Richard Daley Outram (April 9, 1930 – January 21, 2005) was a Canadian poet. Often regarded as a poet's poet, he wrote eleven commercially published books of poetry in addition to the many collections of his poetry and prose published under the imprint of the Gauntlet Press. In 1999 he won the City of Toronto Book Award for his sequence of poems Benedict Abroad.City of Toronto Book Award 1999
Life Outram was born in Oshawa, Ontario. His mother, née Mary Muriel Daley, was the daughter of a Methodist minister centrally involved in the negotiations which led to the creation of the United Church of Canada. While working as a schoolteacher, Outram's mother met and married his father, Alfred Allan Outram, in Port Hope, Ontario. Allan Outram, son of the owner of the hardware store in Port Hope, served and was wounded in the First World War. By profession, he was an engineer. The couple moved to Toronto. From 1944 to 1949, Outram attended high school in Leaside, which was then still on the outskirts of the city.Through Darkling Air: The Poetry of Richard Outram, Peter Sanger. Gaspereau Press, Kentville, N.S., 2010.
From 1949 to 1953, Outram was enrolled in the Honours B.A., English and Philosophy course at Victoria College in the University of Toronto. Two of his teachers, the philosopher Emil Fackenheim and the critic Northrop Frye, with the latter of whom Outram studied Milton, Spenser and (when E. J. Pratt became ill) Shakespeare, had a profound and lasting effect on him. During the summers of 1950 and 1951, Outram also served as an officer cadet in the reserve system of the Royal Canadian Navy, aboard frigates in the Bay of Fundy and at HMCS Stadacona in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
After graduation, Outram worked with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as a television stagehand for a year, then he moved to London, England, where he worked as a television stagehand for the British Broadcasting Corporation between 1955 and 1956. During those years he began to write poetry. During them also, he met his future wife, the Toronto painter and wood engraver Barbara Howard. They returned to Toronto to marry in 1957. Outram went back to work with the CBC, first, again, as a television stagehand, then as a stage crew foreman, a position he held until early retirement at the age of sixty in 1990. Having lost his wife in 2002, Outram took his own life, dying of hypothermia in Port Hope, Ontario. On April 1, 2005, a celebration of the lives of Outram and Howard was held at The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. Speakers included film director Ted Kotcheff, literary critic Alberto Manguel and poet Peter Sanger.
Work Between 1966 and 2001, Outram wrote ten commercially published collections of poetry (South of North: Images of Canada, with drawings by Thoreau MacDonald was published posthumously in 2007). In addition to these commercial publications, Outram issued over a dozen other collections of poetry and prose under the imprint of the Gauntlet Press, a small private press which he founded with his wife in 1960. Its limited editions (60-80 copies) of four small collections by Outram, Creatures (1972), Thresholds (1973), Locus (1974) and Arbor (1976), illustrated with wood engravings by Howard, are prized by collectors and can be found in public collections such as the University of Toronto Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, which is also the repository for Outram's personal papers and manuscripts.
The Gauntlet Press also issued a series of broadsheets of Outram's poems throughout the 1970s and 1980s, all of them designed (and many illustrated) by Howard. In the early 1990s the Gauntlet Press switched from letterpress to digitally based production on the computer. As well as his poem and prose broadsheets, the press during this electronic phase issued nine small books by Outram in limited editions. Among them are Around & About the Toronto Islands (1993); Tradecraft and Other Uncollected Poems (1994); Eros Descending (1995); Ms Cassie (2000) and Lightfall (2001). Many of the poems from these Gauntlet Press publications (with the exception of Ms Cassie and Lightfall) have been gathered into the commercially available Dove Legend and Other Poems. Examples of the Ms Cassie broadsheets can be seen on the Porcupine's Quill web site.Broadsheets on Porcupine's Quill
Digital facsimiles of the books and broadsheets of the Gauntlet Press in the collection of the Memorial University of Newfoundland can be viewed at the website dedicated to The Gauntlet Press of Richard Outram and Barbara Howard, together with extensive background material and an exhaustive bibliography.
