About Alfred Bailey
Alfred Goldsworthy Bailey, born March 18, 1905 in Quebec City and died April 21, 1997 in Fredericton at the age of 92, is a Canadian poet, anthropologist, ethnologist, journalist and historian of Quebec origin. He was described as “the creator of ethnohistory in Canada” and as one of the country's first modernist poets. A cultural historian by training and education, he published his first book of poems, Songs of the Saguenay & Other Poems, in 1927, privately printed. That book would not have been enough to garner him a reputation, however, in its neo-Georgian forms. It was his second full collection, Border River, not published until 1952, with its metaphysical bent and turn against his Georgian beginnings, that left a lasting impression. Most remarkable about Bailey is the aversion in his poems to the popular rhetorical mannerisms of modernism, all the while maintaining a form that is infinitely modern: a rare achievement that has cemented his importance. His voice is unique in Canada, the historian coming through clearly but without any sense of didacticism. As a poet, he helped to found Canada’s oldest literary magazine the important journal The Fiddlehead in 1945; as a cultural historian, he helped to create important cultural and intellectual bonds between universities along the east coast of Canada and south into the United States: a lasting legacy left in both realms. He served as the first head of the University of New Brunswick History Department (1938-69), was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1951, and an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1978. His poetry books are currently out of print.Browse all poems and texts published on Alfred Bailey
