T.L. Morrisey

Showing posts with label Artie Gold. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Artie Gold. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 2, 2023

Poets' Web Sites


Even fairly recently I was asked about the importance of poets having webs sites. A poet's site is a business card. A site won't make you famous and it probably won't sell your books, it probably won't get many visitors, but it will PR you to some extent. And you can make the site more interesting by adding content that would otherwise not reach a wider audience. You don't need a large audience for your site, but you need the right audience. A site will help you make connections and increase your involvement with other poets.

    People buy books online from companies like Amazon.com. I doubt many poet's sites actually sell any books. Some poets PR their latest books on their sites, but how effective is this for selling books? As someone said to me, "if a million spam E-mails can bring in a few hundred orders, you will need maybe a thousand visitors a day to your site to sell only a few books, if any." Sixty or seventy visitors a day to a poetry site is pretty good, but it won't sell books. Poetry isn't a big seller at the best of times and your site isn't likely to change this. 

    Until I'm proved wrong, I'll continue believing that poets' sites aren't an effective means to sell poetry books. Some poets have beautiful web sites, they are beautiful business cards but still worth the effort; maybe that online business card will put you into contact with someone who interests you or who is interested in your work, or that you are interested in. A poet's website is also a portal into a poet's work; either the beautiful business card model or a comprehensive portal to a poet's body of work, a poet's website might generate some interest in a poet's work but I doubt it will sell many books if that's what you want. Why does a poet's website not sell books? Because you are trying to sell something that has very limited or no interest to most people.

    This leaves a poet's site as both PR and educational outreach. What is effective, or interesting content, for a poet's site? My own feeling is that I want to put everything I've written regarding poetry online. Most of what we write reaches a small audience at best, so why not recycle this content onto our sites? The internet is a voracious publisher of content. I think of Allen Ginsberg's Deliberate Prose, Selected Essays 1952 - 1995 (New York, Perennial, 2000) as a model for what can be put online. Ginsberg's book is a collection of essays, short prose pieces, letters, odds and ends, and notes. Put some money aside in your will to keep your site online for as long as possible, sometimes a poet's work will become popular post mortem, but don't count on it.

    I recommend Bill Knott's blog which is apparently the complete Bill Knott body of work, or something approaching it. Artie Gold gave me Knott's Nights of Naomi (Plus 2 Songs) (The Barn Dream Press, Massachusetts, 1971) back in the mid-1970s. It wasn't until the 1990s that I found Knott's Other Strangers Than Our Own, Selected Love Poems. Now, online, you can find Bill Knott's body of work. Of course, Knott retains his copyright, but anyone can access the work online. He's even presented his work so it can be printed in book form. Good for Bill Knott!


Note written in July 2023: I found this 2008 post that I had taken offline, I don't remember why I took it offline. But now I see there is a comment (below) from Bill Knott, a poet whose work I like and respect. So, here it is, restored to the site. BTW, Artie gave me Bill Knott's book and then told me he was selling it to me, there you go. It was $5.00 and I'm glad I still have it. Thank you, Artie!

Bill Knott died on 12 March 2014.

Saturday, October 15, 2022

Louis Dudek in Paradise

I began writing this poem back in 2001 and completed it in 2012, and just found it in my archives. 

A winter afternoon at Mount Royal Cemetery



1)  Homage to Louis Dudek

A cold wind sweeps down
from Mount Royal
to the city below;
this bitter winter
ending with a death.
When a poet dies
a light goes out,
a bit of brilliance
is extinguished,
although poets know
no death is greater than another,
the homeless man surrounded
by plastic garbage bags,
or the former prime minister,
his body carried by a train
slowing at each station.

At the funeral, I listen to Louis' poems
being read, each reader celebrating Louis' life
with anecdotes and poems, a life
dedicated to poetry and teaching.
Louis has moved from temporal
to eternal, from flesh to word;
no more poems will be written by him,
no more meetings in restaurants
to discuss books and art and ideas.

A final grief, a final salute:
the old poet is dead,
the books are written,
the poems recited,
discussions into the evening
come to an end
and we prepare to go home.
We linger at the door
and say "Louis' life
was lived for love of others,
his poems were written out of love."
Outside the March day has turned to night,
we return to our usual lives
feeling diminished by his death
and the world seems
a lesser place.


