Collection C013 - Raymond Souster and Cid Corman collection

Cid (Sidney) Corman was born in Boston, Massachusetts on June 29, 1924. His parents were of Ukrainian origin. Corman was an accomplished American poet, broadcaster and teacher. In 1945 Corman received his bachelors of arts from Tufts College. He completed graduate studies at the University of Michigan, University of North Carolina, and at the Sorbonne in Paris. He worked at WMEX Radio in Boston from 1949-1951. In 1951, he founded the poetry magazine Origin, and became editor of Origin Press. He stayed editor of Origin until 1984. Corman occupied a post as a private teacher in Italy from 1956-1957, and in Japan between 1956-1979. He married Shizumi Konishi in February 1965. Together, they moved to Boston during the early 80's, where Corman owned and operated the Sister City Tea House in 1981. They returned to Kyoto one year later, and opened a coffee shop. Corman stayed in Japan until his death on March 12, 2004 in Kytoto, Japan.

Corman’s publications include Aegis: selected poems 1970-1980, And the Word, For Granted, Once and For All, and Words for Each Other. Many of his works have been translated into Japanese.

Corman was the recipient of several awards, prizes, and grants including the Hopewood Prize, the Chapelbrook Foundation Grant, National Endowment for the Arts Grant and the Lenore Marshall Memorial Poetry Award for outstanding new book of poems from Book-of-the-Month Club.

Raymond Souster was born in Toronto on January 15, 1921 and died on October 19, 2012. Souster was a Canadian poet and launched three poetry magazines: Direction (1941-1946), Contact (1952-1954), and Combustion (1957-1960). Souster was a founding member of the League of Canadian Poets and served as its first president from 1967-1972. He won the Governor General's Award for poetry for The Colour of the Times in 1966. He is also a recipient of the Order of Canada (1995). In addition to his writing, Souster worked at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce from 1939 to 1985, and served in the Royal Canadian Air Force from 1941-1945. Souster was friends with Irving Layton, among many other Canadian poets.

Souster was prolific and produced over 50 volumes of his own work, including: Go to Sleep World (1947), City Hall Street (1951), Shake Hands with the Hangman: Poems 1940-1952 (1953), A Dream That is Dying: Poems (1954), For What Time Slays (1954), A Local Pride (1962), Jubilee Of Death: The Raid On Dieppe (1984), Queen City (1984), Close to Home (1996), Of Time and Toronto (2000), and Take me out to the Ballgame (2002).