Colleen Thibaudeu’s poem “Balloon” from Lozenges: Poems in the Shapes of Things (1965)
( ( ( 0 ) ) ) In this video, London poet Karen Schindler recalls the 2012 billboard-size version of “Balloon”on Wortley Road at Antler River Poetry’s 2025 event Colleen Thibaudeau: An Evening of Poetry and Memories: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HlciA825ZiM
April 14, 2012: “Balloon” by Colleen Thibaudeau mounted on a billboard at Wortley Road in London, Ontario for National Poetry Month.
“Balloon” is from Colleen Thibaudeau’s 1965 book Lozenges: Poems in the Shapes of Things, and has appeared in the poetry anthologies The Wind has Wings (1968), A Poke in the I (2001), and in Italian in Tante rimi per bambini (Mondadori, 2000).
I I look through a circular window: I make a frame of small twigs with budding leaves; Inside this the first spring skippers are jumping: Yellow and pink, yellow and pink. The soundless rhythm of their feet jumping Becomes visible as bubbles on this cup of tea.
II The grass-seed sower casts, casts, And behind her the birds come Greedy for her hopes. They are eating up This poem almost as quickly as I can make it.
III The long-legged man is again whistling As he goes early to work. Seen Through a basement bedroom window, he will always be recalled by boots and jeans, and the whistling that encircles him completely in his day’s dancing.
IV Anne Brontë’s grave is planted completely and mysteriously: “No one knows who tends it.” This time it is lined by yellow pansies, and fixes (for a short spell), our hammered-by-the-sea-winds straying thoughts.
V “The little island of the year,” my mother says and so from desert island it grows; populated by family: Family Reunion. Disquiet about estrangement motivates roots-out-of tumbleweed: annual habitation (strangely) magnets from a tiny stamp or the kiss that fixes it on the ‘just-a-reminder’ postcard.
December 3, 2025 — This poem by Colleen Thibaudeau was read by poet David White at Antler River Poetry’s event Colleen Thibaudeau: An Evening of Poetry and Memories.
My Grandmother’s Sugar Shell, Ontario Baroque
My grandmother’s sugar shell (spoon), Ontario Baroque, has just fallen out of the uncleaned silver bag. What does it mean, I wonder. One day only I saw her stop work. We lay out on the grass by the highway under the big maple and two cars went by toward Owen Sound. When she heard their car coming for dinner, she got up, a big woman with Scottish shoulders, built too heavy on the top like all the Stewarts, her leg-bones stilt-like in proportion to the square rest of her.
And she rose all of a piece, I remember that she rose up somehow straight and not hinging her knees, nor using her hands, nor her elbows, nor leaning her head forward. So that she was the reverse of a tree falling before a quick gust. That is, she rose on a slant as if pulleys were attached to her everywhere
or as if the kitchen woodstove were a magnet that suddenly drew her inside. One minute she was all green and gold lying there dappled. The next she was half-way up the lawn and in motion over the steps. The door opened magically and she disappeared. She would never wonder about anything, just say, “That spoon needs cleaning.” And yet I think it means she needs remembering.
As part of Colleening 2025, London’s Antler River Poetry group presented an evening of poets reading their favourite Colleen Thibaudeau poems and sharing their memories. Thank you Roy Geiger and Misha Bower for organizing the event and to readers John Tyndall, Jordan Williamson, Karen Schindler, Jennifer Wenn, Jenny Berkel, Peggy Roffey, David White, and Penn Kemp.
in the green oakgrove at Timesend’s is blowing a pink rose special to that shade: peculiar, wild and soft, not lasting, it has affinity with what my Dolphin Baby said to me: We’re all aswim in one big sea
out lying on the green grass beside the hedge and under the scrub oak trees, I was watching two children coming through the dust knee-high (and the bees were about and were zooming after those yellow warblers that go lacing through the hedge) and with never a sign they drifted over to the grove and snitched each one a whole banner of roses that they held close to their jerseys till they were nearly out of sight when suddenly they loosened up and began madly swinging roses. Then only the mid-day left very hot and I was listening to the wash-wash voice of my baby who was asleep and who suddenly said, We’re all aswim in one big sea.
O Joy, the lightest tap can stir a failing sun can give the labouring globe a spin that starts a staggering miraculous run of roses, trees and we and we who do all swim in one big sea.
