R.G. Everson's "Everson at Eighty"

R.G. (Ron) Everson was a prominent poet back in the 1950s and 60s, he is also one the founders of the League of Canadian Poets. Like many of the older generation of poets you don't hear much about Everson today. I just read Everson at Eighty (Oberon Press, 1983) which also has an introduction by his friend Al Purdy. Purdy is supposed to have edited this selected poems, but it's a bit confusing if he really did and there are parts of his introduction that are also confusing; for instance, he writes of going on a trip to Newfoundland with the Eversons but also present on this trip was Purdy's wife and her husband, but the husband he is referring to might in fact be Purdy himself, referred to in the third person, or it might be some other man who is married to Purdy's "wife". It just doesn't make sense. Thirty-five years after it was published, Everson at Eighty is still worth reading.

As an aside, in the early 1970s I heard Al Purdy read his work at Loyola College (now the Loyola Campus of Concordia University) and after the reading, in the faculty lounge, I met Everson who had been talking with his friend Al Purdy. Poetry was a small world in the old days but that small world was populated with a pretty talented group of poets.

1983

R.G. Everson, 1903-1992

I've been reading and enjoying R.G. Everson's poetry for many years. Ron Everson (1903 - 1992) was a Montreal poet, he was also a lawyer who never practised law and who spent most of his career in public relations. His extensive literary archives are at McMaster University; he has a voluminous correspondence with other well-known poets, he published more than ten books of poetry, he was published in important periodicals (for instance, in Poetry (Chicago). Al Purdy, Earle Birney, Irving Layton, and Louis Dudek were all his friends, other poets thought highly of his work. His poetry is accessible without being simplistic, and despite all of this he's largely forgotten or ignored. The only missing ingredient, and possible failing, in Everson's body of work is a single (or several) highly impressive poems by which he can be recognized and known. He was a good technician although not a great poet, but still a poet who is enjoyable to read. He published most of his books in his last twenty years, I guess he was trying to catch up on lost time after spending so many years away from the Muse and toiling in the PR business. In 1960 Everson and his wife lived at 4855 Cote St. Luc Road, apt # 608, in Montreal; they spent their winters in Florida.  

1976

1969

1978

1965

1957

R.G. Everson's home in this apartment building,
on Cote St. Luc Road, Montreal