22 Facts About Louis Dudek

Louis Dudek, was a Canadian poet, academic, and publisher known for his role in defining Modernism in poetry, and for his literary criticism.

Louis Dudek was the author of over two dozen books.

Louis Dudek was born in Montreal, Quebec, the son of Vincent and Stanislawa Louis Dudek, part of an extended Catholic family which had emigrated from Poland, and was raised in that city's East End.

Louis Dudek was lean and sickly as a child, which made him introverted and unusually sensitive.

Louis Dudek's mother died at 31, when he was eight.

Louis Dudek entered McGill University in Montreal, where he became a reporter and associate editor for the McGill Daily.

Louis Dudek went on to become a professor of English Literature at McGill University, a major figure in publishing and criticism, and was eventually recognized by being awarded the Greensheilds Chair as well as the Order of Canada.

Louis Dudek had one son with his wife Stephanie, Gregory Dudek, who became a professor at McGill University.

Louis Dudek married Stephanie Zuperko on September 16,1941, with whom he had one son, Gregory Dudek.

In New York, Louis Dudek continued to contribute poems to First Statement and its successor, Northern Review.

Louis Dudek began corresponding with modernist poet Ezra Pound in 1949, and met Pound in person the next year, who encouraged Louis Dudek to adopt a more cosmopolitan approach to his writing.

Louis Dudek returned to Montreal and joined the Department of English at McGill University in 1951, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Louis Dudek became Greenshield Professor of English in 1969, and Professor Emeritus in 1984.

In 1952 Louis Dudek founded Contact Press with Raymond Souster and Irving Layton.

In 1956 Louis Dudek began the McGill Poetry Series, a series of chapbooks by McGill students published by Contact Press.

In 1957 Louis Dudek began Delta, his own poetry magazine, featuring "the work of many promising new poets" until 1966.

Louis Dudek bought a press, installed it in his basement, and learned how to run it to print the magazine's early issues, as well as his 1958 book Laughing Stalks.

Louis Dudek's efforts contributed to Pound's release in 1958 from St Elizabeth's mental hospital, where Pound had been confined since 1946.

At odds with literary trends in the early 1960s, Louis Dudek concentrated on teaching and writing his long poem Atlantis.

Louis Dudek wrote a column on books, film and the arts for the Montreal Gazette between 1965 and 1969.

Louis Dudek regularly contributed to Canadian academic journals, "and, in keeping with his commitment to literature as part of daily life", made frequent appearances on CBC Radio and in various newspapers as a commentator on arts and culture.

Louis Dudek began as a realist lyric poet influenced by the Imagists.