James Reaney

Reaney was born on a farm in Easthope near Stratford, Ontario Almost all of Reaney's poems, stories, and plays are articulations of where he grew up. Poet and story writer Reaney studied English at University College, University of Toronto, receiving his M.A. in 1949. The same year he also received the Governor General's Award, the first of three, at the age of 23, for his first book of poetry, Red Heart.. Reaney married fellow poet Colleen Thibaudeau on December 29, 1951 in St. Thomas. During the 1940s and 1950s Reaney also wrote and published short stories. While not published in book form until years later, his stories were influential in establishing the style of writing later called Southern Ontario Gothic In 1962 he won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama a third time, this time for both his newest book of poetry, Twelve Letters to a Small Town, and his first book of plays, The Killdeer and Other Plays. From 1973 to 1975 Reaney wrote the trilogy The Donnellys, which the Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia calls "one of the nation's most important dramas." The three plays debuted at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre, directed by Keith Turnbull. In 2023, the Blyth Festival produced all three plays in Reaney's The Donnelly Trilogy in repertory. As well, Reaney coauthored several operas with musician John Beckwith, including Night-Blooming Cereus (1960), The Shivaree (1982), and Crazy To Kill (1988). In 2022, London Ontario's AlvegoRoot Theatre produced a new production of Reaney's 1981 play Gyroscope. Reaney also enjoyed painting and drawing and his art works, from the 1940s to 1990s, were put on exhibit at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario in 2008. Reaney died on June 11, 2008, in London, Ontario. ==Writing==

Reaney's complex symbolic and poetic regional drama defies categorizing. Reaney's plays are a combination of symbol, metaphor, chant, poetic incantation, choral speaking, improvisation, miming, and child play. Reaney depends on the concept that we, the audience, are all "children of an older growth" and his audience have responded to this expectation. The symbolic quest as the children search for truth and end in reconciliation with the adult world are the basis of Reaney's plays. Critics have called him a colonial, a rationalist and internationalist, a rabid nationalist, a symbolist, and a poet with the myth of coherence who is yet able to say something in an age of the random. Of his poetry, The Canadian Encyclopedia says: "Reaney's poetry, collected in Poems (1972), has earned him a reputation as an erudite poet at once deriving structures from metaphor, mythology, and a cosmopolitan literary tradition while deeply rooted in a regional sense of place." Reaney's fiction of the 1940s and 1950s (collected in the 1994 book The Box Social and Other Stories, was "influential in establishing the style of writing that has since become known as ‘Southern Ontario Gothic’. Margaret Atwood has remarked that ‘without "The Bully", my fiction would have followed other paths'.... Playing sophisticated games by switching voice, he achieves a kind of ‘magic realism’, often through the distorted perspective and sense of disproportion of his child narrators." ==Awards==

James Reaney won a number of awards in his lifetime: • elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1978 ==Publications==

Poetry • The Red Heart. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1949. | • Masks of Childhood. Toronto: New Press, 1972. • Baldoon, with C.H. Gervais. Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill, 1976. • Plays of James Reaney. ECW P, 1985. • ''Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking Glass adapted for the stage.'' Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill, 1994. • Scripts: Librettos for Operas and Other Musical Works John Beckwith, ed. Toronto: Coach House Books, 2004. • Reaney Days in the West Room. (drama — 7 plays) David Ferry, ed. (Playwrights Canada Press, 2009) Fiction • "The Box Social," Liberty (Toronto), July 19, 1947. • The Boy with an R in His Hand. Toronto: Macmillan, 1965. Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill, 1980. Juvenile. • Take the Big Picture. Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill, 1986. Juvenile. • The Box Social & Other Stories Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill, 1996. Non-Fiction • Halloween (Black Moss Press, 1976) • 14 Barrels from Sea to Sea. Erin, ON: Press Porcepic, 1977. , Edited • Major Plays of the Canadian Theatre, 1934-1984 (Irwin,1984) • Modern Canadian Plays (Talonbooks,1985) Except where noted, Bibliography from JamesReaney.com. ==Discography==

• Celebration: Famous Canadian Poets CD Canadian Poetry Association — 2001 (CD#4) (with F. R. Scott ) • Souwesto Words: 25 poets in Southwestern Ontario Ergo Books 2002 (Poets on the CD: Penn Kemp, John Tyndall, Molly Peacock, Emily Chung, Paul Langille, Sheila Martindale, Roy McDonald, Sadiqa Khan, Jan Figurski, Jody Trevail, Beryl Baigent, John B. Lee, Cornelia Hoogland, James Reaney, Colleen Thibaudeau, Michael Wilson, Aimee O'Beirn, Jason Dickson, Marianne Micros, Skot Deeming, Victor Elias, David J. Paul, April Bulmer, Julie Berry, Don Gutteridge) ==References==