2) that was then, this is now

The older poets
had a sense of their mission,
it was a lineage of poets,

not a competition
but a place in making
a national literature, the importance

of this in nation building;
now, the nation
is built, but we’ve

lost the propriety of things;
no one was concerned
with “award winning poets”

that was never why we wrote,
it was the obsession with writing poems,
the excitement of discovering a new poet,

and with being a community of poets;
the older poets welcomed the young;
that was when

in the whole country
we had ten or fifteen poets,
not fifteen poets times three hundred,  

not everyone writing their poems
and few reading what was written;
to be a poet was to be the exception,

not a commonplace, it was earned by writing,
not one or two poems, but a lifetime
of work, of building a body of work,

because the words came to you, not just
the mundane, but a vision in the work
an obsession for writing and love

for poetry; eccentricity (which is never
politically correct) was not despised,
it was expected; the tyranny of conformity 

had no place among poets,
it was the writing that mattered;
the courtesy of older poets to the young,

as that day, at McGill’s Arts Building,
I was a graduate student that year
in Dudek’s seminar, discussing Pound,

Yeats, Joyce and Ford Madox Ford,
that year in Louis’s office, when being
with an older poet was a privilege—



The Morrice family monument at 
Mount Royal Cemetery, including
a plaque for James Wilson Morrice



3) James Wilson Morrice

James Wilson Morrice
had to go to Paris
to be an artist

(as years later
John Glassco followed)

leaving the family mansion
(now torn down) on Redpath Street, 
a block from

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts,
where his paintings
are on permanent display— 

William Van Horn, president of the CPR,
who collected art as a hobby, told Morrice’s father
to let him study art abroad after seeing

some of the son’s paintings;
at Mount Royal Cemetery
on one side of the Morrice family’s monument,

James Wilson Morrice’s name and dates (1865-1924)
and place of burial, in Tunis; this is the man Louis Dudek said
“painted grey snow”: “he is a Canadian on his travels.

His destination is one he never reaches,
though others may reach it after him — it is Canada.”
That destination is paradise, to live with summer

year round, not in Montreal, the “Metropolis”, that Morrice rarely
visited after he left, where winter is six months of the year,
the other six divided between summer, fall and spring—

Meanwhile, the Beaver Hall artists, their studio space and gallery
located a block east of St. Patrick’s Church,
held two exhibitions, in 1921 and 1922.

And what about that forgotten Beaver Hall artist,
Darrell Morrisey? She was erased as an artist,
her work discarded by her family after her death, at age 33,

in 1930, it soon became as though she never existed;
and Morrice, the warm ocean breeze and sleeping
on a rooftop in Tunis under the stars—the choreography

of his life, and our life-long work as poets,
the vision of art, the act of creation,
the company of poets—


4) in the company of artists and poets

In the company of artists and poets:
John Cage chatting with Arnold Shöenberg

while Glenn Gould eats supper
with Bach; there’s Jackson Pollock listening

as Artie Gold reads his poem about Bucks County,
and later someone plays Charles Ives’ 2nd Piano Concerto;

Jack Shadbolt meets Emily Carr meeting Nellie McClung
(the granddaughter poet of the better known Nellie),

and HD talks with Virginia Woolf who celebrates
her birthday with James Joyce; Yeats and Jeffers

are in their towers; Jack Kerouac and John Lennon
discuss religion and listen to “Imagine” (which Kerouac hates);

Van Gogh argues with Gauguin; Strindberg and Arthur Miller,
watch Marilyn Monroe holding down her skirt around her knees;

Charlie Chaplin’s silhouette walking into the sunset;
we’re in the eternal, art and music, we’re in Paradise,

where artists and poets create our age,
hard cover books on shelves, abstract paintings on walls,

and just last week lying awake in bed at 5 a.m.,
some kid at a university radio station (in Edmonton) 

playing jazz, Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, 
and John Coltrane, with no idea where this music came from,

only knowing that he likes what he’s listening to,
this art, that it speaks to him—


5) all art is vision (or it's just a repetition of the past)

All art is vision—
in the great museums and concert halls,
what returns us to Spirit is art,

poems sustaining us
over a lifetime,
paintings by the Great Masters

drawings on Lascaux’s
cave walls, hieroglyphics
and Inuit art,

sculpture and pottery,
movies and dance—
all the great art of civilization

returns us to God—
all art is vision
all poetry requires vision
to express the poet’s psyche,
if the soul
is filled with lies 

how can the poetry
not also lie? if the poet
censors the poem,

what is created
but a censored poem?
We try to live  

true to our vision, our journey
of truth, our journey
in Paradise—

--------------------------

Note: "Homage to Louis Dudek", a section of this poem, was first published in Eternal Conversation, a tribute to Louis Dudek. 

The politically correct CBC is destroying Canadian culture; it's time to Defund the CBC. 

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Starting out from VĂ©hicule Art

Poster showing interior of VĂ©hicule Art Gallery, 1974

 

With thanks to Klara du Plessis who got me

thinking about the old days at VĂ©hicule Art Gallery

1

 

The mission of VĂ©hicule Art Gallery was primarily the exhibition of contemporary visual art, including conceptual art, installations, photographs, drawings and paintings, and the artists that exhibited there came from across Canada, the United States, and other countries. That was the gallery’s main focus: exhibiting avant-garde contemporary and experimental visual art

            My impression, even at the time, was that the people who founded and then ran the gallery, a collective of mostly English-speaking Montreal artists, were surprised that poetry could be as popular as it turned out to be; every Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. the gallery was full of people there to hear poetry being read or performed, and this was good for the gallery. Poetry readings increased the number of events they held and the number of people who came to the gallery. This also greatly benefitted poets who had a space in downtown Montreal where they could hold poetry readings.

            Somehow, out of the poets who visited the gallery, whether by propinquity or chance, a group of us became friends and this group became known as the VĂ©hicule Poets; we are still friends over forty years later. The VĂ©hicule Poets are a direct result of VĂ©hicule Art Gallery; VĂ©hicule Art Gallery was the institution and the physical location that gave us the opportunity to meet each other, publish together, and to organize poetry readings at the gallery. The gallery wasn’t our beginning as poets but it was the hub, the place that brought us together; that time at the gallery has become an essential part of our individual history as poets.

            The VĂ©hicule poetry reading series came into existence after the reading series at Sir George Williams University had ended; however, the readings at VĂ©hicule Art continued a tradition of promoting contemporary poetry similar to that of the SGWU series. I remember Al Purdy’s reading, some black and white photographs I took of Purdy reading at VĂ©hicule are in my literary papers at Rare Books and Special Collections at McGill University. I remember Robert Kelly’s reading, with his wife recording the reading sitting in the front row of the audience. I brought in Clayton Eshleman, he read at VĂ©hicule Art and at Champlain Regional College where I was teaching, I think that was in early May 1978. I also brought in The Four Horsemen, to VĂ©hicule and to Champlain Regional College; there are many slides I took of bpNichol and The Four Horsemen in performance in my McGill papers; anyone interested in The Four Horsemen would benefit by checking out these many slides of the group performing. I remember Kenneth Koch’s reading and speaking on the phone with Anne Waldman about her reading at VĂ©hicule; Anne Waldman had known Claudia Lapp at Bennington College in Vermont.

            Along with the others, I was at the gallery every Sunday afternoon for the readings and for other events. I remember when the whole group of us, that would be Artie Gold, Ken Norris, Claudia Lapp, John McAuley, Endre Farkas, Tom Konyves, and myself, met one afternoon at Bob Galvin’s apartment on St. Mathieu Street (Bob Galvin was a friend of Ken Norris). We read a few poems and I remember Artie correcting someone, it was me, on my pronunciation of “Orion”. But there was another more important meeting, it was to discuss if we wanted to be considered a group, an umbrella for the seven of us who had similar ideas about poetry and who shared a common history at VĂ©hicule Art Gallery.

            We met on the evening of 1 February 1979 at Artie Gold’s home; I guess we were all in attendance. Ken wanted us to accept what was already a fact, that we were a group called the VĂ©hicule Poets. Ken was writing his dissertation at McGill on Canadian modernist literature, more specifically on little magazine publishing in Canada; several groups of poets came out of publishing little magazines, the Contact poets, the First Statement poets, and others. Ken could see the advantage of being in a group as well as being individual poets; that is, the historical context of seven poets who shared a common bond. But three of us didn’t agree; Artie, Claudia, and I opposed the idea of the group. All we did, I said, was organize poetry readings at VĂ©hicule Art Gallery. Ken, Endre, Tom, and John agreed to the name. Dissension continued as to “what & who & why & wherefore” regarding the group and the name; Tom Konyves assured me that Ken would work to justify accepting the group name. I am not sure if this was the meeting when we decided to publish our first anthology, The VĂ©hicule Poets (1979), edited by John McAuley. Then came Artie’s condition for accepting Ken’s proposal, it was contingent on allowing him to write the introduction of the anthology, “saying just what & if we are or exist.” I was very skeptical, I thought “so the VĂ©hicule Poets’ will make their appearance even tho no such creature exists—& Artie and Claudia and I know so—”. Looking back on it I see that Ken was right, I am glad he persisted in defining us as the VĂ©hicule Poets. 


