SOURCE: Layton, Irving, and Kenneth Sherman. “An Interview with Irving Layton.” Essays on Canadian Writing, no. 10 (spring 1978): 7-18.

In the following interview, conducted on December 10, 1977, Layton discusses social and religious history and ideas; the state of poetry in Canada; and his public image.

[Sherman]: Throughout much of English literature one notes a Christianizing of the Old Testament and its figures. Good examples of this are to be found in the medieval passion plays as well as in Eliot's The Waste Land. Would it be fair to say that in your recent Yeshua poems you are rewriting the New Testament in terms of the Old?

[Layton]: That's certainly a very good way of putting it, because they Christianize not only the figures in the Old Testament—they have Christianized my brother, Yeshua! It's a lie to say that Jesus was the first Christian to die on the cross; he...