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:
Here is the full text at Internet Archive:
