McAuley states in “Poetry Reading”, “the gut always knows first”—but take it in a happier sense this time. Here, the writing just works. It comes off the page: it is the words in an order and a flow only a long time poet would be able to write. I could “hear” many of the works in my mind.

 

John and Artie had been in George Bowering's creative writing class together at Sir George Williams University (present-day Concordia University) in the early 1970s. Sometimes I hear Artie's voice in John's work, it isn't just a similarity to Artie's work, John had an equivalent ability to surprise the reader with insightful metaphors; what they shared, and GB acknowledged, is the rare gift for writing real poems. John writes, "The elderly learn the despair of outlasting everything in their closets", "Ancestral dreams in the one dark mole/ on your neck", and "Tranquil poetry arrives/ like unexpected snowflakes/ on your brother-in-law's roof next door."

 

John is similar in some ways to Leo Kennedy, one of the Montreal Group of poets who brought Modernism to Canadian poetry in the 1920s and 1930s; Kennedy came from an immigrant Irish family and he felt he was always an outsider. John may have identified with Kennedy but, unlike Kennedy, John never stopped being involved with poetry, and unlike Leo Kennedy John lived up to his early promise as a poet. In "To Leo Kennedy 1983" John writes,

 

                                    Half a century ago and one book published.

                                    . . . . .

                                    Tragic success in finding your music

                                    too easy too early,

                                    faultless memory for the cost of each line.

 

Leo Kennedy published one book of poems and while he was perhaps the most original of the Montreal Group of poets, or perhaps the most idiosyncratic, he was not the best of the Montreal Group. I like Kennedy's book, The Shrouding (1933), but it isn't a book I have returned to after my initial enthusiasm for it; it isn't a book that I have reread as I have with the other Montreal Group poets. John has a long gap in publishing, from around 1980 to 2013; but Claudia Lapp also published few books; I didn't publish any books from 1998 to 2009, an eleven year period. In 2013 I offered to publish a chapbook for John, with Coracle Press, but Ritva vetoed it, she said John didn`t have the work needed for a chapbook; John seemed to be always busy correcting student papers, preparing classes, but not writing new poem.

 

John and I, and Bob Galvin, organized the 1976-77 poetry series at Vehicule Art Gallery.  Several years before this, in 1973, I had organized a reading at Vehicule Art Gallery with Guy Birchard, and with Artie Gold's suggestions for readers; it was Guy who introduced me to Artie in early 1973 and I often visited Artie's Lorne Crescent flat. A few years later, organizing poetry readings at Vehicule Art, I brought in bpNichol and later The Four Horsemen, they read at the college where I was teaching, and then read at Vehicule Art; I had been corresponding with Clayton Eshleman and brought him in to read at the college and then at Vehicule Art. I remember Robert Kelly's reading and Kenneth Koch's reading. Claudia Lapp knew Anne Waldman from her years at Bennington College in Vermont and that's how Anne Waldman came to read at Vehicule.

 

In 2013 I suggested to John that he read at the Yellow Door Coffee House, the excellent reading series run by Ilona Martonfi who has done so much for Montreal poetry; the Yellow Door is located just around the corner from Artie Gold's old flat on Lorne Crescent. At the reading I made a short video of John reading his Leo Kennedy poem. The Montreal Review of Books published a poem by John as its Poem of the Month in May 2014. It is not as though John disappeared from the poetry scene, he was present but less than in the 1970s. While Leo Kennedy disappeared from poetry and moved from Montreal, John kept writing and teaching; and Ritva was an excellent editor of his work as can be seen in the poems in All I Can Say for Sure.

 

Tom Konyves posted videos on YouTube of the readings we did that evening in April 2018 at McGill's Rare Books and Special Collections, organized by Chris Lyon, the former director of that department; it was an evening celebrating the Vehicule Poets including readings by John McAuley, Claudia Lapp, Tom Konyves, Endre Farkas, and myself; Artie Gold's and Ken Norris's poems were read by other readers. An interactive screen displayed poems; exhibition cases contained books, letters, newsletters, and photographs of each poet; it was a great evening and well attended. It was great seeing John who was warmly welcomed, especially by Tom and Claudia, John was obviously emotionally distraught because Ritva was seriously ill.

