Life
MacEwen was born in Toronto, Ontario. Her mother, Elsie, spent much of her life as a patient in mental health institutions. Her father, Alick, suffered from alcoholism. Gwendolyn MacEwen grew up in the High Park area of the city, and attended Western Technical-Commercial School.
Her first poem was published in The Canadian Forum when she was only 17, and she left school at 18 to pursue a writing career. By 18 she had written her first novel, Julian the Magician.
"She was small (5'4") and slight, with a round pale face, huge blue eyes usually rimmed in kohl (Egyptian eye shadow), and long dark straight hair."
Her first book of poetry, The Drunken Clock, was published in 1961. She married poet Milton Acorn, 19 years her senior, in 1962, although they divorced two years later.
She published over twenty books, in a variety of genres. She also wrote numerous radio docudramas for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), including a "much-admired radio drama", Terror and Erebus, in 1965.
With her second husband, Greek musician Niko Tsingos, MacEwen opened a Toronto coffeehouse, The Trojan Horse, in 1972. She and Tsingos translated some of the poetry of contemporary Greek writer Yiannis Ritsos (published in her 1981 book Trojan Women).
She taught herself to read Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and French, translated writers from each of those languages. In 1978 her translation of Euripides' drama The Trojan Women was first performed in Toronto.
She served as writer in residence at the University of Western Ontario in 1985, and the University of Toronto in 1986 and 1987.
MacEwen died in 1987, at the age of 46, of health problems related to alcoholism. She is buried in Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
Read more about this topic: Gwendolyn MacEwen
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“I want relations which are not purely personal, based on purely personal qualities; but relations based upon some unanimous accord in truth or belief, and a harmony of purpose, rather than of personality. I am weary of personality.... Let us be easy and impersonal, not forever fingering over our own souls, and the souls of our acquaintances, but trying to create a new life, a new common life, a new complete tree of life from the roots that are within us.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.”
—A.C. (Algernon Charles)
“There is ... an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.”
—William James (1842–1910)