Margaret Atwood reads "Marrying the Hangman," 1978 in San Francisco - The Poetry Center

Full-program video (with downloadable audio) at Poetry Center Digital Archive: diva.sfsu.edu/collections/poe...
Margaret Atwood introduces then reads her poem "Marrying the Hangman" (from her book Two-Headed Poems, Houghton Mifflin, 1978) to a full-house audience on May 3, 1978 in the César Chavez Student Center at San Francisco State University, for her first ever reading in California.
Atwood's footnote to the poem reads as follows:
"Jean Cololère, a drummer in the colonial troops at Québec, was imprisoned for duelling in 1751. In the cell next to his was Françoise Laurent, who had been sentenced to hang for stealing. Except for letters of pardon, the only way at the time for someone under sentence of death to escape hanging was, for a man, to become a hangman, or, for a woman, to marry one. Françoise persuaded Cololère to apply for the vacant (and undesirable) post of executioner, and also to marry her."
#poetrycenterarchivegoeslive #margaretatwood #canadianpoets