Louis Dudek

Louis Dudek, (February 6, 1918 – March 23, 2001) was a Canadian poet, academic, and publisher known for his role in defining Modernism in poetry, and for his literary criticism.

He was the author of over two dozen books.

In A Digital History of Canadian Poetry, writer Heather Prycz said that "As a critic, teacher and theoretician, Dudek influenced the teaching of Canadian poetry in most [Canadian] schools and universities".

Dudek was born in Montreal, Quebec, the son of Vincent and Stanislawa Dudek, part of an extended Catholic family which had emigrated from Poland, and was raised in that city's East End.

He was lean and sickly as a child, which made him introverted and unusually sensitive.

His mother died at 31, when he was eight.

Due to the family's financial limitations, Dudek dropped out of the High School of Montreal and went to work in a warehouse until, in 1936, his father was able to send him to college.

He entered McGill University in Montreal, where he became a reporter and associate editor for the McGill Daily.

He received his BA degree there in 1939.

Dudek went on to become a professor of English Literature at McGill University, a major figure in publishing and criticism, and was eventually recognized by being awarded the Greensheilds Chair as well as the Order of Canada.

He had one son with his wife Stephanie, Gregory Dudek, who also became a professor at McGill University.

After graduating, Dudek briefly freelanced in journalism and advertising.

He married Stephanie Zuperko on September 16, 1941, with whom he had one son, Gregory Dudek (a professor of computer science and former director of the McGill University School of Computer Science).

During this time Louis Dudek "was prominent among the poets who participated in First Statement (1942-1945), a seminal 'little magazine' in the development of modern Canadian literature."

With John Sutherland, the magazine's editor, and poet Irving Layton, he "fought hard to foster a native tradition in poetry and establish new ways of writing in Canada, pioneering a direct style that articulated experience in plain language."

The Dudeks moved to New York City in 1943, where he began graduate studies in journalism and history at Columbia University, and soon changed his major to literature.

In 1944, some of his poems appeared in the anthology Unit of Five, alongside poetry by Ronald Hambleton, P. K. Page, Raymond Souster and James Wreford.

His own first book of poetry, East of the City, was issued by Toronto's Ryerson Press in 1946.

Dudek began corresponding with modernist poet Ezra Pound in 1949, and met Pound in person the next year, who encouraged Dudek to adopt a more cosmopolitan approach to his writing.

By the early 1950s the Dudeks' marriage was ending.

Throughout the 1950s Dudek remained "a passionate admirer and defender" of Ezra Pound.

He returned to Montreal and joined the Department of English at McGill University in 1951, where he remained for the rest of his life.

In 1952 Dudek founded Contact Press with Raymond Souster and Irving Layton.

Its first book was Cerberus, an anthology by the three of them.

Contact Press went on to publish "most of the important Canadian poets of the fifties and sixties."

Dudek also worked on the little magazine CIV/n ("Civilation"), founded in 1953 and edited by Aileen Collins.

Dudek published his first long poem, Europe, in 1954.

In 1956 Dudek began the McGill Poetry Series, a series of chapbooks by McGill students published by Contact Press.

The first in the series, printed in 1956, was Let Us Compare Mythologies, the first book from Leonard Cohen.

In 1957 the series included The Carnal and the Crane, the first book by Daryl Hine.

In 1957 Dudek began Delta, his own poetry magazine, featuring "the work of many promising new poets" until 1966.

He bought a press, installed it in his basement, and learned how to run it to print the magazine's early issues, as well as his 1958 book Laughing Stalks. In his own writing he continued to explore the possibilities of long poems, writing Transparent Sea in 1956 and En Mexico in 1958.

His efforts contributed to Pound's release in 1958 from St. Elizabeth's mental hospital, where Pound had been confined since 1946.

His doctoral dissertation, Literature and the Press, was published in 1960.

After receiving his PhD, he taught at New York's City College.

In New York, Dudek continued to contribute poems to First Statement and its successor, Northern Review.

At odds with literary trends in the early 1960s, Dudek concentrated on teaching and writing his long poem Atlantis (published in 1967).

In 1966 he founded Delta Canada Books with Michael Gnarowski and Glen Siebrasse, which published more than 30 titles between 1966 and 1971, including Dudek's Collected Poems (1971).

He became Greenshield Professor of English in 1969, and Professor Emeritus in 1984.

His colleague Brian Trehearne remembered him as a "gifted and natural lecturer" who taught "one of the most popular and challenging courses in the history of the Faculty of Arts."