Kay Smith (1911-2004)
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New Brunswick poet Kay Smith was well acquainted with the leading Canadian modernists. Her work appeared in major literary magazines and in six volumes of verse.
30 April 1911, Saint John, NB
18 September 2004, Hampton, NB
Name at birth:
Clara Kathleen Smith
Alternate names:
C. Kathleen Smith
C. Kay Smith
Clara Smith
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Professor A. Elizabeth McKim of St. Thomas University (Fredericton, NB) for sharing her knowledge of Kay Smith’s life and work, most particularly in regards to questions about her first published poem,
Twilight Garden, appearing in the Buffalo Sunday Times. Thanks also to David Mawhinney, University Archivist at Mount Allison University, for providing Kay Smith’s graduation records.
Entry written by Alison McDonald
Kay Smith (1911-2004)
A life-long participant in creative and dramatic arts in Canada, Clara Kathleen (“Kay”) Smith was born in St. John, NB, on 30 April 1911. A modernist poet, Kay is believed to have published her first poem,
Twilight Garden, at the age of 14, for a contest sponsored by the Buffalo Sunday Times. She studied drama and theatre at both Mount Allison University and Columbia University, where she reportedly excelled in Columbia’s drama workshops during the summer of 1934. Due to financial constraints associated with the Depression, Kay was unable to remain in New York, and returned to New Brunswick. She became involved with the Little Theatre movement, joining the Saint John Theatre Guild in 1934 and participating in a variety of amateur productions until the end of the decade.
A passionate teacher, Kay began her lengthy teaching career at Alma College, a private girls’ school in St. Thomas, ON, in 1940, where she specialized in English and drama. In 1942, she returned to Saint John to take a position at Saint John Vocational School, where she taught English and Drama until her retirement in 1972. There, her role as director of the school’s annual Shakespeare play, at its inception the only regular Shakespeare production in New Brunswick, made her a well-known figure throughout the province. Following her official retirement from teaching, Kay continued to influence New Brunswick’s literary and dramatic communities through workshops in Saint John schools, the Maritime Writers’ Workshop in Fredericton (1979, 1980, 1982), and later at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, where she twice taught several workshops in creative writing (1986, 1990). While her acting ambitions in New York may have been hampered by the Depression, her career as a poet seems to have benefitted from it. Kay was not the only local artist prevented from pursuing a career in a larger centre, and the 1930s saw a vibrant artistic community develop in Saint John. Kay became part of a group that included, among others, the noted Canadian poet and artist P.K. Page (1916-2010). Kay, P.K., and “newspaper woman” Jean Sweet (1904-1978) formed a poetry writing group that met every two weeks during the late 1930s. They eventually joined the Canadian Authors Association, where Kay and P.K. met the poet Anne Marriott (1913-1997), and which led to an introduction to Alan Crawley (1887-1975), editor of
Contemporary Verse. While teaching in Ontario, Kay also met poets A.J.M. Smith (1902-1980), F.R. Scott (1899-1985), Earle Birney (1904-1995), and E.J. Pratt (1882-1964), editor of the Canadian Poetry Magazine, whom she found particularly encouraging. In the 1940s, Kay’s work began to appear in Canadian poetry magazines such as The Fiddlehead, Contemporary Verse, Canadian Poetry Magazine, and Montreal’s First Statement, an important connection, as her first volume of poetry, Footnote to the Lord’s Prayer and Other Poems (1951), was published by First Statement Press.
