Cameron Anstee

Crad Kilodney (1948-2014)

Crad Kilodney, (in)famous Canadian fiction writer and street-bookseller, died yesterday. I know Crad’s work, and I know stories about Crad, but I never knew him personally and never made direct contact with him.

Like many of my generation (I suspect), I first encountered his name in Stuart Ross’s Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer. While describing his own adventures selling self-published books on the streets of Toronto, Ross invoked Crad: “Crad Kilodney, the grandfather of literary street vendors, got me into this. During his 15 years on a the street, he sold 35,000 books of his demented fiction, making him one of Canada’s top-selling literary writers. A misanthrope to begin with, he became increasingly bitter and angry over those years” (34).

News that Crad was unwell spread over the past few months, and some that knew him well began posting short memoirs of Crad. Stuart Ross and Jay MillAr posted two that were particularly thoughtful and honest about Crad’s influence and legacy. [Update: There is now a new post by Lorette C. Luzajic who was with Crad at the end. Lorette is responsible for The Crad Kilodney Literary Foundation and has written on him in two of her books.]

In December, a story was posted on Crad’s website, announced on his Facebook page with the following note: “”Thank you to all my readers, old and new, for your support. This is the last piece I will publish in my lifetime.” The story, “Dreaming With Kay”, is touching and sad and deeply moving.

I am in the process of planning my dissertation chapters. When all is said and done, Crad will make an appearance in chapter five. It is very possible that Crad would have disapproved of this. I can’t find the passage at the moment, but somewhere in one of his books on my shelf Crad wonders if someday an academic will attempt to make a name for him or herself off of his work, while he suffers and dies in poverty. This is a contradiction I will confront when I arrive at it.

What I do know is that Crad did something remarkable standing on the street with his books and with his placards. His critical gesture was emphatically public. For close to two decades he subsisted on a minuscule income garnered from selling a handful of his own books each day. In Putrid Scum, one of his two novels based on his street-bookselling experiences, he writes, “The whole premise of standing on the street was to be accessible to anyone who was interested, and to find my readers one at a time by letting them find me” (148). There is an openness and generosity and courage embodied in this, even though the experience itself often gave way to bitterness and frustration. In Excrement, the other novel about his experiences, he describes standing with his books in public, “bodily before a passing population of nitwits, illiterates, snobs, degenerates, mental cases, stiffs, creeps, assholes, phones, scumbags, cheapskates, and self-styled critics [understanding] my true position in the world, as well as the inconsequentiality of the poor little bundle of wood pulp into which [I had] poured all that I was humanly capable of!” (44).

The small press in Canada is richer for Crad Kilodney’s contributions to it.

Update: Moments after posting this, The Crad Kilodney Literary Foundation was launched.

Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto

“This American and Canadian literature course, with its minimal attention to Canadian literature, remained on the [University of Toronto] English curriculum for thirty years until finally, in 1954, Robert McDougall convinced the department to offer a full course in Canadian literature. In spite of McDougall’s efforts, however, the course was open only to students not majoring in English.” (164)

King, Sarah D. “An Uncomfortable Match: Canadian Literature and English Departments in Canada, 1919-1965.” Diss. University of Western Ontario, 2003.

The Table

The Table (For Rod Anstee)

“The table isn’t immortal, though it hums a tune of going on forever.”

–Ron Padgett

my nerves fail watching the soccer

I read and listen instead

it doesn’t work; we lose

late

again

at least Ron Padgett is in the world

saying the things he says

in just the way that he says them

at the moment we need to hear them

ottawater

I’ve got a handful of very short poems in the brand new issue of ottawater. Amazingly, the annual journal is now in its tenth year! I feel very lucky to have been in it a number of times, and am particularly proud to be among such fine company this time around. Thanks to editor rob mclennan, and designer Tanya Sprowl.