The poetry In a 1988 essay titled "Hard Truths", the literary critic Alberto Manguel wrote: “Richard Outram’s metaphysical message is neither fashionable nor easy to grasp, but he is one of the best poets writing in English.” Alberto Manguel: "Hard Truths", Saturday Night, April, 1988 Outram's work transcends fashion, expressing a private voice of public consequence in poems of great formal variety and range of tone. He is a most mercurial writer, delighting in satire and farce, in low and high comedy, in metaphysical poems of intricate philosophical complexity and dignity, in straightforward or not so straightforward lyrical love poems, and in dramatic soliloquies voiced for outrageously imagined characters, including some animals. Outram may write straightforward narrative poems in which, as is not usually the case in contemporary narrative poems, things really do happen consecutively. He can also write subtle parables and allegories, or commit squibs and puns or propose riddles and anagrams. His poetry must be read while attending to the full meaning of every word."Richard Outram: A Preface and Selection by Peter Sanger", The Antigonish Review, 2001 It has been said that the best companion a reader can have when trying to fully appreciate an Outram poem is an etymological dictionary. It has also been argued that there is, at the same time, an ‘other’, more intuitively accessible side to his poetry.Carmine Starnino: The Other Outram (from A Lover's Quarrel: Essays and Reviews, The Porcupine's Quill, Erin ON, 2004. )
Many years before his death, Outram wrote what he often referred to as his own epitaph:Michael Carbert: Faith and Resilience: An Interview with Richard Outram, The New Quarterly #89, Winter/Spring 2004
Epitaph for an Angler
To haunt the silver river and to wait Were second nature to him, his own bait: Unravelling at last a constant knot, He cast his line clear: and was promptly caught.
Bibliography
Poetry Eight Poems. Toronto: Tortoise Press, 1959. Exsultate, Jubilate. Toronto: Macmillan Canada, 1966. Scarlatti at Improvisation (pamphlet). Toronto: Aliquando Press, 1972. Creatures. Toronto: Gauntlet Press, 1972. Railway (broadside). Toronto: Aliquando Press, 1973. Seer. With drawings by Barbara Howard. Toronto: Aliquando Press, 1973. Thresholds. Toronto: Gauntlet Press, 1973. Below Zero (broadside). Toronto: Aliquando Press, 1974. Locus. Toronto: Gauntlet Press, 1974. Turns and Other Poems. London, Toronto: Chatto and Windus with the Hogarth Press, 1975, and Anson-Cartwright Editions, 1976. Arbor. Toronto: Gauntlet Press, 1976. The Promise of Light. Toronto: Anson-Cartwright Editions, 1979. Selected Poems (1960-1980). Toronto: Exile Editions, 1984. Man in Love. Erin, Ont.: Porcupine's Quill, 1985. Hiram and Jenny. Erin, Ont.: Porcupine's Quill, 1989. Mogul Recollected. Erin, Ont.: Porcupine's Quill, 1993. Around & About the Toronto Islands. Toronto: Gauntlet Press, 1993. Hiram and Jenny, Unpublished Poems. Ottawa: Food for Thought Books, 1994. Tradecraft and Other Uncollected Poems. Toronto: Gauntlet Press, 1994. Eros Descending. Toronto: Gauntlet Press, 1995. Benedict Abroad. St. Thomas Poetry Series, Toronto, 1998. (Winner of the 1999 City of Toronto Book Award) Ms Cassie. Toronto: Gauntlet Press, 2000. Dove Legend & Other Poems. Erin, Ont.: Porcupine's Quill, 2001. Lightfall. Toronto: Gauntlet Press, 2001. Nine Shiners. Port Hope: n.p., 2003. With reproductions of paintings by Barbara Howard. Brief Immortals. Port Hope: n.p., 2003. With reproductions of paintings by Barbara Howard. South of North: Images of Canada, with drawings by Thoreau MacDonald. Erin, Ont.: Porcupine's Quill, 2007. The Essential Richard Outram, Amanda Jernigan, ed., Erin, Ont.: Porcupine's Quill, 2011.