2


VĂ©hicule Art Gallery opened on 13 October 1972. As far as I know, Guy Birchard, Artie Gold, and I organized the first reading at the gallery and it occurred eight months after the gallery opened, on 24 June 1973; the readings organized by Claudia Lapp and Michael Harris came a few months later, in the fall of 1973. Guy Birchard introduced me to Artie Gold and I often visited Artie on Lorne Crescent in the spring and summer of 1973. I remember putting up posters with Guy for the 24 June reading. I invited Richard Sommer; Guy Birchard invited Cam Christie; Artie Gold invited Glen Siebrasse and Joan Thornton; and the three of us also read. Joan Thornton was a talented poet and it is unfortunate that she decided not to attend the reading. 

 

Allan Bealy's poster for  the 24 June reading


             Here is my diary entry, the writing of a young poet at the beginning of things, just a few hours after the reading:

 

Sunday/June 24th/’73—

(20:25) about 30 to 40 people showed up—not many but a nice feeling to it—Joan Thornton phoned Artie earlier to say she wldnt/ show, one guesses she was too nervous—so Artie read and he was really good, he had one poem which really knockt me out—(“my mother’s cunt is a fork, she picks yams out of bottles” with the idea of her marrying men she puts up in bottles)—then I read and it was a few poems I collected last nite & didn’t bother to rehearse or even read them over too much before I read (not in this order), “meditation 1”, “oldman oldman oldman”, then in the middle of the reading “regard as sacred” with Guy; I began with “Shaman on the back of a grizzly”, I threw in my “Van Gogh” poem—so that went well & as I sat down Artie wrote a poem about my reading which I cldn’t make out because of his handwriting and Anne [Heany] askt for a copy of “meditation 1”—

            The reading on 24 June at VĂ©hicule was only my second reading; the first time I read my poems in public was two months earlier, in April 1973, at Karma Coffee House, located in the basement of the SGWU Student Union building on the south-west corner of de Maisonneuve Bouvelard West and Crescent Street. Again, it was Guy Birchard who invited me to read on that occasion and both Artie and Guy were in the audience. The first reading I gave at VĂ©hicule was in 1973; I gave readings every year at VĂ©hicule Art, and my last reading there was in 1980. In fact, I am surprised at how many readings I gave in those years, at VĂ©hicule Art, Powerhouse Gallery, and other venues, for the most part these were solo readings which are rare today, group readings bring in an audience. Louis Dudek told me that in the old days it was only prominent poets—W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, and others— who gave readings, most poets never gave readings unless they achieved something substantial in their literary work. In the late 1970s I was part of a group reading at the Unitarian Church on Sherbrooke Street West, the beautiful church that burned down, invited by Louis to read with him and several other poets. It was hosted by the owner of Mansfield Book Mart.

 

3

 

One of my English professors at SGWU was Richard Sommer; Richard told me that he and his wife had driven to Vancouver in their van around 1969-1970, where they met and were impressed by West Coast poets and artists. I know he participated at the Charles Olson Memorial Poetry Reading in Vancouver, in March 1970, just three months after Olson’s passing. Previous to this Richard was probably fairly conservative; he was an academic, his Ph.D. was from Harvard (he gave me a monograph, The Odyssey and Primitive Religion (1962), that he published and which I still have), and he spoke of meeting Robert Frost at a reception at Harvard.

            In August 1963, ten years before our first VĂ©hicule reading, Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and other American poets attended the Vancouver Poetry Conference; these were poets Donald Allen included in his anthology, The New American Poetry, 1945 - 1960 (1965). A lot of other poets, not included in Donald Allen’s anthology, had a similar approach to poetry as the poets Allen anthologized; some were Beat poets, others were influenced by Charles Olson’s projective verse or by Black Mountain poets, there were confessional poets, concrete/visual/sound poets, poets influenced by Jerome Rothenberg’s Technicians of the Sacred (1968), and others.

