T.L. Morrisey

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

No Looking Back Now



INTRODUCTION: NO LOOKING BACK NOW


M
ark McCawley, who died suddenly in April 2016, was an Edmonton-based writer, publisher, and critic. Mark published and edited Urban Graffiti, a litzine that has an international reputation for publishing transgressive texts, including short stories, poetry, criticism, in-depth interviews with artists, and reviews of books, visual art, and music.
            Writers, as Margaret Laurence said long ago, are a tribe; we know our own people, we have friends, and friends of friends, around the world—we have a lineage and a history—and as members of this tribe many of us came to be friends with Mark. He was, as Richard Rathwell said, of "the social poet class...", that social class is our tribe.  He was one of us.
            I first became acquainted with Mark McCawley in the early 1990s. He published, with his Greensleeve Editions, chapbooks for both my wife and I; it was Carolyn Zonailo's The Letters of the Alphabet (1992) and my The Divining Rod (1993). In 2008 I published Mark's collection of short stories, Collateral Damage, on Coracle Press's online site. I also taught his short stories in my college-level English literature course; the response to his stories was always positive, the students appreciated his honesty and depiction of "real life". Mark wrote to me, "I think of all my literary experiences, I am most proud of the suite of stories you published, Collateral Damage. Even more so that you used those stories to teach your students." With time, there were other honours that Mark was also proud of, for instance being published in the Evergreen Review.
            It was in the early 1990s that Mark and I began to correspond, first by Canada Post, then E-mail, and for the last few years we also kept in touch on Facebook. Mark asked me to write a column for Urban Graffiti but personal events in my own life prevented me from doing this. Mark also published on Urban Graffiti several essays and fiction I wrote.
            Like many writers Mark was an introvert; my image of Mark is him working in solitude, listening to the music he loved, going out for a coffee, editing and publishing Urban Graffiti, and doing his own writing. Mark also had serious health issues and this is what finally ended his life at age fifty-two; it is much too young to leave this world.
            Mark was a highly intelligent and articulate advocate for literature and the arts. His passion was for transgressive literature but he was also interested in and affirmed the importance of literature in general. Mark and I agreed on many things about Canadian literature; for instance, that creative writing courses and the numerous awards for poetry that now exist have ended up promoting mediocre conservative writing. He was critical of everything fake, false, and hypocritical; Mark's integrity is part of why we valued him so much. One time I wrote to Mark that he was one of the most honest people on Facebook. I wrote, " ... Stay being honest, although I doubt you can do otherwise..."
            If Mark had a message for writers it is to be true to one's vision, don't sell out, tell the truth of what you have witnessed. Whenever we think of softening our line, of selling out what we believe, we need only remember Mark McCawley and we will quickly return to our authentic vision, one that is at the core of our inner being.
            The title of this essay, "No looking back now", are Mark's final words taken from his last communication with me. This morning I was thinking of Mark, I wondered: What will we do without him? And then, after some reflection, I remembered what Mark said, that there is "no looking back now." I realized that this is what we must do, move on to the future, get on with life; that is what he would have said and what he would have wanted us to do.  

                                                                        Stephen Morrissey

                                                                        Montreal, June 2016

Revised: 19/06/2016

Here is the full text at Internet Archive: 

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