photo credit: Sonja Skarstedt Louis Dudek 1918–2001 One of Canada’s first great modern poets, Louis Dudek was born into a Polish Catholic family in the east end of Montréal. He became a most influential Canadian literary critic, anthologist, founding publisher of Contact Press and Delta, a literary magazine. He published a whole new generation of Canadian poets. According to Canadian Literature, “Dudek is now properly regarded as one of the central figures of twentieth-century Canadian poetry.” A longtime professor of English at McGill University, Louis Dudek’s works include Atlantis (1967), Epigrams (1975), Cross-Section: Poems 1940–1980, and The Birth of Reason (1994). Dudek is Polish for ‘piper’ and refers specifically to one
The Polish surname Dudek may have originated as a nickname for an ancestor who was a gaudy dresser or a show-off. In Polish and several other European and Slavic languages, the hoopoe has a reputation for being a noisy, whistling, intrusive bird. Dudek could have been the bird on a sign on a shop owned by the founding ancestor of the family. Before surnames, European people were sometimes identified by motifs and signs painted on the walls of the shops they operated. Many surnames in many different languages originate in this way. One familiar example is Rothschild, in which the founding ancestor had as an identifying mark on his house or place of business, a red shield (German rot ‘red’ +German Schild ‘shield’). English last names of similar provenance are Fish, Lion, and Starr. So Dudek is an apt name for one of Canada's most influential poets.
Hundreds of links to more of my word entries are available below.
ORDER MY BOOKS ONLINE AT
|
little piper, the hoopoe, a gaudily crested European bird, salmon-pink in colour, whose characteristic call has earned it the delightfully plosive ornithological name of Upupa epops, one of the great silly zoological names.