            There were also important voices in Canada; these included Louis Dudek, Irving Layton, Raymond Souster, P.K. Page, Earle Birney, and Al Purdy; not to forget Phyllis Webb, Daphne Marlatt, George Bowering, Frank Davey, Lionel Kearns, bpNichol, and bill bissett. And others, for instance Doug Jones, Leonard Cohen, Pat Lowther, John Newlove, and Alden Nowlan. No doubt I have left out poets who should be a part of this list. But, still, what a great time for Canadian poetry! The SGWU poetry series recognized the importance of this cohort of Canadian and American poets by inviting some of them to read in Montreal; further recognition of the importance of these poets is evident in who read at VĂ©hicule Art Gallery; as well, this new poetry, this new approach to poetry, influenced and encouraged the creative work of the VĂ©hicule Poets. Of course, the formalist poets in Montreal disliked everything about new American poetry, West Coast poetry, the VĂ©hicule Poets, and the readings at VĂ©hicule Art Gallery; they disliked us personally; but formalistic poetry seemed pretty dull and old fashioned when compared to what was happening on the West Coast and at VĂ©hicule Art in the 1970s.

            It must have been that summer of 1973 when I used to visit Richard Sommer at his Draper Avenue home; I was 23 years old, fairly naive, and would graduate from SGWU in the fall of 1973. I remember meeting Roy Kiyooka at Richard’s home which had formerly been Roy Kiyooka’s home when he lived in Montreal and taught at SGWU. Sitting together in his second floor office-library Richard helped me compile a mailing list for what is, a concrete poetry newsletter of experimental poetry. I edited and published fourteen issues of what is from 1973-1975; a few years later, from 1978-1985, I published The Montreal Journal of Poetics. Both were mailed out and free to the poets who received them. Whether what is was a newsletter or a magazine was something Wynn Francis discussed with me at her home in Montreal West. I also published my own concrete poetry in what is and other periodicals; that is how I first came into contact with Vancouver poets like Gerry Gilbert and Ed Varney.

            The gallery welcomed and even encouraged an avant-garde approach to poetry. I learned of John Cage from Richard and the readings I gave with my first wife, Pat Walsh, were events, not readings with one person standing up and reading their poems. By 1976 or 1977 Pat Walsh and I began to call ourselves, for performances, Cold Mountain Review, after Han-Shan  (from Burton Watson’s translation, Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T’ang Poet Han-Shan, 1970), and we did readings together at VĂ©hicule Art, Powerhouse Gallery, high schools, and other venues; I still remember these reading-performances, especially those given at VĂ©hicule. They were readings of randomly chosen texts, poems read simultaneously by several voices, the purposeful inclusion of silence in a performance, and the use of randomness in texts and their performance; this also included the influence of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s cut-up technique. A performance at VĂ©hicule might include having the whole audience reading texts simultaneously out loud, it was a cacophony of meaningless human voices; the implications of these readings were open-ended and lent themselves to a variety of interpretations. My first reading for voices, performing my poem “regard as sacred”, was with Guy Birchard at the 24 June 1973 reading at VĂ©hicule Art.

