Toronto-born poet Yerra Sugarman has won a prestigious American literary award for a debut collection of poems, Forms of Gone, that captures the experience of being a daughter of Holocaust survivors growing up in a survivor community in north Toronto. A university instructor who has lived in New York for more than 20 years, Sugarman…
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Simchovitch’s Fiery Mountain
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Readers of the Yiddish Forward may have noticed several published notices in the New York-based newspaper a while ago congratulating Toronto poet and writer Simcha (Sam) Simchovitch for passing the milestone of his 85th birthday. Simchovitch is known as one of Canada’s senior Yiddish writers, yet he’s also achieved recognition for his literary contributions in…
Two by Sherman: Clusters and The Well
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The author of nine books of poetry including the recent Clusters, Kenneth Sherman has received considerable critical recognition, yet he acknowledges he still labors in relative obscurity in an age when the public has lost much of its passion for poetry. The Toronto writer teaches English composition at Sheridan College and creative writing at York…
Libby Scheier’s “seething inferno of words”
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In “Why Poems Should Not Be Fictions,” one of the pieces in Libby Scheier’s Kaddish For My Father: New and Selected Poems, 1970-1999 (ECW Press, 1999), the Toronto poet seems to imply that there’s already too much artifice in the world and that the poet should perform her art unmasked, without resorting to a narrative…
Mayne’s September Rain
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One needs a “strong sense of perseverance” to be a poet, says Seymour Mayne, the Ottawa professor and wordsmith whose recent slim volume September Rain (Mosaic Press) is the 29th book of poetry he’s published since 1964 — “ken eina hora, almost 41 years ago.” Educated at the Talmud Torah in his native Montreal, Mayne…
Former Yiddish Theatre may become heritage site
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Toronto city councilors are set to debate a recommendation this week from the City Hall heritage department to designate the former Standard Theatre at Dundas and Spadina — a once-thriving Yiddish theatre that later became the Victory movie house and burlesque palace — as a heritage site worthy of limited protection. Since its last incarnation…
Obit: Harry Rasky, Film Pioneer (2007)
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Known for his award-winning cinematic portraits of such iconic artists as Marc Chagall, Tennessee Williams, Leonard Cohen, Henry Moore, Yousuf Karsh, Arthur Miller and George Bernard Shaw, Toronto-based documentary filmmaker Harry Rasky has died in Toronto at age 78. A co-founder of the news-documentary department of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Rasky made more than 50…
Chaim Grade letters find home in YIVO
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Readers of Jewish literature will be interested to know that a cache of about 50 letters by Lithuanian-born novelist and poet Chaim Grade (1910-1982) have surfaced in Toronto. The letters belong to Sally Eisner, a longtime North York resident who, together with her late husband Leon Eisner, was a close friend of the New York-based…
Kvetching All the Way to the Bank
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With two new books in print to follow his 2005 bestseller Born to Kvetch, and enjoying a new popularity with Jewish audiences who delight in his erudite knowledge of Yiddish, Toronto writer Michael Wex can no longer be said to be languishing in obscurity. In the round fullness of middle age, the Lethbridge-born Yiddishist put…
Historic plaque for Kensington Market
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Several hundred people attended a plaquing ceremony in the Kensington Market area on Sunday May 25 as a plaques was unveiled designating the once-Jewish neighbourhood in downtown Toronto as a national historic site. The event was sponsored by Parks Canada and included speeches by important delegates, including the Hon. Jason Kenney, secretary of state for…
