Earle Birney has created a unique memoir that spans four decades. By linking together book reviews, magazine articles, editorials, and radio broadcasts with reminiscences of his childhood, education, and early teaching and writing career, Birney presents the reader with an exciting view of the early days of modern Canadian literature. He writes of meeting and corresponding with Bliss Carmen, Raymond Souster, A.J.M. Smith, P.K. Page, Malcolm Lowry, Pierre Berton, George Woodcock, and James Reaney among others—a pantheon of Canadian writers.

Earle Birney was a poet, novelist, and playwright whose experimental instincts drove him to create some of Canada's most diverse and recognizable poetry, including the oft-anthologized 'Anglosaxon Street', and 'David', which is often considered the most popular Canadian poem of all time. Born in Calgary, Alberta, Birney was raised on a farm before embarking on an academic career, attending the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of London, where his interest in Old and Middle English led to a reputation as an accomplished scholar of medieval literature. After serving as a personnel officer in WWII, Birney took a professorship at the University of British Columbia, where he spent twenty years travelling, writing, and teaching. In 1965, Birney became the first Writer in Residence at the University of Toronto, mentoring new, up-and-coming poets and branching out into new and experimental forms.

Birney died in Toronto in 1995 after an impressive career spanning several decades, over twenty books of poetry, two Governor General's Awards, and several plays, novels, short stories, and works of non-fiction.

Earle Birney's profile page