            One of the most memorable poetry performances I attended at VĂ©hicule was by Tom Konyves who joined the gallery in 1977, it was his long poem, No Parking, Tom read this poem accompanied by a cellist; it was brilliant! He also had a poem entitled “VĂ©hicule R”; see his book, Performances (1980). I met Tom at Vicky Tansey’s dance studio, Vicky was Richard’s wife and the dance studio was located behind their home on Draper Avenue; it had been a garage and was converted into an art studio by Roy Kyooka. The occasion was the launch of Bob Morrison’s Anthol magazine, probably issue #2, published in 1973; Tom had some work in this issue. It seems to me that it was Endre Farkas who was the impetus behind us working collectively, Endre was always interested in doing collaborations with other artists, including poets, dancers, and actors. I met Endre, very briefly, at the McKay Street location of Explorations One, a two year experimental programme in which I was a student at SGWU beginning in 1969-70. I doubt I made any impression on either Tom or Endre but they made an impression on me, I tend to keep a low profile; however, I do have a good episodic memory and I am a diarist. Ken Norris arrived at the gallery around 1975 and attended the readings. For a while Pat Walsh had been one of the roommates of Ken’s girlfriend, Jill, and I heard about Ken from her. Most of my relationship with Ken has been in the form of letters and E-mails, because of this I have probably had more to do with Ken than any of the others. John McAuley and I organized the reading series in 1976-1977; John was also the gallery administrator in the late 1970s. My mother worked at the Norris Building library of SGWU and some people involved or peripherally involved in literary things also worked there, for instance John McAuley’s first wife, Diana Brewer; by the way, Diana Brewer’s parents lived next door to Richard Sommer on Draper Avenue and Diana’s mother was a good friend of Pat Walsh before I met Pat, it really is a small world; Nancy Marrelli, Simon Dardick’s wife, also worked at the Norris Building, Simon is the publisher of VĂ©hicule Press and Nancy was an archivist at Concordia. In 1974-76 I worked at the SGWU library, in the Shuchat Building and the Hall Building library. The First Annual Spring Marathon reading was a joint VĂ©hicule - Concordia literary society production, held on 16 May 1975 in H-820 of the Hall Building; the Marathon readings moved to VĂ©hicule Art Gallery for the second annual spring reading, on 21 March 1976. These readings could go on for many hours which was the intention of the reading. I think it was Tom Konyves who was behind the marathon readings; one of the last marathon readings that I attended was held in the Hall Building at Concordia/SGWU, possibly in 1980. Just for clarity, Sir George Williams University was renamed Concordia University in 1974 with the merger of the downtown Sir George Williams Campus with Loyola College in Montreal's west end.

            I graduated from Sir George Williams University in the fall of 1973; then, a year later, I was a graduate student at McGill University, studying that first year with Louis Dudek, and at McGill until November 1976; only two weeks after graduating from McGill I began teaching at Champlain Regional College. I invited poets, including Artie, Tom, Endre, and Claudia to read before my classes. In addition to poetry I was interested in the writings of J. Krishnamurti and I attended his series of annual lectures in Saanen, Switzerland, in July 1973; in Ojai, California, in 1976; and in New York City in the early 80s. I got married in August 1976 and my son was born in January 1979; later in 1979 we moved to a country home near Huntingdon, Quebec, and I only returned to live full-time in Montreal in 1997. I met Carolyn Zonailo for the first time in 1991, she had published my book Family Album (1987) and I offered to meet her at the airport and drive her to where she was staying on the campus of John Abbott College for The Writers’ Union of Canada AGM; Carolyn is from Vancouver, she founded and ran Caitlin Press, co-founded The Poem Factory press with Ed Varney, and she was one of the founders of the Federation of BC Writers; six months after the AGM she moved to Montreal and we have been together since then. Carolyn and Cathy Ford were in Montreal in May 1978 for a League of Canadian Poets AGM and met Artie Gold and possibly Ken Norris at Artie’s Lorne Crescent flat.

            While living near Huntingdon I became good friends with George Johnston who moved to his country home in south-west Quebec when he retired from teaching at Carleton University; George was a meticulous poet and translator, he was friends with George Bowering, Jay McPherson, Northrop Frye, Cid Corman, and George Whalley, and he had travelled in the UK giving readings with bill bissett and Susan Musgrave. Louis Dudek was a friend and, like George Johnston, he is one of my poetry mentors. I want to say that Louis and George were not simpatico as poets but they were two of the kindest people you could meet. As well, Carolyn and I spent a lot of time in Vancouver and I got to know many poets there because they were friends of Carolyn’s; we also gave readings, at UBC, SFU, The Kootenay School of Writing at Artspeak Gallery, an art gallery in Deep Cove, and book stores and art galleries in the lower mainland including reading on Gerry Gilbert’s radiofreerainforest. Other good friends were Ed Varney, Marya Fiamengo, Ralph Maud, Jean Mallinson, Nellie McClung, and Trevor Carolan. I used to have more poet-friends in Vancouver than in Montreal. I first visited Vancouver in late April 1976, passing through on my way home from California and Mexico; I was between flights and walked outside of the airport, it took me no time at all to fall in love with that beautiful city.

 

4

 

Poetry readings were the main literary event held at the gallery, but I would like to include other VĂ©hicule events that were of a literary nature; other than VĂ©hicule Press there was Allan Bealy’s Davinci poetry magazine and then the offshoot of Davinci which was the Eldorado Editions chapbook series published in 1974; Eldorado Editions was named after a restaurant near the gallery. I think there were four chapbooks in all, Claudia Lapp’s Dakini, Andre (Endre) Farkas’s Szerbusz, and titles by Ian Ferrier and Tom Ezzy. Ian Ferrier was this young kid who aspired to be a poet, and he is now one of the most original and prominent spoken-word poets in Canada. I included a flyer for these chapbooks in an issue of what is.

