Literary Gratitude

By Richard Harrison

A few years ago, I was on a WordFest panel around the theme “Your Governor-General’s Crush.” As well as readings from their published work, each panelist read an original piece about a previous winner of the award who’d influenced us in some way, or whom we just admired, even from the page alone. I chose Patrick Lane.

Of course I did. As anyone who has heard me speak of him knows, Patrick is right up there with my father in terms of teaching me how to love the sound of the poem, and with Gerard Manley Hopkins and Sharon Olds (among others) in terms of giving me the incentive to put in the years it takes to learn how to write one. This was 2017, and I was in the last stages of coming to understand everything that Patrick meant to me in terms of what he wrote and how he handled my youthful idolatry towards him from the day I met him in 1978. 

I was an undergrad at Trent University, and had been invited to Patrick’s reading. In the kind of conversation small university life is famous for, I had told the principal of the college 

that even though I was a science student, I always had a love for poetry. I think I had published a few poems in the student newspaper. The Senior Common Room was a small space, comfortable and intimate, and I sat directly in front of Patrick who was reading from Poems: New and Selected that had just won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry.  Patrick’s poems sculpted severed hands and baleful gazes into words that haunted with their beauty. I had come to poetry through the poetry that entertained the British in me. It was a poetry meant for a people whose drama played out either indoors or on the battlefield. Patrick’s was the poetry of a Canadian wilderness into which people did their best to make a living until it swallowed them. His poetry wasn’t from my world, but it was from a world that lived side by side with it, and so it taught me I could write from mine. Everything changed. 

I worked with Patrick once after that, a few years later, at a writing retreat in the Blue Mountains of Collingwood. I handed him a poem that was too much a copy of his to show what I’d learned to write, it only showed what I’d learned to imitate. When I look on it now, I see that young man’s writing as going through an essential phase, but Patrick did not want to be idolized. Patrick refused to talk about it. I was hurt, and it took me a long time, but because of who he had been to me, I needed to figure out what it meant that the person who taught me to treat every line of a poem as a poem itself, and that poetry is the work of obsession, said nothing. He was telling me, in no words, that people can only speak to me if I am genuinely myself with them. Everything needed to change more. 

As Patrick would admit himself, he was often a hard man on the people around him. The injured often are, and for most of his life, Patrick’s great beauty as a poet sprung directly from his wounds. But through his own hard work and his relationship with Lorna Crozier, also one of Canada’s most respected poets, he found his peace with himself and with those who would make peace with him. In the end, after years of not speaking with one another after Blue Mountain, I became one of those. 

On my way to that peace, for that WordFest night, I wrote a thank you to him for all that he had done to help shape who I was and what I’d written. At the time I knew that I had won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry that year, but I had to keep it a secret until the Canada Council announced the full slate of winners at the end of that month. So what I was writing, though at the time only I knew it, was my thanks to him as one GG-winner who owed what he’d achieved to the inspiration of another whose influence began almost 40 years before. 

Lorna was with me on that panel. She offered to take a copy of my talk to Patrick, and a little while later, he got in touch with me to thank me for what I had read out loud that night. It meant a lot to him. And of course, that he took the time to thank me meant a nice big slice of the world to me, too. Then, more than that, he opened up to me in a way he never had, and he shared his disappointment at how often he’d not been thanked, how often he felt his contribution to people’s work had been ignored.

I was shocked. All I’d heard from others was how great an influence Patrick had been to them. But then I thought I’d only heard the ones who spoke, not the ones who didn’t, and Patrick had been a mentor, teacher, editor, and workshop leader for decades: he’d influenced hundreds and I was one of them. But even I had waited until the very last opportunity, the result of the lucky bounce that got me on that panel, to thank him publicly, out in the open. That made a difference. Still, in Patrick’s disappointment, I heard my father telling me what I now see as the saddest thing he told me he’d learned from life: “You can only teach people to be ungrateful.” 

My father died in 2011. But I still talk things through with him from time to time. 

“So, Dad,” I say now, “setting aside that bit about ‘only,’ if you can teach people to be ungrateful, then you can teach them the opposite. In fact, I think people want not just to receive the gratitude of others that they often don’t, they want to feel gratitude towards others, and be able to express their thanks. What they don’t always know is how. If gratitude is a relationship that people desire to be good, they can learn how to become good at it. All we have to do is open up the discussion.” To which my father replies, “It’s harder than you think.” 

