26 Facts About Irving Layton

Irving Layton was known for his "tell it like it is" style which won him a wide following but made him enemies.

Irving Layton was born on March 12,1912, as Israel Pincu Lazarovitch in Targu Neamt to Romanian Jewish parents, Moses and Klara Lazarovitch.

Irving Layton migrated with his family to Montreal, Quebec in 1913, where they lived in the impoverished St Urbain Street neighbourhood, later made famous by the novels of Mordecai Richler.

Irving Layton identified himself not as an observant Jew but rather as a freethinker.

Irving Layton graduated from Alexandra Elementary School and attended Baron Byng High School, where his life was changed when he was introduced to such poets as Tennyson, Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley; the novelists Jane Austen and George Eliot; the essayists Francis Bacon, Oliver Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson, and Jonathan Swift; and Shakespeare and Darwin.

Irving Layton was befriended by David Lewis and became very interested in politics and social theory.

Irving Layton joined the Young People's Socialist League or YPSL, which Lewis led.

Irving Layton quickly found that his true interest was poetry, so he pursued a career as a poet, and soon became friends with the emerging young poets of his day, including fellow Canadian poets John Sutherland, Raymond Souster, and Louis Dudek.

In 1936 Irving Layton met Faye Lynch, whom he married in 1938.

When Irving Layton graduated from Macdonald College in 1939, he moved with Faye to Halifax, where he worked odd jobs, including a stint as a Fuller Brush salesman.

Soon disenchanted with his life, Irving Layton decided to return to Montreal.

Irving Layton began teaching English to recent immigrants to make ends meet and continued doing so for many years.

Indecisive about his future and enraged by Hitler's violence toward Jews and destruction of European culture, Irving Layton enlisted in the Canadian army in 1942.

In 1943 Irving Layton was given an honourable discharge from the army and returned to Montreal, where he became involved with several literary magazines including the seminal Northern Review, which he co-edited with John Sutherland.

Irving Layton's satire was generally directed against bourgeois dullness, and his famous love poems were erotically explicit.

Irving Layton was an influential teacher, and some of his students became writers and artists.

Irving Layton continued to teach for the greater part of his life: as a teacher of modern English and American poetry at Sir George Williams University and as a tenured professor at Toronto's York University from 1969 to 1978.

Irving Layton pursued his PhD in 1948, but he abandoned it due to the demands of his already hectic professional life.

Irving Layton met Leonard Cohen, with whom he remained friends for life and who dedicated his 2007 book The Book of Longing to Irving Layton.

Irving Layton was admired by such diverse artists and writers as Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, among other poets.

In 1974 Irving Layton met Harriet Bernstein, who was enrolled in his Poetry Workshop at York University.

Irving Layton then met Anna Pottier and invited her to be his housekeeper, although it soon became apparent that she would play a far greater role in his life.

Irving Layton died at the Maimonides Geriatric Centre in Cote Saint-Luc at the age of 93 on January 4,2006.

Irving Layton was the first non-Italian to be awarded the Petrarch Award for Poetry.

Irving Layton is remembered by many as one of the first Canadian rebels of poetry, politics, and philosophy.

Irving Layton is depicted in the drama television series So Long, Marianne, in which he is portrayed by Peter Stormare.