            Another event held at VĂ©hicule Art, a literary-dance-performance event, was presented by Vicky Tansey; she gave other performances at the gallery but one that I participated in was a dance interpretation of Gertrude Stein’s novel Ida; I narrated Stein’s text during the performance. I don’t remember the date for this, maybe 1976 or 1977. Vicky Tansey also performed at Roy Kiyooka’s Poetry/Video/Text performance at VĂ©hicule Art in December 1973, an event I attended.

            This was a time of creativity, a time of meeting people and forming friendships, of hearing new poems and poets at the readings, a time of being in a milieu of openness in the arts. This was an exciting time for some of us; it was when we were young and just starting out from VĂ©hicule Art Gallery.         

            

                                                                        Stephen Morrissey

                                                                        12 September 2021

                                                                        Montreal, Canada


Addendum

 

The following items can be found in the first accrual of my literary papers at Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University. Memory and anecdote are interesting but often not reliable for writing history, only documentation is reliable:

 

Box Fifteen

 

Contains two video tapes of readings Morrissey gave at Vehicule Art on 27 March 1977 and an unopened LP album, "Sounds Like" of sound poetry by Montreal poets.

 

The following thirty-eight audio cassettes of poetry readings are also included. These are recordings of readings, mostly from the 1970s and 1980s in Montreal; however, there are several tapes from the 1990s in Montreal and Vancouver.

 

Also included are photographs—black and white, colour, and colour slides—taken by Stephen Morrissey. These photographs are mostly of poets, taken at poetry readings, or less formal settings, in Quebec and in the 1990s in British Columbia.

 

Sound Recordings:

 

Vehicule Art Gallery, Montreal:

 

- Anne Waldman, Drummer Boy Raga, Steve McCaffery, 1976-1977.

 

- Clayton Eshleman, 3 May 1978.

 

- Stephen Morrissey, 2 December 1979, 15 January 1975 and

            19 January 1975.

 

- Robert Kelly, 20 March 1977.

 

Powerhouse Gallery, Montreal:

 

- Stephen Morrissey, 24 April 1975.

 

 

Concordia University, Montreal:

- Steve McCaffery, 22 September 1978.

 

 

Champlain Regional College-St. Lambert, Quebec:

 

- Artie Gold, 20 March 1979, 13 February 1979, 27 March 1980,

            19 October 1981, 19 October 1981.

 

- David McFadden (two tapes each reading), 28 February 1978,

            14 October 1990.

 

- Claudia Lapp, 11 April 1978, 15 October 1978, 17 April 1980.

 

- Endre Farkas, 24 October 1978.

 

- Clayton Eshleman, 3 May 1978.

 

- bpNichol, 13 February 1978.

 

- The Four Horsemen, 27 March 1978.

 

- George Johnston, 27 October 1981.

 

- Carolyn Zonailo, (two tapes), 25 February 1992.

 

 

Readings in Vancouver:

 

- Black Sheep Books, Carolyn Zonailo, Stephen Morrissey, Ed Varney, 16 October 1996.

 

- Radiofreerainforest (Vancouver co-op radio) hosted by Gerry Gilbert, Vancouver community radio station, on-air readings by Carolyn Zonailo and Stephen Morrissey, 14 August 1996.

 

 

Miscellaneous sound recordings:

 

- Radio Canada (French), "English Poets of Quebec" hosted by

            Tom Konyves, early-1980s.

 

- Louis Dudek reviewing Divisions on CBC-radio,

            26 October 1983.

 

- Sound Poetry, John Abbott College, Ken Norris on CBC-radio.

 

- CINQ-FM (co-op radio station in Montreal), "Arts and Eggs", on-air interview with Stephen

            Morrissey, 2 June 1979.

 

- Clayton Eshleman, interview and reading, 1976.

 

- Interview with Tom Konyves, 14 March 1978.

 

 

Photographs by Stephen Morrissey:

 

Includes the following colour slides in three slide boxes and separately in three plastic slide envelopes, and black and white photographs on contact sheets (including the respective black and white negatives), of poets at poetry readings in Montreal. These photographs were taken by Stephen Morrissey. They contain the following:

 

 

Colour slides by Stephen Morrissey:

 

 

Slide box one:

 

- Thirteen slides of bpNichol and the other members of “The Four Horsemen”, in performance at Champlain Regional College on 29 March 1978.