 

The main collection of literary papers of the individual Vehicule Poets are housed at Rare Books and Special Collections on the fourth floor of McGill's McLennan Library; these include all of the literary archives of Artie Gold, Ken Norris, Endre Farkas, and myself. I agree with Ken Norris in the hope that someone who has access to John McAuley's literary papers donates them to the university, it would be a generous and important gift for present and future literary scholars; it would preserve something of John's literary and personal legacy. If you watch Tom`s video from that evening, you'll see that despite everything John was dealing with, Ritva's illness, John's reading at McGill University was a great reading, the poems he read were a showcase of his talent as a poet. Tom's video is the main visual document of John's public poetry readings. John was self-deprecating about public readings; in his poem "Poetry Reading"; he writes,

 

                        Years without a reading, no publishing, not much writing

                        as if the word really had gone out from Parnassus

 

And then he continues,

 

                        Some readers will even think he is dead or the next thing to it.

                        No one will want to talk to him nor he to them. . .

                        . . .

                        By the end of the reading, pale and shaken

                                    I can only murmur,

                        "What's wrong with being second or third rate?"

 

I want to show John's extensive involvement with poetry in those early days, and his lesser but still significant involvement that followed; I want to show that John participated in creating an open and inclusive poetry scene at a time when English language poetry was in decline in Montreal. John was never solely a traditional poet, he also has a substantial body of concrete and visual poetry. Looking back on things, John participated in the writing and performance of “Drummer Boy Raga”, on 16 April 1977 at Powerhouse Gallery; it was a group reading promoted by Tom Konyves. John's work was included in the anthology, published by Vehicule Press, Montreal English Poetry of the Seventies (1978). John's Maker Press published books and he edited and published a literary magazine, "Maker"; he edited and published our first anthology, The Vehicule Poets (1979). John participated in our collective interview with Louis Dudek and published the interview with his Maker Press, A Real Good Goosin', Talking Poetics, Louis Dudek and The Vehicule Poets (1980). Of course, John's work is included in Vehicule Days, An Unorthodox History of Montreal's Vehicule Poets (1993). John also read at our 2004 reading, C=a=b=a=r=e=t ==V=e=h=i=c=u=le, presented at La Cinquieme Salle of Place des Arts on 8 April 2004, and he was in the anthology of The Vehicule Poets_Now (2004). And John's work was included in Language Acts: Anglo-Québec Poetry, 1976 to the 21st Century (2007), edited by Jason Camlot and Todd Swift and published by Vehicule Press. In addition to the Yellow Door reading in 2013, John also read at Argo Book Shop when DC Books launched his 2013 title, All I Can Say for Sure. He read at both the Bleu Met literary festival reading in April 2018 and the Vehicule Poets' reading at Archives and Special Collections at McGill University, also in April 2018.

 

John and I used to correspond, beginning in 1974 and ending in 2018, up to 2014 our correspondence is archived in my literary papers at McGill University: there are five letters to John McAuley, in 1976 and 1979-1980; seven letters from John, 1974 to 1976; one letter in 1980; and then years of silence until two letters in 2003, a few letters between 2004 and 2006, and silence until 2010; writing this I reread his emails to me from 2013 to 2018. When John didn't respond to emails from Ken Norris or Endre Farkas I was asked to contact John, which I tried to do. Reading these more recent letters, 2013 to 2018, I even discovered an unpublished review John had written of my book Girouard Avenue (2009); he had been at the book launch for Girouard Avenue, at The Word Bookstore, and after the book launch we had walked along Milton Street, talking about the old days at Vehicule Art Gallery.

 

I tried to keep in touch with John but, after the Bleu Met reading, in late April 2018, it was with little success; after 2018 John's life was filled with care giving for Ritva. After the event at Bleu Met John and I sat in my car and he told me of Ritva's health situation and that he was her primary care giver; I commiserated with John, I know that care giving is constant solitary work, exhaustion, and worry. I never expected this would be the last time John and I would meet or speak together; I sent him letters and books but they were either returned by the post office or never acknowledged by him, if they were ever received. Ritva died in 2021 and then John's health began to decline.

 

Memories fade, some are authentic but many memories are forgotten or unreliable, and some things that we remember, in fact, never happened, they are invented by time. Writing this memorial has been a return to the past, a time to remember those years of publishing books and poetry magazines, of public readings, of knowing John McAuley, but it is also about the excitement of being young poets and committed and passionate about poetry. Other than being a highly talented poet, a dedicated teacher, a faithful and loving husband to Ritva, a loyal friend, my memory of John is that he was a good decent human being and that means everything.

 

                                                                        Stephen Morrissey

                                                                        Montreal • 20 April 2026