Frank Davey: Difference between revisions

Davey published his first poetry collection, ''D-Day and After'', in 1962, with an introduction by Tallman that emphasized how this was poetry as the act of the moment rather than poetry as the commonplace attempt 'to express ... feelings.' <ref name="vancouverartinthesixties.com">'Frank Davey, Intro to D-Day and After' http://vancouverartinthesixties.com/archive/87.</ref> It was the first of more than a hundred volumes to be published by the ''TISH'' editors. Receiving an MA from UBC in 1963, Davey taught for the Canadian armed forces at [[Royal Roads Military College]] in Victoria, BC until 1969, while also working on a doctorate in poetics at the University of Southern California in the summers of 1965 and 1966, and a 1966-67 leave of absence. He witnessed the 1965 [[Watts Riots]] from an apartment within the curfew zone, feeling more endangered, he indicates in 'Writing a Life' (99-100) and ''When TISH Happens'' (224), by the US National Guard than by the mostly black protesters. It seems very possible that this experience contributed to his later insistence in his political and cultural writings that the Canadian nation-state should be a collaboration open to the meaningful participation of all its citizens. In the fall of 1965 his third and fourth volumes of poetry were published. He also launched his poetry and criticism journal ''[[Open Letter]]'' that fall of 1965, designing it initially as an open editorial dialogue with former ''Tish'' editors Bowering and David Dawson. In the spring of 1968 he received his PhD, having presented a thesis on the poetics of the [[Black Mountain poets]].

In the spring of 1969 he was appointed Writer-in-Residence for 1969-70 at Sir George Williams (now Concordia) University in Montreal. The following year he joined the faculty of York University in Toronto to teach Canadian Literature and, amid teaching and research collaborations with [[Clara Thomas]] and [[Barbara Godard]],<ref>''When TISH Happens'' 285-6, 288.</ref> quickly assumed a nationally influential role. He published two poetry collections in each of 1970, 1971, and 1972, and a selected poems in 1972. He published a monograph on [[Earle Birney]] in 1971, and the widely praised ''From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature Since 1960'', the first book to theorize Canadian postmodernism, in 1974. But his most important contribution in these years was his withering critique, 'Surviving the Paraphrase,' of the thematic criticism of [[Northrop Frye]], [[D.G. Jones]] and [[Margaret Atwood]] which he delivered at the founding conference of the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures in the spring of 1974. That paper, in [[Stephen Scobie]]'s words 'a vastly influential essay',<ref>'Frank Davey' 276.</ref> almost immediately discredited thematic criticism in Canada and, forty years later, reverberates as well within Canadian postcolonial studies.<ref>See Laura Moss, 'Between Fractals and Rainbows: Critiquing Canadian Criticism,' ''Tropes and Territories'', ed. [[Marta Dvorak]] and [[W.H. New]]. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 2007. 22.</ref>

In 1976 he was appointed Coordinator of the York University creative writing program, and also joined, along with [[bpNichol]] and [[Michael Ondaatje]], the new editorial board of The Coach House Press. With the assistance of Nichol and [[Barbara Godard]], he was also expanding the pages and range of ''Open Letter'' to give attention to Québécois poets, women writers, and poststructuralist poetics, developing it into what [[Gregory Betts]] in ''The Canadian Encyclopedia'' would call 'Canada's most important forum for discussion and examination of innovative and experimental ideas and texts.'<ref>http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/frank-davey.</ref> In 1982 he helped conduct a month-long workshop in [[Dharwar]], India, for young academics many of whom became major contributors to Canadian Studies in that country. Here he wrote one of his most important long poems, the "brilliant poetic commentary on postcolonialism" <ref>Scobie, 'Frank Davey,' 276.</ref> ''The Abbotsford Guide to India'', published in 1986—one of six poetry books he published in the 1980s.<ref>'Writing a Life' 110-11</ref> That year he was also elected chair of the York University Department of English.<ref>'Writing a Life' 97-8.</ref> Two years earlier he had published the first study of [[Margaret Atwood]]'s feminism: ''Margaret Atwood: A Feminist Poetics.''

In 1990 he was named the first Carl F. Klinck Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Western Ontario (now Western University), in London, Ontario, and began a new writing phase in which he adapted discourse analysis to Canadian cultural studies, and examined various Canadian cultural scenes—from those of literary criticism to those of politics, celebrity, and popular crime writing. His new books included ''Post-National Arguments: The Politics of the Anglo-Canadian Novel since 1967'' (1993), ''Reading 'KIM' Right'' (1993), an analysis of the public persona of [[Kim Campbell]], Canada's first woman prime minister, ''Canadian Literary Power'' (1994), a study of how Canadian literary reputations are constructed and defended, ''Karla's Web: A Cultural Examination of the Mahaffy-French Murders'' (1994), an examination of how newspaper crime writing distorts both victims and criminal justice issues, ''Cultural Mischief: A Practical Guide to Multiculturalism'' (1996), a poetry collection that mocked both the sentimentalities of multiculturalism's proponents and the narcissism of its critics, and ''Mr & Mrs G-G'' (2002) an examination of Canadian Governor-General [[Adrienne Clarkson]] and her husband, writer [[John Ralston Saul]], that accused both of a pretentiousness that misrepresented and stifled actual Canadian realities. As Betts observes with some understatement, this was 'a critical stance that has occasionally put him into conflict with the Canadian literary establishment.' Its consequences are likely reflected in Davey's description in ''When TISH Happens'' of Canadian literary and academic prizes as institutional rewards for 'banality and careerism' (304). Meanwhile, in May 1994 he had been elected president of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE). That November he had led the Association in issuing a controversial and widely publicized 'caution' against the postsecondary education policies of the British Columbia government and the resulting working conditions and quality of education at its recently established University Colleges.<ref>''ACCUTE Newsletter'', December 1994: 20.</ref>