When Canadian icon and original Canadian People’s Poet Milton Acorn was passed over for the Governor General’s Award for his 1969 collection I’ve Tasted My Blood, several of his peers, including Margaret Atwood, Pat Lane and Mordecai Richler, established the People’s Poetry Award, which they presented to Milton at a ceremony at Grossman’s Tavern in Toronto in 1970.
When I’ve Tasted My Blood was re-issued in 1978 by Steel Rail Publishing, Milton wrote corrections and edits for the new edition on a copy of the original book. Milton Acorn: The People’s Poet reproduces that copy of I’ve Tasted My Blood with Milton’s handwritten notes, offering readers an intimate look into the work of one of Canada’s most important poets. Also included are never-before-published photographs of Milton taken by Kent Nason, a studio recording of Milton reading many of his poems and a 1971 documentary film about Milton Acorn made by Kent Martin and Errol Sharpe.
Errol Sharpe is a publisher at Fernwood Publishing. He holds an ma in Atlantic Canada Studies from Saint Mary’s University and is co-author of In Pursuit of Justice: Just Us! Coffee Roasters Co-op and the Fair Trade Movement.
Continuing Chesterton is a collection of essays on People’s Poetry which goes well beyond the conventional territory of literary criticism to produce a fascinating set of perspectives on the nature of Canadian identity. It offers a case study of the cultural crisis of the ‘gnostic’ culture of late modernity.
Terry Barker studied political theory and philosophy at McMaster and Oxford Universities, and taught Liberal Arts at Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Toronto. He is the author of After Acorn: Meditations on the Message of Canada’s People’s Poet (1999) and Beyond Bethune: People’s Poetry and Milton Acorn’s Metaphor for the Canadian Fate (2006).
With poetry by Anna Yin, and music by Tom Smarda and Mark Harry.
Free to all.
