kay's biography
Born Clara Kathleen Smith, 30 April, 1911 she graduated
from Saint John High School 1928, and Mount Allison Ladies College in 1933.
1942 found her beginning a thirty year association with the Saint John
Vocational School where she taught English (literature - grammar) and Drama.
Kay Smith took over the direction of the school's annual Shakespeare play...the
only production produced in the province of New Brunswick.
In the 1940's she began publishing poetry, first poem in Chatelaine,
then The Fiddlehead (UNB Fredericton). Her first book of poetry was
"Footnote to the Lord's Prayer and Other Poems", "At The Bottom of the
Dark" was her second Fiddle head book, 1987 "White Paper Face In
The Window" published by The Purple Wednesday Society and then
"The
Bright Particulars" by Ragweed Press of P.E.I..
In 1988 Kay received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University
of New Brunswick. The citation reads, in part, "It (her poetry) reveals
to us much of what we are capable of seeing, but often do not. And it is
mystical because it leaves the right holes and gaps, nooks and crannies
into which we pour our own thoughts, our own souls."
In May 1988 she was interviewed by Peter Czowski on CBC Morningside
and in 1989 appeared in Nine Allisonian Poets, a sesquicentennial
anthology selected and edited by Michael Thorpe, Anchorage Press. In 1991
she received the Alden Nolan Award from the Province of New Brunswick "in
recognition of her outstanding contribution to New Brunswick literature".
In 1992 UNBSJ's CORMORANT and editors,( Vivian Wright, William Prouty
and Carol Ann Nobel) published a special Kay Smith Edition ISBN 0 920492
20 7 .
Kay died in the autumn of 2004.
.
C.T. |
