Wilfred Watson
Wilfred Watson was an influential English-Canadian poet and playwright, born in 1911 in Rochester, England. He immigrated to Duncan, British Columbia, at the age of fifteen and pursued higher education, earning a B.A. from the University of British Columbia and advanced degrees from the University of Toronto. Watson served in the Canadian Navy during World War II and began his academic career at the University of British Columbia before moving to the University of Alberta, where he taught until retirement. His literary debut came with the publication of "Friday's Child" in 1955, a collection of poems that reflected modern poetry traditions while hinting at his experimental style.
Watson's work was notably shaped by his exposure to the Theater of the Absurd, which influenced his satirical plays addressing contemporary societal issues, including the Vietnam War. His experimental approach extended to poetry, employing innovative formats to convey multiple voices. Throughout his career, Watson received several accolades, including the Governor General's Award for "Friday's Child." He continued to impact the literary landscape until his passing in 1998, recognized for his unique contributions to both drama and poetry that offered critical commentary on social and political life.
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Wilfred Watson
Playwright
- Born: May 1, 1911
- Birthplace: Rochester, England
- Died: January 1, 1998
Biography
Wilfred Watson was born in Rochester, England, in 1911. He immigrated with his family, including his father, Frederick Walter, a sailor in the Royal Navy, and his mother, Louisa Clayton Watson, to Duncan, British Columbia, when he was fifteen. He earned a B.A. with honors from the University of British Columbia in 1943, as well as an M.A. in 1946 and a Ph.D. in 1951 from the University of Toronto.
Watson served in the Canadian navy during World War II. He married Sheila Martin Doherty in 1941; his wife later published novels and short stories under the name Sheila Watson. Wilfred Watson began teaching at the University of British Columbia in 1949. He moved in 1951 to the Calgary campus of the University of Alberta and then to the Edmonton campus in 1954, where he remained a professor of English until his retirement.
His writing career began with publication of Friday’s Child (1955), a collection of poems. While these poems gained a positive critical reception as reflective of the best in the modern poetry tradition, they also hinted at the experimental and satiric edge that would come to characterize his work. At the time the collection was published, Watson received a fellowship in Paris, where he discovered the Theater of the Absurd. This genre as well as the theories of Marshall McLuhan, with whom he would collaborate on From Cliché to Archetype a decade later, shaped the direction of the main body of his work. His play O Holy Ghost, Dip Your Finger in the Blood of Canada, and Write, I Love You, produced in 1967, satirizes many of the issues of the day, including both the Vietnam War and its protestors. Other plays, such as Cockcrow and the Gulls, satirize twentieth century society, particularly the way it is popularized and described by the media; Wail for Two Pedestals satirizes Theater of the Absurd itself.
Watson’s verse takes an experimental turn as well. He employs space and typeface to add the sense of multiple voices in his collection The Sorrowful Canadians, and Other Poems. I Begin with Counting continues this innovation by using a number grid format, a form even more suggestive of multiple voices. Mass on Cowback further explores the effects of this technique.
Experimentation in poetry fed Watson’s dramatic creations, especially in his trilogy of plays about Italian Marxist intellectual Antonio Gramsci, who died from abuse received during imprisonment in a Fascist prison camp. Using satire and infusing dramatic traditions from Greek tragedy to modern drama, these three plays describe a life and a political milieu while presenting social commentary as well. Watson’s work provoked lively and interested critical response, even when it was not always fully understood by audiences and critics, but appreciation for his radical forms soon waned.
His collection Friday’s Child received the Governor General’s Award and the Art Council of Britain Prize in 1956. His play The Necklace was awarded the President’s Medal of Western Ontario in 1961. Watson died in 1998. An innovator in drama and verse, Watson commented, through form as well as content, on the social and political life of his times.