Most of my shorter poems have their background in Newfoundland and spring out of
personal experiences. My father was a clergyman
moving from place to place every three years, and in the course of his life covered nearly the
whole of the island on the sea-coast. So, for the first twenty years of my life I was never out of
sight of the sea, the harbours and bays and the coastline. We knew what storms were, wrecks and
rescues and loss of life. Indeed one of my first experiences of a shipwreck happened when I was
about eight years of age. A ship had gone down with the loss of some of the crew and my father
had to break the news to a woman whose husband was drowned. I went with him and I shall
never forget the look on her face when she opened the door. It is one of the most vivid
experiences of my early life. Twenty years after I wrote a short poem of eight lines upon the
impression. I began searching for an image which might combine rhythm and aptness and
concentration. I called the poem "Erosion."
[Box 7, no. 60; On His Life and Poetry 87-88]
E.J.P. reading "Erosion" [0:29; 321Kb]
[recorded March 1956 in the Victoria College Library]
E.J.P. comments on "breaking the news" [3:43; 2,402Kb]
[interview by Jed Adams, 1 May 1958]