Irving Layton
photo by Terry Byrnes
Irving Layton (Israel Pincu Lazarovitch) was born March 12, 1912 in Tirgu Neamt, Romania. Layton came to Montreal with his family before he was one. He attained a BSc in agriculture at Macdonald College in 1939. Following a stint in the Canadian Army, he did graduate work in political science at McGill.
A poet, short-story writer, and essayist, Layton is perhaps the most well-known of the Montreal poets, a group of young poets who engaged in a battle against romanticism in poetry in the 1940’s. Layton has published many poetry collections, including A Red Carpet for the Sun (1959) which won the Governor General’s Award. Layton has been poet-in-residence at various Canadian universities and was professor of English at York University 1969-78. Layton was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1981. He passed away on January 4, 2006.