Inside you’ll find poems from Sylvia Adams, Cameron Anstee, John Barton, Stephanie Bolster, Frances Boyle, Heather Brunet, Sara Cassidy, George Elliott Clarke, Stewart Cole, Anita Dolman, JM Francheteau, Richard Froude, Elisabeth Harvor, Jenna Jarvis, Nicholas Lea, Michael Lithgow, N.L. Lea, Anne Le Dressay, Sneha Madhavan-Reese, Karen Massey, Justin Million, Colin Morton, Andrew Oliveira, Roland Prevost, Adrienne Ho Rose, Armand Garnet Ruffo, Tim Mook Sang, jesslyn delia smith, D.S. Stymeist, Priscila Uppal, Will Vallières, Gabriel Wainio-Théberge, Matthew Walsh and Deanna Young, as well as artwork by Anthony Tremmaglia, Ariane Beauchamp, Arpi, Fall Down Gallery, Marisa Gallemit, Mat Dubé, Patti Normand, Sarah Hatton and Scott Fairchild.

ottawater will be launching this coming Friday, January 24, upstairs at the Carleton Tavern, readings at 7:30pm. Full details here.

A few self-centred updates

There are posts forthcoming on other things, but in the meantime, I wanted to gather together some recent activity before I lost track of it all together.

Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013 has begun to receive some reviews. My piece in the book, the chapbook Frank St. (2010), gets a nice mention at the end of Ryan Pratt’s review here. Less nice is the mention that I get at the end of Catherine Owen’s review here, but hey, so it goes. I am unbelievably proud to be in this book.

I was on the radio last week. Dave Currie invited me onto his monthly installment of Literary Landscapes on CKCU (93.1FM, Ottawa). You can listen to it here. We speak about Ottawa, knee injuries, and Apt. 9, before the show turns to its esteemed panel to discuss a number of other things. I truly enjoy listening to Dave’s half-hour of gonzo-radio every month, and it was very cool to be on the inside of it.

rob mclennan also wrote a short review of a small publication I made to give out at my In/Words reading last October, Three Poems. rob continues to be kind to and supportive of my work, and I appreciate it. As I work slowly, I’m quite happy with rob’s “optimistic and impatient” stance regarding my writing. I’ve got a small number of these still available as a freebie if anyone out there is interested.

Apt. 9 is back in production. Printing is mostly done, and binding has begun on Minutiae from Nelson Ball, a hero of mine and the subject of a central chapter in my dissertation-to-be. It has been a real joy working on this book, and I can’t wait for people to read it.

Apologies that it has been so long between updates, there will be more to come.

The Blue R Hand Press (Ottawa)

I’ve written about Robert Rosewarne and Fran Jones on this blog before. Artists, printers, and publishers, the two were a part of Ottawa’s vibrant literary and visual arts community in the early 1960s. Ottawa being Ottawa, though, there is little information available and little research has been performed on their work. This blog is actually one of the few hits when you search Rosewarne or their press, the “Blue R Hand Press”, on Google.

Consequently, I was delighted to come across a reference to their work recently. In Fine Printing: The Private Press in Canada, a catalogue related to a traveling exhibition organized by the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild and the Friends of Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in 1995, the Blue R Hand Press gets a mention. The two books Rosewarne designed and printed for Jay Macpherson’s Emblem Books were included in the exhibition. More interestingly, the book quoted from a publication another private press exhibit, leading to another book that offered further context.

Reader, Lover of Books, Lover of Heaven is “a catalogue based on a exhibition of the book arts in Ontario compiled by David B. Kotin with a checklist of Ontario private presses by Marilyn Reuter.” It was published by the North York Public Library in 1978 to mark the opening of the Canadiana Collection in its new quarters at the library. An exhibition ran from March 21 to April 30, 1977, to celebrate. Frances Rosewarne [Fran Jones], is quoted under “BLUE R PRESS, Ottawa, 1961-1965”:

Bob and I, both printmakers, needed a press of our own. In Westport Bob and an artist friend from the Queen Street Studios finally found the “Blue R” at the Westport [Ont.] Mirror. It was a beauty, with Greek column support for the bed with vestiges of blue and gold paint on the name plate. It was Taylor-Washington, very similar to the one shown as William Lyon Mackenzie’s in one of the Toronto Museum’s publications. One of the uprights had even been smashed which unfortunately made it erratic for printing (smahsed by the Family Compact and reborn as the Blue R, I fancy). Bob bought Carter’s reprint of Moxon and we set to work. Jay Macpherson gave us two Emblem Books to do; Bob did the illustration for both books. Then in May 1965 the studio burnt and the beautiful Blue R Press was damaged too much for our pocket book to repair. The last I hear of the Blue R was that it was in Nesbitt’s Engineering Barns waiting for reconstruction.