 

- One slide of Ken Norris at a Vehicule Art book launch, 30 September 1977.

 

- Slides of the poet Guy Birchard, taken between March and May 1977.

 

- Three slides of Clarke Blaise at Champlain Regional College on 29 September 1977.

 

- Two slides of Stephen Morrissey, taken around 1977.

 

 

Slide box two:

 

- Thirty-seven slides of bpNichol and the other members of “The Four Horsemen”, in performance at Champlain Regional College on 29 March 1978.

 

 

Slide box three:

 

- Thirteen slides of Clayton Eshleman at Champlain Regional College on 3 May 1978.

 

- One slide of Artie Gold, outside of Vehicule Art, in July 1975.

 

 

There are three slide envelopes:

 

Slide envelope # one:

 

- Ten slides of “The Four Horsemen” in performance at Vehicule Art, Montreal, 29 March 1978.

 

 

Slide envelope # two:

 

- Slides taken during the book launch of Divisions (Toronto, Coach House Press, 1983) at the Double Hook Bookstore in Westmount, Quebec on 12 October 1983. Included are two photographs of Louis Dudek, a single photograph of George Johnston, Ken Norris, Artie Gold, and Judy Mappin the owner of The Double Hook Bookstore.

  

Slide envelope # three:

 

- Four slides of Anne Waldman reading at Vehicule Art, around 1978.

 

- One slide of Claudia Lapp (introducing Anne Waldman) at Vehicule Art, 1978.

 

- Several slides taken during the book launch of The Trees of Unknowing (Vehicule Press, 1978) at Powerhouse Gallery, Montreal on 6 March 1978. Included are slides of John Glassco, Artie Gold.

 

- Four slides of Clayton Eshleman reading at Vehicule Art on 3 May 1978.

 

 

Black and white photographs by Stephen Morrissey:

 

- Three contact sheets, black and white negatives for the contact sheets are included. Photographs of Al Purdy reading at Vehicule Art, bpNichol at Vehicule Art, Tom Konyves and Carol Leckner at Vehicule Art. Between 1977 - 1978.

 

 

Colour photographs by Stephen Morrissey:

 

This manila envelope contains seven separate envelopes of photographs, seventy-nine colour photographs in all.

 

Envelope # 1: Three photographs of Ken Norris, his wife Sue, and Stephen Morrissey at the Powerscourt Bridge near Huntingdon, Quebec, in the spring of 1990.

 

Envelope # 2: Four photographs of David McFadden with Carolyn Zonailo and Stephen Morrissey at the restaurant of the Holiday Inn near the Toronto City Hall, in August 1992.

 

Envelope # 3: Four photographs of Vancouver poet Beth Jankola with Carolyn Zonailo and Stephen Morrissey, in Huntingdon, Quebec, August 1992.

 

Envelope # 4: Seven photographs of Professor Ralph Maud with Carolyn Zonailo and Stephen Morrissey, at the Powerscourt Bridge near Huntingdon, Quebec in the spring of 1996. Ralph Maud is Emeritus Professor of English at Simon Fraser University and a leading authority on the poetry of Dylan Thomas and Charles Olson.

 

Envelope # 5: Nineteen photographs of American-born poet Norm Sibum, Carolyn Zonailo and Stephen Morrissey at The Cedars, Huntingdon, Quebec, and other photographs, spring 1996.

 

Envelope # 6: Twenty-eight photographs of Vancouver poet Nellie McClung, Carolyn Zonailo and Stephen Morrissey, at Nellie McClung's Vancouver home, and other related photographs, taken in July-August 1996. 

 

Envelope # 7: Fourteen photographs of Vancouver-poet Gerry Gilbert and Carolyn Zonailo at Co-op radio in Vancouver, during the broadcast of Gilbert's radiofreerainforest programme, in January 1996.

 

Envelope # 8: Thirteen photographs of Vancouver poet Marya Fiamengo at her home in West Vancouver, with Carolyn Zonailo and Stephen Morrissey, in January 1995.

 

Minor punctuation and paragraph break revisions made on 19/09/2021

Paragraph breaks and editing revisions made on 11/10/2021, 29/11/2021