Alan Crawley
Alan Crawley was a notable figure in Canadian literature and poetry, born on July 28, 1887, in Cobourg, Ontario, and later moving to Manitoba. After being apprenticed in law, he practiced for fifteen years until a severe eyesight condition, exacerbated by a disease in 1933, forced him to abandon his legal career. Despite this challenge, Crawley dedicated himself to his long-standing passion for modernist poetry, particularly the works of W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot, while actively engaging with the local literary community in Victoria, British Columbia.
Crawley's commitment to poetry led him to establish the journal *Contemporary Verse: A Canadian Quarterly* in 1941, which he directed for twelve years. The journal served as a platform for both emerging and established Canadian poets, contributing significantly to the postwar renaissance in Canadian literature. He played a vital role in nurturing and mentoring young writers, fostering a connection between modernist ideals and Canadian voices. *Contemporary Verse* ceased publication in 1952, but Crawley’s influence continued as he supported the growth of national literature until his passing on July 28, 1975. Despite never being a poet himself, Crawley's editorial work and passion for modernism helped shape the landscape of Canadian poetry.
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Alan Crawley
Poetry Editor
- Born: August 23, 1887
- Birthplace: Cobourg, Ontario, Canada
- Died: July 28, 1975
- Place of death: Cordova Bay, British Columbia, Canada
Biography
Although associated with western Canada, Alan Crawley was born in Cobourg, Ontario, on July 28, 1887. While he was quite young, his family relocated to the farm country outside Holland, Manitoba, where his father opened a small private bank. Crawley was educated at a prestigious boarding school but did not attend university. Instead, in 1905 he was apprenticed by a law firm in Winnipeg and was admitted to the practice in 1911. Poor eyesight prevented him from service in World War I, but Crawley continued to practice law for the next fifteen years. His interest in the arts, nurtured by a childhood love of books, was channeled into organizing local theatrical groups with his wife, Jean Horn.
In 1933, while summering on the shores of the Lake of the Woods, Crawley suffered from a disease that damaged his eyesight too severely for him to resume law. The Crawleys moved to Victoria, British Columbia, where Crawley resolved not to let his disability deter him from productive endeavors. Teaching himself Braille, he committed his considerable energy to his longtime passion: a love of modernist poetry, particularly the work of W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot, which had begun on a business trip to London before the war. He became active in the local literary community at a time when Canadian poetry was centered far away in Ontario. Crawley found that poetry guided by a leftist agenda was at odds with the cerebral modernist poetry he relished—poems that were formally inventive, stylistically direct, and rhythmically provocative. Determined to encourage such poetry and finding the area active with similarly- minded artists, Crawley scheduled readings, promoted lectures, and even gave readings on his own, his blindness no deterrence as he memorized the poems he loved.
In 1940, Crawley was approached by a small combine of western Canadian writers to direct a new poetry journal. He agreed, and in 1941 the first issue of Contemporary Verse: A Canadian Quarterly appeared. For the next twelve years, the journal, each issue only fourteen pages, introduced readers to both new and established Canadian talents. Many of the poets published in Contemporary Verse, including Doris Ferme, Dorothy Livesay, P. K. Page, and James Reaney, would become canonical voices in the postwar Canadian poetic renaissance that Crawley had so ambitiously envisioned — a renaissance in which indigenous writers would take their place with the finest voices in British and American modernism. Crawley also personally attended to the journal’s considerable correspondence, with the help of his wife, in which he advised a generation of struggling young writers. When the burgeoning market of literary presses cut significantly into the number of submissions, and Crawley feared the journal’s integrity might suffer, Contemporary Verse ceased publication in 1952 after thirty-nine issues.
Crawley and his wife retired to Cordova Bay on Vancouver Island. He died there on July 28, 1975. Never a poet, Crawley responded nevertheless to the sea change of modernism and championed its innovative agenda, while at the same time providing editorial guidance that helped build Canada’s national literature.