He’s right. Gratitude, acknowledgement, particularly when it is missing in the few times we set aside for its appearance in print or out loud, is a very hard topic to raise, because it can only come up between people whose acknowledgement you have to confess you care about — or even might need. To admit you care about its absence is to admit your vulnerability. And there’s a twist, like a screwcap that keeps discussion of the topic inside: we think of gratitude as something that, once asked for, can never be given, or received, without being made less sincere. All that taken into account, it does seem better to avoid the risks and let expressions of gratitude come when and if they come quote-unquote naturally or not at all. Or, as Dear Abby once suggested in a newspaper column I think I read when I was ten years old, maybe don’t do anything again for which an expression of gratitude is the proper answer when the last time you did it, that answer did not come. 

But Abby’s advice leaves everything as unsatisfying as it clearly has been for two of the most important people in my life. I do not want anyone to feel about their work – or other people – the way Patrick did in that respect, or to conclude what my father left as his final, condemning word on the subject. And so I arrive at the hardest of the hard parts: I’ve felt what Patrick felt. I’ve been tempted by my father’s conclusion. If I walked away now from the editing and workshopping work that I’ve done, I could still say I disagreed with my father, but I couldn’t say he didn’t have a point. And what good comes of that? 

The strangest part about all this is how it only took a few instances over a short time to get me to feel what they felt, and to be fair, I did try Abby’s advice. I stepped back and thought about what it would be like to stay out, but I didn’t like it. I think of myself as someone who’d always rather teach than retreat. And I realized, somewhere in all this thinking, that I have never taught what I know about lineage and public acknowledgement, and that the omission on my part – as Frost wrote, owning those words forever after – has made all the difference. 

So it’s time to do some work. By and large, editors don’t get enough public credit for their work, even from publishers. In Calgary, where I live, I’ve been working with my friend and colleague Micheline Maylor to correct this, and now in books from Frontenac House, you’ll find the name of the Series or Book Editor, or both, on the same page as you’ll find the names of those to be credited with Book Design and Author Photo. You’ll find the same now in books from Wolsak & Wynn, and I’ve been informed that Dundurn Press does so as well. These are new practices, and these houses (and those like them) deserve thanks for taking them up. That acknowledgement used to be left to the vagaries of the author’s sense of debt and appropriate wording – and not all of that has been kind or accurate. Time and time again the pattern has repeated itself: editors are the elves in the workshop. There’s this agreement that happens the way all silent agreements are made: without a word, things are just done in a certain way.

But it’s worth speculating why. I think that part of the motivation for the invisible editor is the idea of the necessary solitude and exclusive relationship between artist and art, particularly the art of words, which leave no trace of the mind who brought them to the page. As anyone who teaches Creative Writing knows, the anxiety of influence is widespread in beginning writers, the worry that if they take other people’s suggestions into their poems, their poems might be better, but not completely theirs anymore. But this isn’t just found in them. Consider Kerouac’s self-promoted and willingly, even lovingly, believed myth that he wrote On the Road in one sitting without the influence of anyone. Or think of how difficult it is to find out who edited Raymond Carver’s breakthrough book of minimalist short stories by suggesting to him that the drafts he sent him were too long by half. 

But as the film industry has shown us in every screening of the credits, despite the lionization of the director in the style of the artist, nothing comes creatively from any named individual without the contributions of many others. And by the latest count, according to a statement from Oxford University Press, Shakespeare, whose very existence the breadth and genius of his writing has called into question, worked with at least 17 other authors (in person or through judicious borrowing) to create his plays. That makes sense, he had to write to deadline. And he was surrounded by artists. Spoken of accurately, Shakespeare only became Shakespeare because his work took in more than he alone could create. If that’s true of one of the greatest writers of the English language, why are we so adamant in public that it’s false for the rest of us? 

Literary practice actually offers us a clear distinction in the difference between the words “writer” and “author.” Anyone who writes is a writer. We’ve all heard that, and while we can talk about how well or ill anyone has written, that their writing makes them writers is true by definition. But a writer becomes the author they could be in the way they choose to consider, accept, or reject the work that others are willing to do with the words they’ve written so that when finished, the story, the poem, the novel is the best that it can be. An author is a writer who has put the writing first. The contributions of others make no difference to authorship because the author’s is the mind in charge; the contributions of others make no difference to the writer’s status as writer because a successful writer creates a text that’s worthy of an editor’s gifts – a successful writer creates the text that lets them become the author they need to be in order to finish the job.  

