“The heart above the ruins”: Miriam Waddington’s Poetry, the Spanish Civil War, and Jewish Canadian Literature

The Jewish Canadian writer Miriam Waddington returned repeatedly to the subject of the Spanish Civil War, searching for hope amid the ruins of Spanish democracy. The conflict, a prelude to World War II, inspired an outpouring of literature and volunteerism. My paper argues for Waddington’s unique poetic perspective, in which she represents the Holocaust as the Spanish Civil War’s outgrowth while highlighting the deeply personal repercussions of the war – consequences for women, for the earth, and for community. Waddington’s poetry connects women’s rights to human rights, Canadian peace to European war, and Jewish persecution to Spanish carnage.L’écrivaine juive canadienne Miriam Waddington est fréquemment revenue sur le sujet de la guerre civile d’Espagne, cherchant la lumière dans les ruines de la démocratie espagnole. Le conflit, prélude de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, a suscité beaucoup d’engagement et inspiré de nombreuses œuvres littéraires. Mon article met en avant la perspective poétique unique de Waddington, où elle représente l’Holocauste comme une émanation de la Guerre d’Espagne tout en éclairant les répercussions profondément intimes de la guerre – ses conséquences pour les femmes, pour la terre et pour la communauté. La poésie de Waddington fait dialoguer droits des femmes et droits de la personne, paix canadienne et guerre européenne, persécution juive et carnage espagnol

Canadian Jewish Poetry: A Roundtable

Is Canadian Jewish Poetry a meaningful category of study? Are there particular traits that differentiate Canadian Jewish poets from poets of other countries, or from writers in other genres? How do contemporary poets confront the looming legacy of Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, and A.M. Klein? Six prominent poets and scholars conduct a roundtable discussion to articulate recent developments in the field.La poésie juive canadienne est-elle une catégorie d’étude significative? Y a-t-il des traits particuliers qui différencient les poètes juifs canadiens des poètes d’autres pays, ou des écrivains d’autres genres? Comment les poètes contemporains font-ils face à l’héritage imminent d’Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen et A.M. Klein ? Six poètes et universitaires éminents organisent une table ronde pour exposer les développements récents dans ce domaine

Tracing Morocco: Postcolonialism and Spanish Civil War Literature

Increasing scholarly attention to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) has exposed the colonial implications of the Spanish Republic’s fight against Franco’s fascist coup. The Spanish Republic’s refusal to relinquish its colonial control allowed Franco to exploit Moroccan antipathy and poverty in support of his forces. For many North American volunteers—and particularly for the hundred or so African Americans who fought in Spain—the war’s stakes were not only tied to European fascism and American racism, as Popular Front and black expatriate artists often depicted, but also to colonial relationships between Europe, Africa and the New World. This essay examines literary depictions of these colonial relationships in the works of Langston Hughes and John A. Williams, contextualizing their writings alongside fictional and biographical representations of Moroccan and African American participation by North American writers who, like Hughes, participated in the Spanish Civil War. Read together, the depictions and erasures of African diasporic contact across political lines reveal the underlying contradictions used to construct categories of racial, national, and religious difference—categories used as rallying cries on each side of the battle line. Williams’s retrospective positioning and Hughes’s writings from the war’s midst together represent the war’s stakes as yet another global conflict in which members of the African diaspora faced even greater risks and greater losses