Béla Szabados

Prose Poem Memoir
Review of the Independently Published paperback edition (April 9, 2022).

This memoir of the early graduate student years 1966-1972 by Philosophy Professor Emeritus at the University of Regina Béla Szabados is written in the form of Canto poems and is illustrated with an appendix of photographs from the time. I had the sense that these might have been written over 50 years ago and only now published. The prose poem style did not really sing to me and the main item of interest was the friendship that Szabados develops with the family of artist Nicholas Raphael de Grandmaison (1892-1978) who is now remembered for his portraits of First Nations peoples in Canada's Western provinces.

I obtained a free copy of this book through the Saskatchewan Book Awards where it was a nominee for the City of Regina Award, for which I participated in a jury of 3 readers. We agreed to embargo our participation and opinions until after the Award Announcements on May 4, 2023.

Trivia and Link
For more on the art of Nicholas de Grandmaison see History in Their Blood : the Indian Portraits of Nicholas De Grandmaison / by Hugh A. Dempsey ; Introduction by J. Russell Harper ; Foreword by Frederick J. Dockstader (1982).… (more)