A post-script of sorts to the Contact Press post yesterday. Below you’ll find a small handful of Louis Dudek-related items from my shelves that overlap with Contact Press (1952-1967), and below those, a couple related little magazines.
Louis Dudek edited Delta from 1957-1965, during the life of Contact Press and co-incident with Souster’s editing of Combustion.
Delta contained regular ads for the latest titles from Contact Press. Here Ellenbogen’s entry in the McGill Poetry Series is announced as “A New Contact Press Book.”
Dudek’s Delta Canada Press was begun while Contact Press was still Active. Atlantis was published in 1967. According to Nicky Drumbolis, it was “repeatedly intended for publication by Contact Press.”
Glen Siebrasse’s The Regeneration of an Athlete, published by Delta Canada in 1965.
CIV/n, of course, edited by Aileen Collins from 1953-1955 (along with Jackie Gallagher, Wanda Staniszewska, and Stan Rozynski). Dudek and Irving Layton served as readers and contributed to discussion of submissions. Jennifer Macquarrie’s 2006 MA Thesis on CIV/n is an excellent discussion of Aileen Collins’s importance as an editor.
![In his introductory note to Michael Gnarowski's index of CIV/n, Dudek writes: "[I]t led to a realization on my own part, when the magazine ended, that I wanted to edit a magazine single-handed, so that CIV/n prepared the way for Delta, just as First Statement had prepared for CIV/n.](https://cameronanstee.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/img_0414.jpg?w=746&h=995 "IMG_0414")
In his introductory note to Michael Gnarowski’s index of CIV/n, Dudek writes: “[I]t led to a realization on my own part, when the magazine ended, that I wanted to edit a magazine single-handed, so that CIV/n prepared the way for Delta, just as First Statement had prepared for CIV/n.
Related Little Magazines:
Contemporary Verse, edited for 39 issues by Alan Crawley from 1941-1952. A precedent for and spiritual contemporary of Contact magazine. According to Tim McIntyre, “in 1941, West-coast poets Dorothy Livesay and Floris McLaren, with help from Doris Ferne and Anne Marriott, decided to start a modern poetry magazine and asked Alan Crawley to be its editor.”
Northern Review (1945-1956), edited primarily by John Sutherland following the merger of Preview and First Statement. An important link between the ferment of the 1940s and the establishment of Contact Press in the 1950s. Dudek and Souster’s correspondence surrounding their increasingly frustration with Sutherland’s editing practices demonstrate one reason that Souster launched Contact magazine in January 1952.
Yes, edited primarily by Michael Gnarowski from 1957-1970 (with help along the way from Glen Siebrasse, John Lachs, Donald Winkleman, Hugh Hood, and, informally, Louis Dudek).
Peter Gibbon’s MA thesis in the history of YES is sadly not widely available, but can be found in a rare issue of his magazine, Conduit, published as a double issue (Conduit 1/YES 20, Fall/Spring 2012).
Cameron Anstee 