Fred Cogswell

1917-2004

Frederick (Fred) William Cogswell BA, MA, PhD, OC, ONB (poet, professor, editor, publisher, literary critic) was born in East Centreville, New Brunswick on 08 November 1917 and died in Vancouver, BC on 20 June 2004. Until grade nine Cogswell attended a one-room schoolhouse across the street from the family farm.  After graduating from Normal School with a first-class Superior license in 1936 he worked in small rural New Brunswick schools for a couple of years then set off to Fredericton in February 1940 to enlist. He joined the forestry corps, shipping overseas to Scotland where he worked on the telephone switchboard to maintain inventory. Cogswell enrolled at UNB in 1945. With a veteran’s allowance, he was able to study full time for almost eight years, moving from a BA (1949, UNB) to an MA to a PhD (1952, Edinburgh) in that time.  By the start of the 1952 academic year, he had accepted a job at UNB and almost immediately took over editorial control of The Fiddlehead. A year after he began remaking the magazine, he and Al Tunis, a colleague in the UNB Sociology Department, founded Fiddlehead Poetry Books. The first book published was Cogswell’s The Stunted Strong (1954).  In the late 1960s Cogswell went to Montreal to study and translate French. Star-People appeared in 1967. One Hundred Poems of Modern Quebec was published in 1970. In subsequent years, he became a founding member of the Independent Publishers’ Association (IPA), then the Literary Press Group, then the Atlantic Publishers’ Association.  He received the Order of Canada (1981) and Professor Emeritus status was conferred by UNB in 1983. Honorary degrees for outstanding achievement in the arts followed: 1983, LLD, St. FX; 1985, DCL, King’s College, Halifax; and 1988, LLD, Mount Allison. The Best Notes Merge appeared in 1988. His translations in Unfinished Dreams: Contemporary Poetry of Acadie (1990, with Jo-Anne Elder) were the first Acadian verses that many English New Brunswickers read. From 1991 until he left New Brunswick in 2002 he published twelve collections. In early 2002, Cogswell left New Brunswick for the last time, going to Vancouver to live with his daughter Kathleen. Fred Cogswell died at the Royal Columbian Hospital on 20 June 2004.

Predominant New Brunswick Residences:

Centreville, Fredericton

Archival Material

• The Fiddlehead/Fred Cogswell fonds
  ⌄
  Location

  University of New Brunswick Archives & Special Collections

  Website/Catalogue Record

  View Archival Record

  Retrieval Number

  UA RG 83

  Date Range of Material

  1945-1980
  

  Extent

  4.7 m textual records

  Scope and Content Note

  The correspondence deals mainly with the submission of poetry, but there is also a large section dealing with the business aspects of The Fiddlehead. Also included are drafts of poetry submissions, book reviews, and poetry manuscripts from Fiddlehead Poetry Books.