Archibald Lampman

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Archibald Lampman Source: Topley Studio / Library and Archives Canada / PA-027190
Archibald Lampman
Source: Topley Studio / Library and Archives Canada / PA-027190

Archibald Lampman, FRSC (17 November 1861 – 10 February 1899) was a Canadian poet. He was born at Morpeth, Ontario, a village near Chatham. Lampman attended Trinity College (now part of the University of Toronto). During his senior years at the college, he served as the scribe of Episkopon.

In 1883, after a brief and unsuccessful attempt teaching high school in Orangeville, Ontario, Lampman took an appointment as a low-paid clerk in the Post Office Department, Ottawa, a position he held for the rest of his life.

Lampman associated with Charles G. D. Roberts, Susanna Moodie, Catherine Parr Traill, Duncan Campbell Scott, and William Wilfred Campbell. He was one of the Confederation Poets and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1895.

He is widely regarded as Canada's finest 19th century English language poet. Lampman's poetry concerns Canada's rural life and the wonders of nature and can be compared to British romantic and nature poetry contemporary to his life. Lampman's ability to write detailed, meaningful poems that depict traditional Canadian and Native American life was one of his greatest triumphs as a poet, and probably one of the reasons why his work has had lasting impact in the Canadian canon.

Lampman died in Ottawa at the age of 37, his weak heart an after-effect of his having suffered rheumatic fever as a child. He is buried, fittingly, at Beechwood Cemetery, in Ottawa, a landscape he wrote about in the poem "In Beechwood Cemetery," inscribed at the cemetery's entranceway. Unlike most plots there, marked by monuments, his grave marked by a natural stone.

An annual literary prize, the Archibald Lampman Award, is named in Lampman's honour, as is the town of Lampman, Saskatchewan, a small community of approximately 730 people, situated near the City of Estevan.

The Canadian singer/songwriter Loreena McKennitt adapted Lampman's poem "Snow" as a song, writing original music while keeping as the lyrics the poem verbatim. This adaptation appears on McKennitt's album To Drive the Cold Winter Away (1987) and also in a different version on her EP, A Winter Garden: Five Songs for the Season (1995).

[edit] Bibliography

  • Among the Millett, and Other Poems. – Ottawa : Durie, 1888.
  • Lyrics of Earth. – Boston : Copeland & Day, 1895.
  • Alcyone. – Ottawa : Ogilvy, 1899.
  • The Poems of Archibald Lampman, edited by Duncan Campbell Scott. – Toronto : Morang, 1900.
  • Lyrics of Earth : Sonnets and Ballads, edited by Duncan Campbell Scott. – Toronto : Musson, 1925.
  • At the Long Sault and Other New Poems, edited by Duncan Campbell Scott and E.K. Brown. – Toronto : Ryerson, 1943.
  • Selected Poems of Archibald Lampman, edited by Duncan Campbell Scott. – Toronto : Ryerson, 1947.
  • Lampman’s Kate : Late Love Poems of Archibald Lampman, edited by Margaret Coulby Whitridge. – Ottawa : Borealis, 1975.
  • Selected Prose of Archibald Lampman, edited by Barrie Davies. – Ottawa : Tecumseh, 1975.
  • Lampman’s Sonnets : The Complete Sonnets of Archibald Lampman, edited by Margaret Coulby Whitridge. – Ottawa : Borealis, 1976.
  • Selected Poetry of Archibald Lampman, edited by Michael Gnarowski. – Ottawa : Tecumseh, 1990

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