Colleen Thibaudeau, 1954
Colleen Thibaudeau and her son James, King’s Park, Manitoba 1954.
On November 29, 2025, the James Reaney Memorial Lecture was given by poet Peggy Roffey, and the title of her lecture was Colleen Thibaudeau’s ‘Big Sea’ Vision. Inspired by Thibaudeau’s idea of how we are “all aswim in one big sea,” Roffey explained that “The poem shows how the affinity between the rose and what the baby says is created, and how that summer moment enters the speaker’s mind and memory.”
Thank you for coming to the 16th annual James Reaney Memorial Lecture celebrating poet Colleen Thibaudeau’s ‘Big Sea’ Vision on Saturday November 29th. This year’s lecture is part of Colleening 2025, a year-long celebration of Colleen Thibaudeau’s centenary.
Peggy Roffey presents “Colleen Thibaudeau’s ‘Big Sea’ Vision” at the James Reaney Memorial Lecture on November 29, 2025 in London, Ontario. London poets Patricia Black and Ola Nowosad (seated) read many of Colleen Thibaudeau’s poems.
Thank you, Peggy Roffey, for leading us through a thoughtful exploration of Thibaudeau’s poetry. After getting us to reflect on someone dear to us and on what we associated with that person, Peggy said that we “… had all donea bit of Colleening. You’ve used memory and imagination to reach beyond time and space. You found an association, made a connection and had that associated detail there. You’ve also connected to somebody else in the room.”
“You’ve touched on the way Colleen wrote her poems; they are peopled, very peopled. Full of significant objects, places, experiences, but all attached to people. I actually counted the number of people that she named by name or role: five hundred. Five hundred people in just over two hundred poems….”
We would also like to thank London poets Patricia Black and Ola Nowosad who read Colleen Thibaudeau’s poems so beautifully. And thanks also to Alannah Vanderburgh-Oakley and Dan Hamilton of the London Public Library for their coordination and assistance, and to Josh Lambier of Words Festival for his technical expertise.
About the presenter:Peggy Roffey is a Londoner who did her Master’s Thesis at UWO on Colleen’s poetry to 1975 and was a frequent reader alongside Colleen. Peggy has also had an interesting career in organizational culture and leadership development at St. Joseph’s Health Care London and at UWO (Western). She taught English Renaissance Literature and Canadian Literature at Western for the last 15 years of her career.
This year’s James Reaney Memorial Lecture celebrates the legacy of poet Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012), the late wife of poet and playwright James Crerar (Jamie) Reaney (1926-2008). Our grateful thanks to the London Public Library and Words Festival for giving the lecture a new home and partnership.
Colleen Thibaudeau and James Reaney near Stratford, Ontario, 1982. (Photo by Marty Gervais)
Our celebration of poet Colleen Thibaudeau’s centenary continues this month on November 7-9 with AlvegoRoot Theatre‘s brand new concert version of Colleening: The Letters and Poetry of Colleen Thibaudeau, which premiered in 2013.
Compiled by Adam Corrigan Holowitz with music by Stephen Holowitz and Oliver Whitehead, Colleen’s letters and poems take us on a journey through childhood memories, home life, and Canadian culture. The performers are Katy Clark, Paul Grambo, and Kydra Ryan.
Where: The Manor Park Memorial Hall, 11 Briscoe Street W, London, Ontario When:Friday November 7 at 7:30 pm and matinees at 2 pm on Saturday November 8 and Sunday November 9.
Colleening: The Letters & Poetry of Colleen Thibaudeau, November 7-9.Paul Grambo, Kydra Ryan and Katy Clark in AlvegoRoot Theatre’s Colleening, November 7-9, 2025
Miniatures II The grass-seed sower casts, casts, And behind her the birds come Greedy for her hopes. They are eating up This poem almost as quickly as I can make it. Colleen Thibaudeau, 1991
Colleen Thibaudeau, July 1969 in Vancouver, BC. Photo by Pat Yeomans.
September 18, 2025 — Thank you, Julie Berry, for curating and organizing a magical Colleening 2025 evening celebrating Colleen Thibaudeau’s poetry in her home town of St. Thomas, Ontario.
