The Al Purdy A-frame Residency

The Al Purdy A-frame Association has published a book, The Al Purdy A-FRAME Anthology, through Harbour Publishing. The book consists of contributions by prominent members of the literary community who visited the Purdys during the fifty years they occupied the property, along with writings by Al Purdy in which the property is mentioned. Selling through…

Kevin Van Paassen for The Globe and Mail Poetic myths can be hard to sustain in a prosy age, but every versifier in Canada will tell you something uncanny happened 50 years ago on a bush lot in the country south of Belleville, Ont., where local couple Al and Eurithe Purdy had retreated after the…

The United Nations declared 1975 International Women’s Year, and Jack McClelland decided he had to do something about it. So he put out a public call for poetry by Canadian women, in aid of producing an anthology of the best of it. And he volunteered Al Purdy and me, his editor, to make the selection.…

The following letter, written by Dr. David Bentley of the University of Western Ontario and co-signed by 40 of his colleagues from universities coast-to-coast, was distributed late February to all post-secondary institutions, Canadian literature and Canadian studies organizations. “Al Purdy has been described at various times and by various writers as the “first,” the “last,”…

NATIONAL AL PURDY DAY (APRIL 21, 2009) — In recognition of the importance of Al Purdy to Canadian poetry, the iconic symbol of the A-frame to Canadian culture, and in support of the Purdy A-frame Association, the League of Canadian Poets officially declared APRIL 21, 2009 NATIONAL AL PURDY DAY. All Canadian poets and lovers…