01.03.18

Malcolm Lowry Dérive: Genuine glee on Malcolm's face here. With the pier behind him we can only guess he is holding a satisfying volume if not an edition of Under the Volcano, freshly minted.

"Suppose you land in Vancouver, as seems reasonable. So far not so good. McGoff didn't have much use for modern Vancouver. According to him it has a sort of Pango Pango quality mingled with sausage and mash and generally a rather Puritan atmosphere. Everyone fast asleep and when you prick them a Union Jack flows out of the the hole. But no one in a certain sense lives there. They merely as it were pass through. Mine the country and quit. Blast the land to pieces, knock down the trees and send them rolling down the Burrard Inlet... As for drinking, by the way, that is beset," only beer parlours so uncomfortable and cold that serve beer so weak no self-respecting drunkard would show his nose in them. You have to drink at home, and when you run short it's too far to get a bottle-"

- from Under the Volcano 

 

The symmetry is pleasing, and the adoration they had for each other, endearing.  Worth the double take. Shoreline bohemians that embraced squalls and solitude in equal measure. Such shacks lining the sliver of land around Roche Point were numerous. The great Canadian poet, Earle Birney, had a waterfront stilted shack nearby. Curt Lang was a visitor. Al Purdy frequented. There were others, most welcome. Here stands Birney and Lowry in 1947:

 Bushed

He invented a rainbow but lightning struck it
shattered it into the lake-lap of a mountain
so big his mind slowed when he looked at it
Yet he built a shack on the shore
learned to roast porcupine belly and
wore the quills on his hatband
At first he was out with the dawn
whether it yellowed bright as wood-columbine
or was only a fuzzed moth in a flannel of storm
But he found the mountain was clearly alive
sent messages whizzing down every hot morning
boomed proclamations at noon and spread out
a white guard of goat
before falling asleep on its feet at sundown
When he tried his eyes on the lake ospreys
would fall like valkyries
choosing the cut-throat
He took then to waiting
till the night smoke rose from the boil of the sunset
But the moon carved unknown totems
out of the lakeshore
owls in the beardusky woods derided him
moosehorned cedars circled his swamps and tossed
their antlers up to the stars
then he knew though the mountain slept the winds
were shaping its peak to an arrowhead
poised
And now he could only
bar himself in and wait
for the great flint to come singing into his heart

 - Earle Birney, 1951