Born in Vancouver on September 27, 1948, Allan Safarik was raised in a commercial fishing family in Vancouver Heights in North Burnaby from where he spent much of his childhood exploring the waterfront. He has a B.A. in English from Simon Fraser University. He co-founded Blackfish Press and edited Vancouver Poetry (Polestar Press, 1986) to mark the Vancouver Centennial. He and Dolores Reimer co-compiled Quotations From Chairman Cherry (Arsenal Pulp, 1992) and Quotations on the Great One: The Little Book of Wayne Gretzky (Arsenal Pulp, 1992). Safarik was the National Book Festival organizer for B.C. until the program was disbanded in 1993. In 1998 Safarik edited Bill Macdonald's The True Intrepid: William Stephenson and the Unknown Agents (Timberholme, 1998). He also edited Marie Annharte Baker's Being On The Moon (Polestar Press, 1990) and WHT Olive's The Olive Diary (Timberholme, 1997), a tale of adventures in the Klondike of 1898. Allan Safark lived above the pier in White Rock for 15 years prior to moving to Dundurn, Saskatchewan, and settling into the 100-year-old Jacoby house there. He won the 2003 John V. Hicks Manuscript Award for Literary Non-Fiction and the 2005 Anne Szumigalski Poetry Award at the Saskatchewan Book Awards for When Light Falls from the Sun.
Allan Safarik's memoirs in Notes from the Outside: Episodes from an Unconventional Life (Hagios 2006) recall his literary relations with Dorothy Livesay, Milton Acorn, Anne Szumigalski, Joe Rosenblatt, Patrick Friesen and William Hoffer. Most significantly, Safarik concludes the volume with his recollections of his friend Pat Lowther, as well as his central role in the documentary film Watermarks, directed by Anne Henderson, in which the filmmaker focuses on the family story of how the daughters of the murdered poet [See Pat Lowther entry] gradually overcame the loss of their mother and their father, her murderer, who died in prison. Safarik knew Pat Lowther from 1970 until her death in 1975, publishing her poetry with Brian Brett under their Blackfish imprint. Around 2000, Safarik had decided to no longer make himself available for queries about Lowther. "The body of rumours and misinformation that had taken over left appalled and depressed by the way history was being constructed like bad plumbing that leaked all over the place," he wrote.
BOOKS:
Okira (Blackfish, 1975)
Green Lights Stones and Trees (Cold Turkey Press, 1977)
The Heart is Altered (1979)
The Naked Machine Rides On (Blackfish Press, 1980)
God Loves Us Like Earthworms Love Wood (Porcupine’s Quill, 1983)
Vancouver Poetry (1986). Editor.
Advertisements for Paradise (Oolichan, 1986)
On the Way to Ethiopia (Polestar, 1992)
All Night Highway (Black Moss, 1997)
How I Know the Sky Is a River: Selected and New Poems (Regina: Hagios Press, 1999)
Bird Writers Handbook (2003)
Blood of Angels (2004)
When Light Falls From the Sun (Hagios Press, 2005). With artworks by Terry Fenton.
Notes from the Outside: Episodes from an Unconventional Life (Hagios Press, 2006).
Yellowgrass (Hagios Press 2008)
The Day is a Cold Grey Stone (Hagios Press, 2009)
[BCBW 2010] "Poetry" "Publishing"
Notes from the Outside: Episodes from an Unconventional Life (Hagios $19.95)
Article
In “Watermarks,” the final chapter of his Notes from the Outside: Episodes from an Unconventional Life, publisher Allan Safarik recounts his friendship with poet Pat Lowther and his difficulties coming to terms with her murder.
On October 15, 1975, Pat Lowther’s body was discovered five kilometres south of Britannia Beach at Furry Creek, badly decomposed. Police concluded several months later that Lowther was bludgeoned to death with a hammer wielded by her jealous husband; a would-be poet.
As a student at Simon Fraser University, Allan Safarik first met Lowther in 1970 and later published several of her poems in his Blackfish magazine, as well as an obscure collection of poetry, The Age of the Bird. As Pat Lowther’s reputation as a poet began to eclipse her husband’s reputation as a would-be author, Safarik sometimes visited the Lowthers’ hostile home environment. Separated by about ten years, Pat and Roy Lowther were sleeping at, and occupied, opposite ends of the house, remaining under the same roof for their children, while constrained financially.
“Pat stood up and dropped a section of the newspaper on top of my working area and held her finger to her lips to warn me to stop what I was doing,” writes Safarik. “It soon became obvious that we weren’t alone. “Roy, quiet as their cat, Tinker, had snuck up the stairs and manoeuvred himself into a position behind a tall book shelf so he could listen and observe us before we could detect his presence. When finally he came out from his hiding spot he gave me the creeps. Soon he went back down into the basement again and Pat heaved a sigh of relief.”
Safarik refers to Roy Lowther as demented, abusive, diabolical and a madman. “He wrote doggerel,” Safarik claims, “and was completely convinced that he was a misunderstood genius. It burned his ass to think that people saw more in Pat’s work than they saw in his feeble output.” Safarik is convinced that the final straw that led to Lowther’s murder was her invitation to a poetry reading at the Ironworkers Hall on Columbia Street, along with headliners Patrick Lane, David Day and Peter Trower. Already perturbed by his wife’s dabbling in an extra-marital relationship with a poet in eastern Canada, Roy Lowther was furious not to be allowed onto the stage to read. Four days before the event, Pat Lowther was dead by the hands of her hammer-wielding husband, who had been diagnosed prior to their marriage as paranoid schizophrenic. According to BC BookWorld reviewer Joan Givner, “The acquisition of a briefcase became in his eyes the hated symbol of her growing professionalism. He confessed that after he disposed of the body, he flung the briefcase as far as he could into the bushes.
“It is a sad irony that the brief-case seems to have been the one private repository of her working papers for a writer who had no office, room or desk of her own.”
After family members prompted authorities to investigate more closely, police discovered 117 bloodspots on the walls of the couple’s bedroom. Roy Lowther had taken the couple’s mattress to Mayne Island, having washed on both sides, but reddish stains remained. Following the murder trial in 1977, Safarik became a common target of inquiry for journalists and media people and made numerous appearances at literary events to honour Lowther, who became venerated as a tragic, Sylvia Plath figure for Canada. “I was burnt out on the subject and tweaking my memory gave me nightmares,” he says. Rumours and misinformation appalled him, and Safarik resented the way Lowther had been turned into a “celebrity victim” by a sensational trial, so he decided to no longer speak publicly about the Lowthers.
Roy Lowther died in prison in 1985. After many years of silence, and his move to Dundurn, Saskatchewan, Allan Safarik was contacted by Anne Henderson, a documentary film-maker who was working on a project about Pat Lowther’s daughters Beth and Chris. After Safarik reluctantly agreed to participate, his teary-eyed reunion with the daughters was captured on film. “My encounter with Beth and Chris in Jericho Beach Park thanks to Anne Henderson set me free from my feelings of denial. I broke down in tears but I was able to talk freely with Beth and Chris on camera and give them copies of their mother’s publications that they had never seen.”
Relieved to be presented as the main authority on Lowther in “Watermarks,” Safarik has broken his silence to start anew. “In a sense we never had a chance to miss her properly,” he writes, “because we were always talking about her.”
Notes from the Outside: Episodes from an Unconventional Life also includes Safarik’s recollections of Dorothy Livesay, Milton Acorn, Anne Szumigalski, Joe Rosenblatt, Patrick Friesen and William Hoffer, along with other personal essays about growing up in Vancouver and starting Blackfish Press. 0973972742
[BCBW 2006]
