Stephen Morrissey : Sonja Skarstedt on Louis Dudek

 

 

 

I first met Sonja Skarstedt and her husband Geof Isherwood around 1990 when they visited my home near Huntingdon, Quebec; a few years later Sonja began Empyreal Press, she had been a student of Louis Dudek at McGill University in the early 1980s and later she became a friend and then a supporter and publisher of Louis' last books.

Louis was a great supporter of Sonja's poetry. Louis often wrote personal inscriptions in his books: in Atlantis, he wrote "For Sonja Skarstedt, with admiration for your fine talent"; in The First Person in Literature he wrote, "For Sonja Skarstedt, Excellent poet!"; in 1982, in Continuation 1, he wrote, "For Sonja, great expectations for your own work!"; he could see that she was a genuine poet and someone worth encouraging. She was a poet, a playwright, a publisher, and a visual artist. Her passing, in 2009, was a great loss for Montreal poetry and a personal loss for many of us. 

A few weeks ago I was writing an essay in which I referred to the Louis Dudek issue of Open Letter (spring and summer 1981); my second copy of this had belonged to Sonja and I found two sheets of paper, written in Sonja's handwriting in March 1991, in the pages of this issue. They were her preparatory notes for Dave Bronstetter's afternoon home run programme broadcast daily on CBC radio, in which Sonja was interviewed with Louis, explaining his influence on younger poets and her memories of being one of his students.

Below, I have transcribed Sonja's notes for this interview so that they will be easier to read; this is Sonja's text, her hand lettering, including spelling noting strikethroughs; I wanted the transcription to be accurate to Sonja's original text. Louis had a profound influence on his students; many of us who were in Louis' classes went on to literary or teaching careers, or we were influenced in other life choices. Susan Stromberg-Stein, who was in Louis' graduate seminar with me in 1974-1975, wrote for her MA thesis Louis Dudek, A biographical Introduction to his Poetry (published by Golden Dog Press in 1983); Susan is a prominent sculptor whose work is widely exhibited. One day in 1975, I visited the English Department staff lounge at McGill and I remember seeing Louis and Laurence Hutchman sitting together editing and discussing Laurence's first book of poetry, Explorations (1975), published by Louis' DC Editions; Laurence's Swimming Toward the Sun: Collected Poems 1968-2018 was published in 2020. Louis Dudek supervised Ken Norris's PhD dissertation on the development of modernism in little magazines in Canada; Ken's place in Canadian poetry is secure considering his large body of work. Louis published first books of poetry for Leonard Cohen and Daryl Hine, both had been his students at McGill; Cohen's Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956) was highly acclaimed while Hine became editor of the prestigious Poetry (Chicago) from 1968-1978. Dudek's influence is extensive; I suggest reading Louis Dudek, Essays on his Works, edited by George Hildebrand (Guernica, 2001) and Robin Blaser's introduction to Infinite Worlds, the poetry of Louis Dudek (1988).

Sonja's notes record her experience as a young poet, her formative years as a writer, and her appreciation of Louis Dudek. After Louis' passing in 2001, Sonja edited, with Louis's widow Aileen Collins and his old friend Michael Gnarowski, Eternal Conversations: Remembering Louis Dudek (DC Books, Montreal, 2003); for some of us the eternal conversation continues.

Stephen Morrissey
29 September 2026

 

 

(Page one, handwritten by Sonja Skarstedt)

 

 

Sonja A. Skarstedt (her signature])                              Prep. Notes for Dave Bronstetter's
                                                                        CBC Home Run
                                                                        (Interview w/ L. Dudek
                                                                        & SAS   March 1/91 (written in pencil)

 

How has Louis Dudek influenced you?

As a "renaissance" individual: his words and actions convey the message: don't waste any of your potential, whether your talents are singular or multi-dimensional. Louis of course has branched out into many fields, from poetry (at the center of it all) to essays, teaching, broadcasting, translating, publishing, editing… bound together by enthusiasm.