Prose An Exercise in Exegesis. Toronto: Arts & Letters Club, 1991. Corrections to the Cave. Toronto: Arts & Letters Club, 1992. Peripatetics: Some Annotations, Glosses and Divers Comments Upon "Around & About the Toronto Islands". Toronto: Gauntlet Press, 1994 "And Growes to Something of Great Constancie ...", being a SYZYGY. Toronto: Gauntlet Press, 1994. Divers Arrows. Toronto: Arts & Letters Club, 1995. Swann: A Literary Mystery (a brief talk on Carol Shields' book of that title, and on the poems included therein. Toronto: Arts & Letters Club, 1995.) Notes on William Blake's 'The Tyger'''. Toronto: Arts & Letters Club, 1997. Stardust. Toronto: Arts & Letters Club, 1998. Of Blockheads. Toronto: Arts & Letters Club, 1999 & 2000. Arrows of Desire. Toronto: Hart House, 2000. Arrows of Desire. Toronto: Arts & Letters Club, 2001, (a revised version of the above). Rage & Outrage: Poetry & the Media. Toronto: Arts & Letters Club, 2002. Poetic Practice. Toronto: Arts & Letters Club, 2003.
Anthologies Christian Poetry in Canada, David A. Kent, ed., ECW Press, 1989. Literature in English, W. H. New and W. E. Messenger, eds., Prentice Hall, Scarborough, ON, 1993. In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry, Kate Braid & Sandy Shreve, eds., Polestar/Raincoast Books, Vancouver, BC, 2005. Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets, Zachariah Wells, ed., Biblioasis, Emeryville, ON, 2008. Open Wide a Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems, Nancy Holmes, ed., Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo, ON, 2009. Arc Poetry Annual 2010: Best of How Poems Work (2003-2008), Arc Poetry Society, Ottawa, ON, 2009. Modern Canadian Poets, Evan Jones & Todd Swift, eds., Carcanet Press, Manchester, England, 2010. Another English: Anglophone Poems from Around the World, Catherine Barnett & Tiphanie Yanique, eds., Poetry Foundation and Tupelo Press, North Adams, MA, 2014. Earth and Heaven: An Anthology of Myth Poetry, Amanda Jernigan & Evan Jones, eds., Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Markham, ON, 2015. In Fine Form 2nd Edition: A Contemporary Look at Canadian Form Poetry, Kate Braid & Sandy Shreve, eds., Caitlin Press Inc., Halfmoon Bay, BC, 2016. 150+: Canada's History in Poems, Judy Gaudet, ed., The Acorn Press, Charlottetown, PEI, 2018.
Works about Outram or the Gauntlet Press
Books Horne, Alan and Guy Upjohn, eds. Fine Printing: The Private Press in Canada. Toronto: Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild, 1995. Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, 18 April - 16 June 1995. Sanger, Peter. ‘Her Kindled Shadow ..’: An Introduction to the Work of Richard Outram. Antigonish, N.S.: Antigonish Review, 2001; rev. ed., 2002. Sanger, Peter. Through Darkling Air: The Poetry of Richard Outram. Gaspereau Press, Kentville, N.S., 2010. An extensive study of the life and work of Canadian poet Richard Outram with detailed analysis of his poetry, his influences and allusions, and his collaboration with his wife, Barbara Howard, on the limited edition broadsides and handmade books issued from the Gauntlet Press. Includes over 75 photographic reproductions. Ruthig, Ingrid, ed. Richard Outram: Essays on His Works. Guernica Editions, Toronto, ON, 2011. New essays, interview, lecture, and elegy, by poets and writers who admire Outram’s commitment to “concision and precision” in language: Brian Bartlett, Michael Carbert, Robert Denham, Jeffery Donaldson, Steven Heighton, Amanda Jernigan, Eric Ormsby, Ingrid Ruthig, Peter Sanger, and Zachariah Wells.