One wonders what became of the press…

Blue R also receives a mention in Reader under one other publication–Wrongfount 2: a portfolio of printed pieces issued by the Guild of Hand Printers, Toronto. The listing: “Don Mills, 1963. 12 items. 22.8cmx38cm. 150 copies. Enclosed in a cardboard envelope. Contributions from: Ampersand Press, Blue R Press, Carl Morrison, Donald Duncan, E.J. Mulrooney, Heinrich Heine Press, Leslie and Philip Smart, Village Press, Vincent Rueter, Willow Green Press.” I can only imagine what such an item would go for. If you ever see one, keep me in mind!

Reading about Blue R again, I was motivated to put some Canadian books from the 60s (and one from more recently), side by side to look (informally) at influence in book design and printing. I cannot make an explicit case for direct influence here, but there are striking similarities in book design aesthetics among certain Canadian publishers of poetry in these years. In any event, these are beautiful productions that speak to one another. My apologies for the poor quality photos–I only own the paperbacks in most cases, and thus can’t lay them flat.

As is often the case with modern Canadian book design, we begin with Frank Newfeld. These are photos from two of the “Design for Poetry” titles: Ralph Gustafson’s Rivers Among Rocks (1960) and Phyllis Gotlieb’s Within the Zodiac (1964), both published by McClelland & Stewart. Read what Randall Speller has to say about the series in his wonderful article from Devil’s Artisan.

Moving chronologically, here are images from the two books that came off of the Blue R Hand Press for Emblem: Wind a Rocky Country by Alden Nowlan (1961) and The Blur in Between by Al Purdy (1962).

Stan Bevington has been explicit regarding his admiration for Frank Newfeld’s design work and it’s influence on what Coach House went on to do. Below are images from one Coach House title (I’ll do another post at some point with images of a number of Coach House books from the late 1960s and early 1970s), Joe Rosenblatt’s The LSD Leacock (1966). Note that this is the second printing from 1968.

Finally, the last book is brand new. Phil Hall’s X was recently published by Thee Hellbox Press run by Hugh Walter Barclay out of Kingston, Ontario. This book in particular reminds me of Rosewarne’s work on behalf of Emblem. Amazingly, Thee Hellbox is included in the 1995 catalogue Fine Printing. Operating since 1981, Barclay has clearly learned how to get the most out of his printing. I aspire to this work.

There is an awful lot to aspire to. When I someday get the new, more literal press of Apt. 9 Press operating, I hope to begin fumbling my way in their direction. Thanks for all the beautiful books!

[I do not own the rights to any of these books or images. They are reproduced here with respect and admiration. If you want one pulled down, do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so immediately.]

Self-Promotion

If you’ll indulge me, I’m going to use this space for some blatant self-promotion. My last post focused on work I had published through Apt. 9 by other poets appearing in trade collections. I don’t have a trade collection of my own on the horizon, but I do have work coming out in two trade collection in the next month or so.

First up, I feel honoured to have my 2010 chapbook Frank St. being reprinted in Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013. Not only do I have a great deal of respect for what rob has accomplished and sustained over twenty year with the press, but the anthology is being published as part of the re-launch of Ottawa’s Chaudiere Books. The city needs a dedicated trade publisher that is plugged into the local scene. I am feeling super-optimistic about what is going to happen with Chaudiere over the next few years, and it is a joy be there in some form at the start (and among such fine company). Ground Rules is launching on December 7 in Ottawa, 5pm at The Manx with readings from Sharon Harris, Stephen Brockwell, and Marilyn Irwin.

Second, I was lucky enough to collaborate on a poem with Stuart Ross in the last year, the cryptically titled “Melrose 3.” Stuart has gathered collaborations that he wrote with 29 poets over the years and is publishing them under his “a stuart ross book” imprint at the wonderful Mansfield Press. He has some details about the book up at his blog, and also posted this first look at the delightful cover. I’ll share any launch details that I hear as they are revealed.