I've always been obsessed by words, (whether) written down and bound in beautiful volumes—whether spoken or invented. I write poetry and edit Zymergy—which I may have been doing if I'd not encountered Louis. However, his stamp on the importance, the vitality of literature in this country—would have been unavoidable. "Hearing" this vitality firsthand then, has made the purpose of putting out everything as caustic as a literary magazine more plausible, more necessary.

I first encountered the name of Louis Dudek in Endre Farkas's History of Montreal Poets at John Abbott College. He was included in the Smith-Scott-Klein category (if these can be called a category!), his poetry briefly covered. During my first year at McGill I was combing the Gazette's book section & came across an article on the Vehicule Poets. I was impressed by the writer's wit, the bouncing from one name or element to the next (while remaining in context). "Louis Dudek," I noted, remembering the name from somewhere at McGill, "if he can teach as well as he writes…what a phenomenal way to learn!" I went to the McGill course directory & was delighted to see "Canadian Literature" Louis Dudek, prof/. (that review found now: The Defense of Art)

I've always gravitated to art, graphic & comic books as opposed to classics; after attending the second or third class of Dudek's, I noted that I was making elaborate doodles not only in the margins but in the middle of my notes. It certainly wasn't boredom—every word of the lectures was sinking in, flipping around in my imagination then re-emerging in the form of detailed birds, profiles and experimental lines. Next class, I brought with me a pad of vellum art paper and my drafting pens: I might as well conduct a full-scale experiment!

(Page two, handwritten by Sonja Skarstedt)

—How has Louis' poetry changed (40s vs. 80s e.g.)?

There is less formality, I think, although the same questioning, philosophical voice is there. There might be a grain more pessimism, a mellowered anger.

—Aserbic?

Louis I think pours whatever acid he wishes to convey into his essays & articles rather than the poetry. Even in EPIGRAMS the barbs are gentle, presented with humour & wit rather than Layton-esque vinegar!

—Does Louis differ from Scott, Klein, Smith ... how?

They somehow belong in a category, perhaps generation, of their own. One sees Dudek as either on his own, or within (a word here is illegible and with strikethrough) Laytons the same era as Layton. Layton & Dudek = twins, nonidentical yet pulled from the same musing ribcage.

Scott, Klein & Smith might be viewed as more (overtly) political (religious or mytho-traditional.) Their main preoccupation might be the jabbing and spearing of political monsters. With Dudek & Layton, the "monsters" can be found in ourselves, in sociology, psychology. The terrain is trickier.

Louis' voice is gentler, & his mind is the launching-pad for the universe of perplexities, imperfections.

Elements of this universe: the sea, movement, the sky, emotions,

                                          LOGIC, auroras, creatures (from octopito an
                                                              "Octopus w/saucer-like suckers"
                                                   to "the weeping beech/ hanging like a great
                                                                        pavillion") Atlantis                                                                                                

rhymes not as frequent, more "everyday" conversation

* ("why don't you," he once suggested), "take out a pen & paper

 when you're in the cafeteria or some such place, & write down what you hear, slivers of chit-chat, whatever ... & see if you can make a poem out of that?"

* the Ogilvy's rose

* Phyllis Webb: rare books & rich enthusiasm over an interview.

"Who knows ..." he would pause, staring into the rows of faces in his classes, who knows which of you sitting in this room will someday become famous, produce something astounding & enrich the human race ... who knows? But we all must try ..."

* CBC reading poetry w/ Jane Lewis. Enthusiasm over poetry: honesty ("try prose!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo, above: Robert Creeley, Michael Andre, Sonja Skarstedt, New York City, 1993

 

 

 

 

Sonja A. Skarstedt was a Canadian poet, short story, playwright writer, painter and illustrator. Born in Montreal, Quebec, she was the founder and former editor of the literary magazine Zymergy, 1987-1991, and founder of Empyreal Press, 1990. Her books include Mythographies: Poems (1990), A Demolition Symphony (1995), and Beautiful Chaos (2000). She graduated from McGill University with a BA in English Literature in 1982. She was married to the artist and comic book illustrator Geof Isherwood.