Along with P.K. Page, Kay was a contributor to Canada’s emerging Little Magazine culture and, as a woman, was subject to its “masculinist literary-historical discourse” and gender-specific attacks on her work. Even so, connections and influences from this important period of Canadian literary history are evident in Kay’s poetry, for she was a modernist poet, whose work often built around “precise and sometimes startling images ... seeking connection–with nature, with other humans, or with God–from a stance of self-conscious alienation.” Her work thus “displays the metaphysical impulse common to the early modernists, as she attempts, with obscure and disconnected images and syntactical inversions, to convey her perceptions about human existence.” In 1962, a substantial number of her newer poems were collected in
Fiddlehead’s Five New Brunswick Poets, which was followed in 1971 by her second volume of poetry, At the Bottom of the Dark. In 1978, she published When a Girl Looks Down, a “large (but incomplete) collection,” but one in which she speaks “candidly and evocatively about female sexuality.” In 1980, The League of Canadian Poets published her Again with Music: Seven Poems. In 1987, Kay’s The Bright Particulars appeared, a collection of both earlier and new poems; that same year her chapbook White Paper Face in the Window was also published. Kay continued to publish new poems regularly in the University of New Brunswick’s literary magazine, The Cormorant, well into the 1990s, and served on its editorial board from 1987 until 1998.
In 1988, Kay received an Honourary Doctorate of Letters from the University of New Brunswick, and in 1991 her important contributions to poetry and the arts in New Brunswick were recognized when she was awarded the Alden Nolan Award from the Province of New Brunswick (1991). In 1992,
The Cormorant devoted a special issue to her life and work. Kay was a Life Member of the League of Canadian Poets. She died on 18 September, 2004, in Hampton, NB.
Published Texts
Poetry
Footnote to the Lord's Prayer, and Other Poems (Montreal: First Statement, 1951)
At the Bottom of the Dark (Fredericton, NB: Fiddlehead, 1972)
When a Girl Looks Down (Fredericton, NB: Fiddlehead, 1978)
Again With Music, Seven Poems (Toronto: League of Canadian Poets, 1980)
The Bright Particulars: Poems Selected and New (Charlottetown, PEI: Ragweed, 1987)
White Paper Face in the Window (Saint John, NB: Purple Wednesday Society, 1987)
Periodical Contributions
Canadian Poetry Magazine (Toronto)
Chatelaine (Toronto)
Contemporary Verse
The Cormorant (Fredericton, NB)
The Fiddlehead (Fredericton, NB)
First Statement (Montreal, QC)
Sunday Times (Buffalo, NY)
Other Publications
Anthologized in:
Fiddlehead’s Five New Brunswick Poets (Fredericton, NB: Fiddlehead, 1962).
Gustafson, Ralph, ed. A Little Anthology of Canadian Poets (Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1943).
Sutherland, John, ed. Other Canadians: An Anthology of the New Poetry in Canada, 1940-1946 (Montreal: First Statement, 1947).
Other Artistic Productions
Music
Again with Music (Spring 2006)—composed by Aimee Velle, score and sound recording
Changing Illusions (1996)—compiled by Richard Kidd. The CD includes seven poems by Kay Smith performed by soprano Janet Kidd.
Selections of Smith’s poetry were set to music by Stella Goude and performed by Jessica McCormack at Portland United Church in 1999; Barry Snodgrass produced the concert.
Family and Relationships
Father: Charles Weber Smith (28 January 1873 – 1949)
Charles Weber Smith was born to Robert H. Smith and Harriet E. Anderson in Carleton, NB, on 28 January 1873. In 1897, he married Margaret (“Maggie”) Mirey (1874-1964) in Saint John, NB. They had two children: Llewellyn Weber (1901-1910) and Clara Kathleen (1911-2004). Smith reportedly worked as a manager for a fuel and coal business and as a fish merchant, running Smith’s Fish Market in Saint John, NB. He died in 1949.
Mother: Margaret Mirey (10 May 1874 – 1964)
Margaret (“Maggie”) Mirey was born in Saint John, NB, the daughter of Benjamin Mirey and Mary Ann Holland. On 16 June 1897, Maggie married Charles Weber Smith, in Saint John, NB. In 1901, she gave birth to her first child: a son, Llewellyn Weber (1901-1910). Tragically, Llewellyn died shortly before their daughter, Clara Kathleen (1911-2004), was born in 1911. Maggie lived all of her life in the Saint John, NB area. She died in 1964.