I’ve seen a lot of writers, particularly in their threshold stages: first book, first book launch, first award and attendant ceremony, become very concerned about who to thank and why. Some put in the names of only the last people they worked with – the publisher and the publisher’s editor on the literary side plus their life partner and possibly their children on the personally supportive one. This pares it down to those whom everyone agrees should be there so that no one could be offended for being omitted because everyone except those universally acknowledged as essential are not named. Others write a list pages long, making sure no one can be offended because no one is left out no matter how significant their contributions have been.   

I understand both responses, but I don’t think that either does the work that needs to be done as well as it could be. It is true that everyone who contributed to who we are plays a part in everything we write. It is also true that there are times when the contributions of some are more prominent and directly linked to what we’ve done than others. There needs to be a way to give appropriate thanks in those books that we have made with the help of editors or colleagues where the book would not be the same without their gifts, which have been accepted by the author, and often are only visible to the author and the one who gave them. What we need is an etiquette through which the acknowledgements, as the record of a book’s lineage, can do that work.

I’ve opened the discussion that will lead to such a guide, so I should propose one. I feel one of the greatest guides to writing is Fowler’s English Usage. It’s a bit out of fashion, replaced in many schools by the much slimmer and to-the-point Elements of Style by Strunk & White. And according to half the YouTubes I watch, Grammarly is doing its best to take over from them. The problem with Grammarly is that it embeds the style favoured by its programmers, and I don’t enjoy instructions that boil down to “Do it like me.” Strunk & White are clear, and they do explain why they make the prescriptive suggestions they do. But reading Fowler is like talking to a kind old teacher about the art they’ve devoted their life to. There’s a gentle longwindedness to that book’s phrasing that says of anything, “Certainly, you can do that, it is not forbidden, but this is the impression you’ll most likely make. Let me tell you a story.” It’s a contextual and social way of thinking about the written word. 

So here’s me, emulating Fowler on the matter at hand:

An Author’s Guide to Acknowledgements Usage 

(Both within the pages of the book itself and at its launch, as well as for an author’s use in any of the other ceremonies where such public acknowledgements are made.)   

Copyright Page 

You can read a book’s copyright page the way you do your family tree – from yourself up. The copyright page is the book’s biological heritage. Think of it as the result of the work of a small set of human beings. But where a person need only have two parents, books have more. Readily these pages acknowledge the author, the publisher, the photographer who created the picture of the author that might make you want to read the book, the designer and the print shop that made it attractive on the shelf, and, if there are any agencies that put money into the book – which is the case in Canada where most literary works never make enough money to cover the full costs of their publication – these are mentioned too, as part of the group effort without which the book would not exist. 

Only recently, and in a few cases, have the editors of the book been included, and yet, with every word changed through editorial discussion, every poem removed or suggested by the same, and accepted by the author (or, on some occasions, we must admit, imposed by the publisher in the case of a dispute), the book has assumed more and more the distinct character that makes it the book it is. In this sense, the editor is like the sibling to the parent and should, as a member of the family, be included in all gatherings including the one on paper, in the family’s name. Besides, they too share in the pleasure of the completed work in proportion to the work they put in to make it. 

Friends Along the Way 

A book takes years to write; its author will find that it has many friends along the way between the writing of what becomes the book’s first page and the submission of a manuscript ready for consideration for the public. In between the first draft in which a poem’s or story’s identity can be seen, though often only glimpsed, and the form it has when it is sent to a potential publisher, lies the long and often most beautiful part of a written work’s life: the re-writing of it. The great Japanese poet Basho, inventor, some say, of the haiku (though in truth this form, like most, is a variation on a form established long before it), said that when it is on the writing desk – what I call the re-writing stage – is the only time a poem is alive. During that time of growth and development, authors will often seek out the help of people skilled in the art of reading the kind of work in question and moving it along to its next stage of completion. Such people — some working alone, others in small groups — often play a crucial part in the work’s final form. Effectively, and perhaps this is the touchstone, any one of these who offered advice or suggestions that caused the author to change the words in what they’ve written should be acknowledged. This could happen at the party to launch the book, to give it a prize, or in the author’s acknowledgements page at the book’s close, preferably all three if three there are. 