Apt. 9 in Trade

I love making chapbooks through Apt. 9 Press. It is a great joy to publish work by writers I admire, work I inevitably wish I had written. Due to the time and labour-intensive nature of Apt. 9 productions, print-runs are necessarily limited. Typically 50 copies, with occasional reprints when circumstances call for it. One consequence of this is that this wonderful writing is not permanently available. This can be good or bad depending on your perspective. I love limited editions and finding rare publications by my favourite writers, but I also understand the frustration of just missing out on something. So, I’m always thrilled when a chapbook published by Apt. 9 shows up later in a trade collection, becoming available to a wider audience (and I’m always excited to see Apt. 9 in the acknowledgements).

The press has been active for just over four years now, which is long enough for more than a couple of these publications to have appeared. A new one was launched this past Friday in Ottawa, and this felt like an opportune moment to briefly catalogue these items. Of the twenty five books published by Apt. 9, six have gone on to appear in trade collections to date, or nearly 1/4 of what we’ve published. This is a bit skewed as three chapbooks were launched last week. So let’s say 6/22 is a bit more accurate. These six were published by Pedlar, Mansfield, BookThug, and Anvil, four presses I have great respect for and I couldn’t be happier to see Apt. 9 items hidden away in their bibliographies.

Ridley, Sandra. Rest Cure. Ottawa: Apt. 9 Press, August 2009.

–. Post-Apothecary. Toronto: Pedlar Press, 2011.

Rest Cure, one of the first three titles published by Apt. 9 Press, was reprinted in Sandra Ridley’s excellent Post-Apothecary, receiving the typically gorgeous Pedlar-treatment. Sandra also published two broadsides with Ottawa operations, “Plunge” (above/ground press poem broadside #286) and “Untether : Unhinge” (AngelHousePress Broadside #002), that appear in the collection. Sandra has a new collection out from BookThug that you should be tracking down to read as well. Three great collections since 2010 have quickly established Sandra across the country.

Ross, Stuart. I Have Come To Talk About Manners. Ottawa: Apt. 9 Press, February 2010.

–. You Exist. Details Follow. Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2012.

I Have Come To Talk About Manners was a real joy to publish. Stuart Ross was coming to Ottawa to read in the Tree Reading Series, and I approached him about publishing a chapbook to mark the occasion. True to his generous form, Stuart agreed and we got the book together quickly. 14 or so poems appear in both. The chapbook cover still makes me laugh with its subtly-twisted picture.

Nash, Leigh. Landforms. Ottawa: Apt. 9 Press, May 2010.

–. Goodbye, Ukelele. Toronto: Mansfield Press, 2010.

Leigh Nash and Andrew Faulkner’s The Emergency Response Unit is a touchstone of design and poetics for Apt. 9. I was motivated when they brought their books to Ottawa in 2008 (or 2007?) and it brought me great joy to publish a book of Leigh’s in 2010. Landforms, a series of eleven excellent minimalist poems, was rewritten in Goodbye, Ukelele, as a single prose-poem. This remains one of the best Apt. 9 covers, in my opinion. I would love to see some new poetry from Leigh, and hope there is something in the works. People-in-the-know: have I missed anything recently from Leigh?

Smith, Jim. Exit Interviews. Ottawa: Apt. 9 Press, June 2011.

–. Happy Birthday, Nicanor Parra. Toronto: Mansfield Press, 2012.

I’ve written about Jim on this blog previously. Exit Interviews was enormously fun to produce. I love Jim’s list poems, and a set that so consciously and lovingly worked with the materials of his peers and influences was a very welcome surprise when the manuscript appeared. We even produced a broadside, “Postscript to Exit Interviews,” to tuck into the chapbook that appears in a slightly different form in the trade collection. Everything that is great about Jim as a poet can be found in Happy Birthday, Nicanor Parra.

Hall, Phil. A Rural Pen. Ottawa: Apt. 9 Press, October 2012.

–. The Small Nouns Crying Faith. Toronto: Bookthug, 2013.

I have long admired Phil Hall as a poet. I first met Phil at the Tree Reading Series in Ottawa. I had been recruited to present the dead poet reading, and chose Kenneth Patchen to focus on. I found out after the reading that Phil and I had an admiration of Patchen in common. When Phil generously provided me with a manuscript, we decided to try to include Patchen in the project somehow. The cover image is a drawing of Patchen’s from his book We Meet (1960). I wrote to New Directions and, much to my surprise, they gave us the rights to use it. I couldn’t be happier with this book.

