Alden Nowlan (1933-1983)

1933: Born in Stanley, in Hants County, Nova Scotia

1945: Leaves school in 5th grade

1952: Moves to New Brunswick; begins writing career at Hartland Observer

1961: Canadian Council grant funds writing of first novel, The Wanton Troopers (1988)

1963: Marries Claudine Orser; moves to Saint John, N.B.

1968: Governor General’s poetry award for Bread, Wine and Salt; Guggenheim fellowship

1969: Appointed writer-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton

1983: Dies of complications from pneumonia; buried in Poets' Corner of Fredericton’s Forest Hill Cemetery; house on UNB campus named in his honor.

Few poems evoke a personal past as forcefully as Stoney Ridge Dance Hall by Alden Nowlan, born into poverty in the rough remoteness of inland Nova Scotia, a place where “men like him,” Nowlan later wrote of his father, “worked all day/for one stinking dollar.”

Stoney Ridge Dance Hall

They don’t like strangers.

So be careful how you smile.

Eight generations

of Hungerfords, McGards and Staceys

have lived on this ridge

like incestuous kings.

Their blood is so pure

it will not clot.

This is the only

country they know.

There are men here

who have never heard of Canada.

When they tire of dancing

they go down the road

and drink white lightning

out of the bung

of a molasses puncheon.

But they never forget

to strap on the knuckles

they’ve made from beer bottle

caps and leather

and there are sharp spikes

in their orange logging boots.

The poem magnifies the region’s tribalism, poverty, and abuse, alcoholic and emotional, with touches that make violence seem both inevitable and an odd, almost life-affirming ritual for lives rooted amid black trees and barren soil.

On the strength of a self-written recommendation, Nowlan landed a job with the Hartland Observer in New Brunswick—a life-saving, if lateral move, according to poet Thomas R. Smith. “It wasn’t culturally much different from the country that he escaped but there was enough remove there from his origin…enough pride in his new position working as a reporter that he was able to successfully begin his life also as a poet,” Smith said, during a 1994 reading (recorded by Ally Press), marking the first US publication of a major collection of Nowlan’s poetry.

Leaving Hants County also enabled Nolan to process his hardscrabble past and present the struggles of ordinary people with uncompromising clarity and compassion.

Further Reading

Bly, Robert (Foreword) and Smith, Thomas R (Editor) What Happened When He Went to the Store for Bread: Poems by Alden Nowlan. St. Paul, Minn.: Nineties Press, 1993

Bly, Robert, and Smith, Thomas R (readers). What Happened When He Went to the Store for Bread: The Astonishing Poems of Alden Nowlan. St. Paul, Minn.: Ally Press, 1994