Siblings
Llewellyn Weber Smith (25 February 1901 – 8 August 1910)
Llewellyn died of sunstroke and heart failure.
Religion
Baptist
Residences
New York (1934)
Saint John, NB (1911-1940, 1942-2004)
St. Thomas, ON (1940-1942)
Education
Saint John High School (1928)
Mount Allison Ladies College (Diploma in Oratory, 1933)
summer courses at Columbia University (1934)
Awards
Honourary Doctor of Letters (University of New Brunswick ,1988))
City of Moncton Award for “having published the best book in English by a New Brunswick writer in the preceding five years” (Moncton, NB, 1990))
Alden Nolan Award (Province of New Brunswick, 1991))
Special issue on her life and work (The Cormorant, 1992))
Employment and Volunteer Activities
Employment
Ran a nursery school prior to her teaching career
Schoolteacher
Unpaid and volunteer work
Editorial Board,
The Cormorant (1987-1998)
Memberships
Canadian Authors Association
League of Canadian Poets
Saint John Theatre Guild
Tangential Information
According to Kay, the first poem she had published, “Twilight Garden,” was as a result of a contest she entered at the age of 14 sponsored by the
Buffalo Sunday Times. Subsequent research has been unable to locate a copy of the poem in issues of the paper from 1925, suggesting that the author may have mis-remembered the date. Smith attests to its publication in two interviews: one was published in The Cormorant (1983); the other, with Peter Gzowski, aired on CBC radio’s Morningside in 1988. Artist Carole Taylor, a former student and friend of Smith’s who maintains a website in her honour, claims that Smith first published in Chatelaine, although no publication information is given.
Archival Holdings
Kay Smith’s papers are held by her executor, Mary Lou Joyce, of Saint John, New Brunswick.
Published Resources
1901 Census of Canada.
1911 Census of Canada.
Acadia, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1670-1946.
C. Kay Smith. New Brunswick Educators. School Days Museum. Fredericton, New Brunswick. Web. 11 Feb. 2013.
Djwa, Sandra. Journey With No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2012).
Enright, Robert. Interview with Kay Smith. Modern Canadian Poets. Audiocassette (Toronto: League of Canadian Poets, 1982).
Gerson, Carole and Jacques Michon, eds. History of the Book in Canada, Volume Three: 1918-1980(Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2007).
Good, Jackie. An Unlikely Time, An Unlikely Place: Interview with Kay Smith. CBC. 17 August 1980—transcript reprinted in The Cormorant 9.2 (1992): 39- 54.
Gzowski, Peter. Interview with Kay Smith. Morningside. CBC, Toronto. 10 May 1988.
Interview with Kay Smith. The Cormorant 1.2 (1983): 10-14.
Irvine, Dean. Editing Modernity: Women and Little-Magazine Cultures in Canada, 1916-1956 (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2008).
McKim, A. Elizabeth. Kay Smith. New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia. 2011. Web. 20 July 2012.
New, W.H. “Alan Crawley (23 August 1887-28 July 1975).” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 68: Canadian Writers, 1920-1959, First Series (Detroit, MI: Gale, 1988): 86-88.
Rose, Marilyn and Erica Kelly, eds. Kay Smith, 1911-2004. Canadian Women Poets. Web. 9 March 2012.
RS141A1b: Index to Late Registration of Births (Smith, Clara Kathleen). Provincial Archives of New Brunswick: Vital Statistics from Government Records (RS141). Web. 2 December 2012.
RS141C4: Provincial Returns of Deaths (Smith, Llewelyn W.). Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, Vital Statistics from Government Records (RS141). 21 May 2013.
Stewart-Robertson, Tristan. Kay Smith, Poet. Web. 20 July 2012.
Taylor, Carol. Kay Smith, Canadian Poet. Web. 20 July 2012.