The Elgin County Railway Museum is located in the historic Michigan Central Railroad locomotive shops (est. 1913) at 225 Wellington Street in St. Thomas, Ontario.
Performing at the Elgin County Railway Museum’s Rolling Stock Gallery were fourteen wonderful readers: Joe Preston, Barb Hoskins, Peter Bloch-Hansen, Cynthia Snyder, Mike Baker, Rose Gibson, John Allen, Sally Martyn, Kayla Berdan, Bruce Parker, Steve Peters, Julie Berry, Susan Wallace and James Stewart Reaney. Many of the poems they read were about St. Thomas where Colleen Thibaudeau lived for much of her childhood.
Thanks also to audio-visual technicians, Devon Church and Dawn Garton, who made sure Colleen’s words and images more than filled the cavernous Rolling Stock Gallery, home to locomotives from the early 20th century.
The CN 5700 steam locomotive in the Rolling Stock Gallery, Elgin County Railway Museum.
Bruce Parker, who read Thibaudeau’s poem “The Glass Cupboard,” recalls that “The train museum, as you can imagine, is an enormous, echo-ey venue, with natural reverberation for the speaking voices. I must admit, it was rather cool to read in front of 200 tons of locomotive.”
September 18, 2025 at the Elgin County Railway Museum Rolling Stock Gallery
Colleening 2025 is a celebration of thecentenary of poet Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012).
Printers Hilary Neary, Stephen Sword, and Mike Baker at The Forge and Anvil Museum in Sparta, Ontario. (Photo by James Stewart Reaney)
Wednesday August 27, 2025 — Printers and compositors Hilary Neary (left), Stephen Sword, and Mike Baker pose with Colleen Thibaudeau’s 1965 classicLozenges. A detail from the 2025 edition’s cover design is in the foreground at The Forge and Anvil Museumin Sparta, Ontario where the second edition was printed.
The Lozenges second edition is part of Colleening 2025, a celebration of the centenary of Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012).
( ( ( 0 ) ) ) Listen to Hilary Neary and Mike Baker read poems from Lozenges.
Colleen Thibaudeau’s poem “The Train” from Lozenges (1965)Colleen Thibaudeau’s poem “The Hockey Stick” from Lozenges (1965)
Colleen Thibaudeau (seated) with her friends, Summer 1943 in St. Thomas, Ontario. (Joyce Draper is on the left and June Rose is seated at the top.)
The Tin Shop
The Tin Shop never sounded tin it sounded canaries; because of the Great Depression no one wanted eaves but everyone wanted canaries.
It became the place where we changed skates sharpened them traced out our initials on the floor, sipped cocoa.
The Tinsmith bred canaries that lived in tin apartments elaborate as palaces spacious and filling all the upper air with communal sopranos.
The Tin Shop never sounded tin it became a meeting place for men displaced workers all their strength now gone into those deep voices vibrantly disaffected politically haranguing words / scored as deeply in the wooden floors as our skate blades.
The canaries sang and moulted a world of yellow. The men’s words, strong, bedevilled, are they in the end gone like the songs and the feathers?
Colleen Thibaudeau, 1984
“The Tin Shop” first appeared in The Martha Landscapes (1984) and is also included in The Artemesia Book (1991), both available from Brick Books.
( ( ( 0 ) ) ) Listen to Steve Peters, the current owner of the Tin Shop, read Colleen Thibaudeau’s poem.
Lady, in the country of my coming there will be lush peaches ripe on ev’ry tree. Ev’ry little cloud will glide clear as a magic lantern slide. The golden serpent sun will throw his body like a light lasso about the heart of each dark centre, to fashion flowers of strange splendour. You will fill your panier, lass, with blooms like ornamental glass You will hear their Christmas chime all the glorious summertime.
Colleen Thibaudeau, 1950
Composer John Beckwith set music to “Serenade” and entered it in the 1950 CBC Songwriting Contest. It won a prize and was performed on CBC Radio by Charles Jordan (baritone). “Serenade” was performed by Russell Braun (baritone) at the John Beckwith Songbook concert in March 2021.
Pamela Terry Beckwith, John Beckwith, and Colleen Thibaudeau (1960)
( ( 0 ) ) In this audio clip, soprano Katy Clark performs “Serenade” at Wordsfest November 5, 2023 in London, Ontario.
Colleen Thibaudeau 