Brockwell, Stephen. Excerpts from Improbable Books: The Apt. 9 Installment. Ottawa: Apt. 9 Press, June 2013.

–. Complete Surprising Fragments of Improbable Books. Toronto: Mansfield Press, 2013.

This past Friday, Stephen Brockwell launched his unbelievably good new collection at the Ottawa International Writer’s Festival, the books apparently arriving direct from the printer mere hours before the event (so new, in fact, it doesn’t appear on the publisher’s website yet). I’ve discussed the project before. I think this is an important book, one that deserves to bring Stephen greater respect than he already receives. It’s idea seems to simple and clear now that it exists, but it took someone with Stephen’s combinations of poetic curiosity and scientific/technical knowledge to realize it. I feel very lucky to have helped bring a small part of it into print before the trade collection.

So there you go. If you missed any of these, you can at least track down the writing in these books. You should be buying these six books regardless.

Recent and Upcoming Events

Back in August, I had the opportunity to sit down with Nigel Beale and discuss one of my personal and academic interests–Canadian book design. We spoke about Frank Newfeld, McClelland & Stewart, Coach House, and a bunch of other stuff. If you’re interested, you can listen to the 38 minute interview at Nigel’s always fascinating website, The Literary Tourist. I am grateful to Nigel for the interest and for the conversation. It was a great time, and I got to look at Nigel’s books as an added bonus.

One week from tonight, I will be the feature reader in The Reading Series, run by my friends at In/Words Magazine & Press (Carleton University). Beyond my tenure as an editor, I read in the series once before in July 2011 when it was under the stewardship of Justin Million. It will be a joy to take part once again. I’m planning a little freebie handout for anyone who is kind enough to be there listening. 9pm at the Clocktower Brew Pub in the Glebe, downstairs in the basement. Apparently there will be prizes for open-mic participants “dressed up in scary poetry-related costumes.”

Apt. 9 had a wildly successful launch last Friday, with spectacular readings from Jesslyn Delia Smith, Spencer Gordon and Rhonda Douglas. The new chapbooks are available online now in the Apt. 9 Etsy shop for anyone interested. We’ll also be bringing the books to Toronto in November for the Meet the Presses Indie Literary Market. We had a table two years ago and it was really a wonderful time. I can’t wait to see what everyone in Toronto and beyond has been up to.

Ottawa Small Press Book Fair (October 2013)

Some very preliminary notes on a few of the items I brought home from the recent small press book fair. I haven’t had much time to devote to reading through all of this yet, but I wanted to post some initial thoughts and responses while the fair was fresh in my mind. So:

—.

Grow & Grow (Toronto)

Jessica Bebenek came to town with her brand new Toronto-based small press, Grow & Grow. Apt. 9 traded some of our books for the three new titles Bebenek published: Infiltration by Ben Groh, Consanguinity from S.E. Chaves, and Novella: A Short Story by Kaz Adam Mason. Benebek read from Novella at the pre-fair reading. The story was actually written by Bebenek’s partner, Mark Jordan Manner. It describes a love story between its supposed author, Kaz Adam Mason, and fictional poet, Novella Ebony Danger, charting the imagined life of Novella and quoting from her poems. The chapbook includes a smaller chapbook in a flap on the back cover of Novella’s poems, written by Bebenek. It’s a captivating read, despite how confusing my description is. The story feels to me as though Wes Anderson retold Paul Hiebert’s Sarah Binks, though more earnest than Hiebert. I have not yet had time to read the Chaves or Groh titles (Grow & Grow published Groh? The review would write itself), but it is always exciting to discover new communities of young writers that are finding ways to publish each other. Grow & Grow are working hard to push themselves as book makers, and the time and care invested are evident in these productions. Support them! I’m looking forward to seeing where the press goes.

—.