If there is a distinction to make in terms of how much effect a given person has had, it is better to err on the side of any change at all – every word plays a significant part in defining the nature of a work. But if the author has paid someone to do this work, then that person has offered something of value to the author that they would be willing to offer to others. It’s commonplace to say that artists should be paid for their art, and so the conditions of work – including acknowledgement of work done and the availability of workers, are also part of the art world. Word of mouth is a fine distributor of knowledge, but it is limited. The acknowledgements page is often the only place where such freelance advisors and editors are given the recognition they need to sustain their endeavours. Such people should be treated as professionals and acknowledged with their full names. 

Your Teachers 

Though the old saw still cuts that “Creative Writing cannot be taught,” for over a hundred years it has been, including in the institutions often considered to be the highest among those of higher learning. It could be argued that the beginnings of an English-language literature rooted in North America began with Longfellow’s work at Harvard. From this early innovation to broaden the curriculum and to create opportunities for writers to have real jobs, we have now arrived at the point where it seems that well over half the authors published in Canada today are graduates of some creative writing program or other. In these, students spend anywhere from one or two to ten years honing their craft (and often writing their debut works). So among the many mentors a young writer must have, there are usually at least one or two professors of English or Creative Writing among them. These, also, should be formally acknowledged. Not only because of the work they have chosen to do for their students, but because colleges and universities are increasingly oriented towards the measurement of their own value in terms of palpable outcomes – like books – in place of more spiritual and personal values like acquiring a writer’s sensibility and an appreciation of what writing means. When a student becomes, in such countable terms, a success, it is part of the very argument for the program they’ve benefitted from to enjoy continued support from the university and those who fund it. 

Lastly, outside the universities and colleges and some high schools that offer creative writing, there is a host of workshops of various kinds, from Booming Ground and Sage Hill, to those run by the Alexandra Writers’ Centre and the Writers Guild, the Writers’ Union, the League of Canadian Poets and maybe the group you’ve belonged to outside an institution. Some of these are government funded, some are the work of independent writers; the effect of all of these can be found in books across the country. These groups and their teachers or facilitators should be acknowledged by their full names for the same reasons as privately engaged editors and instructors in institutions. 

You Always Thank the Ones You Love 

I have saved the mention of these until last, and though it would seem to go without my saying so, it is most fitting to acknowledge the people in our lives whom we cannot think of our lives without. Always thank them; the last people to take for granted are the ones who love you most. Unfortunately, as many broken loves will tell you, sometimes the easier someone makes your life, the easier it is to forget that they too have that most human and universal of needs: to be acknowledged, to be seen, and to be spoken of in proportion to one’s own value. As I have said, this seems as obvious as any statement could be. And yet how many of us have read literary analysis or critical works on this writer or that with no mention of their life partner except perhaps how long they stayed with the writer in question or – a measure of moral and emotional support – of, if there are children, how many, perhaps a sign of a parallel creativity. I’ve often seen the writer’s most significant relationship written of as if it bore no relevance at all to the literary work itself. 

Of course, an acknowledgements page is no place for an essay, but the questions that critics ask are asked, or not, long before they become critics. Those questions arise from the conversations about writing to which the critic wishes to contribute. So this is a challenge for writers themselves: change the talk, make the invisible seen. In detail, articulate the effect to be found in the connection between your most intimate relationship – the one in which you’ve shared more words than any other – and your writing; be able, if ever asked, to tell someone how the one has helped shape the other in purely literary terms. 

*

I must admit, I enjoyed being my unperturbed Fowler-self more than the self who wrote what led up to it. All writing, I think, is a form of self-inquiry, even self-inquisition. I can’t shake the feeling that in talking about something in public that for years has been discussed in private, or felt in silence, that I’m breaking the code about what it means to be what I have been. That in asking for what I think I and others in my position should get, I am asking for more than I deserve. In the wider picture, the stakes here are low, but the pattern is the important part. The pattern is what I need to learn from and hope to break for myself, and it’s the pattern that I see holding writers and those who work with them back from what could be a more joyous experience than clearly it has been for myself, and for those to whom I owe more than I could say – not because I couldn’t have said it, but because I didn’t know how deeply the absence of the words I could have said was felt.

Richard Harrison is the author of seven books of poetry, among them On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood, which won the 2017 Governor General’s Award for English Poetry. Over the past thirty years, he has worked as an editor, workshop leader, and Professor of English and Creative Writing at Mount Royal University. Thanks for their editorial contribution to this essay to Noelle Allen, Micheline Maylor, and Lisa Rouleau, and thanks too, to Lorna Crozier for her support in the writing of it.