Richard Outram

Richard Outram

Richard Outram, poet (born at Port Hope, Ont 9 April 1930; died there 21 January 2005). Richard Outram is often cited as an essential contributor to Canadian POETRY from the second half of the 20th century. His thematic collections, such as Benedict Abroad and Hiram and Jenny, are significant examples of contemporary English-language dramatic poetry. In partnership with his wife, the artist Barbara Howard, he produced numerous broadsides and ephemera through their Gauntlet Press, the papers of which are housed in public collections in sixteen institutions including Harvard University, the New York Public Library, and university libraries in four Canadian provinces.

Roots, Influences

Through his maternal grandfather, Richard Outram's family had a major role in the founding of the UNITED CHURCH OF CANADA. After a youth spent in Port Hope and Leaside, Ontario, he received his education at the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO (BA Honours), where his teachers included the critic Northrop FRYE. Outram's public admiration of Frye lasted throughout both men's lives, culminating in the former student writing a eulogy for his mentor for the GLOBE AND MAIL in 1991.

Trade Collections

During his lifetime Richard Outram produced ten commercially available collections of poetry, beginning in 1966 with Exsultate, Jubilate (MacMillan) and culminating in 2001 with Dove Legend and Other Poems (The Porcupine's Quill), which was followed posthumously by South of North: Images of Canada (The Porcupine's Quill, 2007). Many of these books were characterized by a consistent narrative or speaker, often telling single, complicated stories rooted in history or myth. A prime example of this can be seen in his Mogul, Recollected (1993), which retells the 1836 drowning of a circus elephant off the coast of New Brunswick using a vocal palette that includes trainers, the circus owner and the elephant itself. The book serves as a running counterpoint to the mythology of Noah's Ark while also taking time to comment on the poetry collection as an ideal and the romanticizing of history in both poetry and prose. This commitment to examining storytelling as well as examining the story, and drawing in allusions from across the historical and mythopoetic canon, firmly establishes Outram as an author working under the system of aesthetic values espoused by Frye, his idol.

Outram is rightfully remembered for this ability to harness the narrative potential of poetry in collections that plot their arcs in single-poem episodes, such as he did in Mogul, Recollected and the love story of Hiram and Jenny (1989). However, beyond the larger constructions of the book, he is also known as a master planner of the line, with a palette broad enough to hold everything from arch-traditionalist rhyming meter to free verse. Still, his appreciation for traditional elements and his disinterest in an explicitly politicized Canadian identity often isolated him from the major movements of Canadian poetry during his lifetime. This division was repaired somewhat later in his career with major critical and creative retrospectives like those organized by Peter Sanger and Ingrid Ruthig, and the awarding of the City of Toronto Book Award to his thematic sequence Benedict Abroad (St. Thomas Poetry Series, 1999). All the while, Outram's work had garnered accolades beyond Canadian borders. The critic Alberto Manguel praised him in 1988 as one of "the best poets writing in English."

The Gauntlet Press: Chapbooks, Broadsides, Ephemera

Beyond the more conventional publication history told in his trade collections lies Outram's long-standing involvement, with his wife Barbara Howard, in Gauntlet Press. Gauntlet Press produced numerous broadsides, chapbooks and small printed matter featuring words by Outram and wood engravings by Howard. Beginning with an Adana HQ flatbed tabletop press in 1960, the couple produced work steadily for more than forty years, until Howard's death in 2002. Many Canadian universities feature extensive collections from Gauntlet Press, and Outram's work with his wife is always a part of the discussion when framing and evaluating his work.