Puddles of Sky (Kingston)

The best item I picked up last weekend was issue three of Illiterature from Michael Casteels’ Puddles of Sky. Casteels has been making interesting books in interesting ways for a couple years now, but this is far and away the best thing his press has done (and one of the best little magazine issues I’ve seen in years). This issue is focused on minimalist poetry, presenting new work from Nelson Ball, Gary Barwin, Judith Copithorne, jwcurry, Amanda Earl, Aram Saroyan, Mark Truscott, and others. In a nod to bpNichol’s The Cosmic Chef, authors are not identified beside their work, but rather only at the back where their bios include notes about who wrote what. This gesture makes for a fun reading experience. I was surprised by who I guessed correctly, and who I was completely wrong about. There are concrete poems here, minimal lyrics, drawings, letraset experiments, and photographs of graffiti from jwcurry’s ongoing Welcome to Concrete anthology (at least I think that is what the photographs are from). There is even a tiny chapbook of visual work by Amanda Earl tucked into an envelope at the back. Only 100 copies were made, so don’t hesitate. You want this on your shelf.

—.

Jarvis, Jenna. The Tiger with the Crooked Mouth. Ottawa: Bywords, 2013.

Jenna Jarvis, winner of 2012 John Newlove Poetry Award, will be launching her winning chapbook next Friday at the Ottawa International Writer’s Festival. The good folks at Bywords brought along copies of the chapbook to sell in advance at the book fair. I’ve only been able to dip in and out of this one a bit so far, but it is wonderful as we have all come to expect from Jarvis. The production is gorgeous, and continues the Bywords trend of producing beautiful chapbooks. I remember hearing Jarvis read “Plathitude” (published in the chapbook) years ago at an In/Words open-mic, and it is incredibly exciting to see her beginning to move into the broader community. She is a poet to keep an eye on, and Bywords, as ever, is there being supportive at the very start.

—.

Derkson, Dalton and Mason Krawczyk. Winter Sway / / Ottawa Dreary. Mortlach, SK: Hurtin’ Crue Press, 2013.

Though the press is supposedly located in the prairies, Derkson and Krawczyk are students at Carleton University. I’ve got a soft spot for student writers on that campus, and I was thrilled to find this chapbook at the fair. I’m one of the biggest In/Words fans out there, but I’m excited to find work being published outside of the In/Words machine on the campus. The clean, minimal production on this one is great, and the poems show a lot of promise. The nature of the collaboration is not identified in the book, so it is anyone’s guess if the two trade off poems or lines, or worked more closely than that, but I like the move to allow their voices to mix. I hope they keep at it, and I hope Hurtin’ Crue Press publishes more.

—.

Hunter, Claire Pattison and Chris Johnson. Snail Shell. Ottawa: In/Words, 2013.

This collaboration between Hunter and Johnson feels like an extension of Hunter’s 2013 chapbook GCI-YOW (From Guernsey to Ottawa), also published by In/Words. The movement between cities, and across an ocean, is again taken up, only this time in an almost epistolary dialogue. The poems are identified on each page by the poet’s initial, but the “CRJ” and “CPH” are printed in a small font, out of the way, resulting in a reading experience where the author is moved to the margins and the poems emphasize their internal relations to one another. It was published for Ottawa’s recent zine-off, an event I was sad to miss, so I was really happy to be able to grab this at the fair. The cover was printed with the same rubber stamps In/Words used years ago to produce Chapbook Series 8 (discussed in detail by Ben Ladouceur here), creating a neat material continuity with In/Words’ past. Johnson read recently at Plan 99, and lived up to the stakes of the billing. Claire Pattison Hunter recently left Ottawa after completing her degree at Carleton, and our scene is sorry to lose her, but we all know that she’ll make great contributions to whatever new community she finds. If they’re not all gone by now, buy this one.

—.

Radmore, Claudia. Desiree / nude in sunlight. Ottawa: Editions des petits nuages, 2013.

I’ve had the great joy of working with Claudia Coutu Radmore in the past, publishing her 2011 bpNichol Chapbook Award winning title Accidentals through Apt. 9. I’m an avid follower of her work, and was thrilled to see that she was publishing a selection of her poems about Desiree, the “Green-Naped Rainbow Lorikeet” that has been living with her since 2001. These are lovely and personal poems from Radmore, a welcome addition to her published work. Two similar poems, “wild” and “sacrament”, also about Desiree, were published in 2010 in Pith & Wry: Canadian Poetry (ed. Susan McMaster). I was lucky enough to be in that anthology as well, and remember those as some of the first poems from Claudia that caught my eye. Editions des petits nuages is new to me (and I can’t find a formal web presence yet), but are evidently doing great work.