What’s a sensitive writer to do with his poetry?
Why, put it in boxes, of course.
At least this one did: for 50-odd years; plays and essays and novels too.
Never mind that his poetry won him a place in famous Canadian poet Earl Birney’s coveted poetry course at UBC in the late 1940s.
Never mind that he made his living writing for radio and TV for CBC and others for about 15 years in the 50s and 60s.
Never mind that he edited his famous brother Arthur’s book on architecture. Boxes were good enough for him, at least until now.
His daughter (that’s me) decided to create a website for him and pushed him to uncrate his work.
I had no idea how much there was. We’re still finding more, but now we have 128 poems, 18 plays, two full-length novels, and a number of essays and stories on the website.
We’ve recorded him reading his poems, and you can hear that on the website too at oderickson.com. His works range from lighthearted and silly to complex and even sublime (he would certainly cringe at that word), and some contain political and social commentary.
His radio play, Giselle, is about an aboriginal girl impregnated by an Englishman and was rejected by CBC for its subject matter. He believes that it was another radio play, Danton, that got him unofficially but effectively black-listed by CBC in the wake of the McCarthy era. His most recent novel, Damien, is a thriller based on genetic modification, and is more than a little shocking in places.
ODE is his name — Oscar Donald Erickson —and he’ll be presenting Damien on Sunday, August 3, at 7 p.m. at The Gallery.
