P.K. Page: 1916-2010

P.K.Page was poet and painter, novelist and scriptwriter. But more importantly she was the voice of  tradition and 'modernism' in Canada, unique, daring and always relevant to a real Canadian sensibility. Along with Irving Layton,Alden Nowlan, Earle Birney, Raymond Souster and Al Purdy, Page was Canadian poetry and I fear, in the age of outrageous experimentalist poetries and declining readership, we'll never see artists like her again.


Among the many favourite passages of mine:

"Now all the scene is flying. Before the face
people and trees are swift; the enormous pool
brims like a crying eye. The immediate flesh
is real and night no curtain." (from "Summer Resort")

Indeed, "all the scene is flying", and a once meaningful poetry of the Canadian people & landscape fading from view. I feel a part of me is fading too, the impressionable 70s English undergraduate in love with tradition and thankful to the great modernists like Page, Nowlan and Layton for gracefully taking us into the fragments of the postmodernist age. Only Nowlan could move me to tears; only Layton could move me to righteous anger; and only Page (and Purdy, Milt Acorn)could move me to love of my country.

I feel I've lost a teacher, friend and guiding spirit. I feel with P.K.Page's passing we've lost a part of Canada.