 

 

 

 

   

Montreal born poet Stephen Morrissey is the author of thirteen books, including poetry and literary criticism. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, Honours in English with Distinction, from Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in 1973. In 1976, he graduated with a Master of Arts degree in English Literature from McGill University. In the 1970s, Morrissey was associated with the Véhicule Poets. The Stephen Morrissey Fonds, 1963 - 2014, are housed at Rare Books and Special Collections of the McLennan Library at McGill University. Stephen Morrissey married Vancouver poet Carolyn Zonailo in 1995. Visit the poet at www.stephenmorrissey.ca

Ken Norris : LOUIS DUDEK & THE FIVE MISSIONS

 

In memory of Louis Dudek, on his 104^th birthday

 

 

I went out of my way to study with Louis Dudek. It wasn’t just happenstance.

I first heard of and became aware of Dudek as the teacher of Leonard Cohen. At the age of sixteen I was a Leonard Cohen fanboy. And I knew that Cohen had attended McGill University and studied with this professor named Louis Dudek. Dudek had also published Cohen’s first book, Let Us Compare Mythologies, in the McGill Poetry Series.

Originally, I wasn’t supposed to attend McGill University for my Ph.D. I was supposed to be going to York University and taking Frank Davey’s graduate Canadian Poetry seminar.

So, in the summer of 1975, I was doing advanced reading for that course while still living in Montreal with my new girlfriend Barbara. We were living in an apartment up on Cote des Neiges.

Reading ahead for Davey’s course is how I first encountered Dudek’s poetry. I was reading “the white book”: The Collected Poems of Louis Dudek. And I was really impressed by what I was reading.

The early lyrics were magnificent. And then there was a long poem called Europe. And then there was another long poem called En Mexico. By the time I got to Atlantis I was at least a fan, possibly a disciple. And Atlantis just wiped me out. Several years later, I was deeply gratified when bpNichol told me that the Epilogue to Atlantis was one of the greatest achievements in Canadian poetry. I agreed and agree with that completely.

My life got rewritten on a morning in late August. I was alone in the apartment when the phone rang (Barbara was down in Toronto, looking for an apartment for us). On the phone was Archie Malloch, who was the graduate director of the English department at McGill.

After exchanging greetings, he said to me, “I’m afraid I spoke too soon when I said we didn’t have a teaching assistantship for you. Someone has dropped out of the program, and I can offer you one now. You’re still coming, right?”

I paused for a moment, then decided to tell the truth. “Well, actually, I sent a letter declining admission back in May, because there wasn’t a teaching assistantship,” I admitted.

“We never received it,” Professor Malloch said.

Pause. Think. “Okay, then I never sent it,” I said.

And so it was resolved. I would be a candidate in the Ph.D. program at McGill. The teaching assistantship at York was $2,400, at McGill $7,000. It really was a no-brainer. I called Barbara and told her to come home, we were staying in Montreal.

*

After Labour Day, it was time for me to check in with McGill.

There were three fateful meetings to have.

The first was with Professor Archie Malloch, who supervised teaching assistants. He welcomed me to the program, then asked me if I had any preferences for courses I’d like to be an assistant to. On a whim, I said Canadian Literature.

“That’s great,” he said, “no one ever asks for that.”

I was then on to meet Professor David Williams, who was the Chair of the English Department. He welcomed me to the program, then gave me a fifteen minute lecture on how, to be successful at literary studies at the Ph.D. level, you had to have a methodology. It wasn’t enough to just love reading books. I assured him that I would develop an adequate methodology (I did: it was literary history).

I’d timed things right. I appeared at the door of Professor Dudek’s office just as he was beginning office hours. I knocked, and was told to enter.

It was a big office, on the second floor of the Arts Building, that members of the English department are probably still fighting over. There were big bookshelves, and behind the desk there were large windows, with an amazing view of the campus and of downtown Montreal.

And behind the desk was Professor Dudek.

I introduced myself, and quickly handed over a copy of  my first poetry book, Vegetables.

Before I could even get comfortable in the situation, he said, “Give me some time to read this. Come back next week.”

Our first meeting had lasted all of two minutes. Not promising.

*

Nevertheless, I returned the following week.

This time he motioned me to the student chair. He allowed me to get settled before he started speaking.

“Your book reminds me of Joe Rosenblatt,” he said.

I hadn’t yet read any Joe Rosenblatt, so I had no idea what this meant.

“Pop Art gestures. You aren’t going to get very far writing poems about vegetables.”

Did I ask Why not? I don’t think so. I was intimidated. I was still a kid. What did I know about poetry?

Dudek rose from his chair. It was my first glimpse of how tall he was. He walked to the window and gestured towards the outside. “There’s the world. Why don’t you write about it?”

It seemed like a reasonable suggestion.

The conversation moved on. I told him I was a Ph.D student in the program and proposed to write a Ph.D. dissertation on D.H. Lawrence.

“The fiction or the poetry?” he asked.

“Probably the poetry,” I replied.

“As you probably know, there are no formal classes for Ph.D. students. You can audit my graduate class in Modernist Poetry if you like.”

I told him that I would like to do that.

I also told him that I’d been reading his Collected Poems and that I thought he was a fine poet.

He told me when the graduate seminar met, in his office (his office was big enough for a small class to meet there), and wished me good day.

*

As I got to know Louis, he began to school me in Can Lit. I was like a sponge, soaking up everything. In fairly short order, he knew that I was a both a poet and a cultural activist. He started to educate me in the work that needed doing.

He began to school me in what I have always called The Five Missions. They are the tasks I would have to undertake as a Canadian writer. They were the tasks that Dudek, himself, had already fulfilled.

The first mission was simply being the writer, being the poet. Canada wasn’t exactly an hospitable environment. He taught me that I would have to be self-motivating while also developing a very thick skin and a will to survive.

The second mission was to be a literary magazine editor. There were very few outlets at the time for Canadian writing, and writers needed to run magazines.

They also needed to run publishing houses. Dudek and Layton and Souster (and later Peter Miller) had set the finest example for literary publishing with Contact Press. They started Contact Press because Dudek and Souster could only get chapbooks published by Ryerson Press, and Layton could not get anyone to publish him in Canada at all. In later years, Robert Creeley would regale me with stories of how he came to publish Irving in the 1950s.

The fourth mission was to be a reviewer. If writers did not review Canadian books, no one reviewed Canadian books. I was happy to have found a place at The Montreal Gazette under the tutelage of Doris Giller. The good news was that I could write the necessary reviews, and also get paid for doing so.

The fifth mission was to teach Can Lit. It was now my specialty.

At the time, I acknowledged that Dudek had to perform all five missions. I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to, or that I needed to. Maybe a few things were beginning to change. Maybe, by 1980, we had some book reviewers and some Can Lit specialists.

Looking back, I see that I fulfilled all five missions. Not necessarily all the time for a lifetime, but at points in time. I’ve been a practicing and publishing poet for forty-eight years now. With my American friend Jim Mele, I ran the magazine CrossCountry for close to a decade. I participated in the running of other poetry magazines like Mouse Eggs and Somewhere Across The Border. Jim and I ran CrossCountry Press for a decade, producing twenty-three titles. Along with Endre Farkas and Artie Gold, I was a poetry editor at Vehicule Press from 1975 to 1981. I “assisted” Endre Farkas in running his publishing house, The Muses’ Company, from 1980 to 1995. I wrote an abundant amount of newspaper reviews for The Montreal Gazette under the tutelage of Book Review Editor Doris Giller. And I taught Canadian Literature (and Creative Writing) at the University of Maine for thirty-three years.

Louis Dudek taught at McGill for thirty-three years, and I taught at U. Maine for thirty-three years. Teaching thirty-four years just wasn’t possible. I didn’t want to attempt to go past him, even in that small regard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ken Norris was born in New York City in 1951. He came to Canada in the early 1970s, to escape Nixon-era America and to pursue his graduate education. He completed an M.A. at Concordia University and a Ph.D. in Canadian Literature at McGill University. He became a Canadian citizen in 1985. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Maine, where he taught Canadian Literature and Creative Writing for thirty-three years. He currently resides in Toronto.