T.L. Morrisey

Showing posts with label Richard Sommer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richard Sommer. Show all posts

Thursday, June 1, 2023

Thinking of Keitha K. MacIntosh

Eleven years ago I heard of the passing of Keitha K. MacIntosh; she was a poet, author of short stories, a publisher, a professor of English at Vanier College, and someone who encouraged Montreal writers, including myself. She was also a good friend; we first met at Sir George Williams University around 1972 when we were enrolled in Richard Sommer's creative writing class; later, I did poetry readings for her class at Vanier College and visited her when she lived in a trailer adjacent to her future home in a 200 year old log cabin. We corresponded for years, and in 1979 I bought property near Trout River not far from Keitha's home in Dewettville. Here (below) is a photograph of her headstone in the Ormstown cemetery, courtesy of the "find a grave" website. 

Last night, watching the Antique Roadshow on PBS, I was reminded of Keitha who was an avid collector of antiques, mainly antique bottles. She told me that she used to find these bottles in the ruins of houses and other buildings that had been abandoned. She and her family and friends explored many of these homesteads in South Western Quebec until the supply of bottles ran out. This reminds me that Artie Gold also collected antique bottles, some of which I inherited after Artie died in 2007; Keitha also published, in her poetry magazine Montreal Poems, some of Artie's early poems. And then I thought of the weeks preceding hearing the news of Keitha's death; I hadn't thought of Keitha for years but I had a curious experience, just before I heard of her death I was filled with memories of Keitha, not just one or two memories but a flood of memories, mostly of things she said about her mother and father, and her husband Archie. Even I was surprised by how much I remembered!

It was at this time, in 2012,  when I was "rampant with memory" about Keitha, a phrase Margaret Laurence uses in one of her books, that I received news of her passing. I have always remembered the past, perhaps more than most people, and, of course, I have written about it, the early death of a parent does that to a person, grief does that, every memory is precious because it is all that we have left of the person, so close to us, that died. Memory is a part of our DNA, years ago I read Henry Miller's Remember to Remember, C.G. Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and Jack Kerouac's novels and poetry, "Memory Babe" said Jack Kerouac. 

Before hearing of Keitha's passing, I must have spent ten years trying to write "A Poet's Journey", an essay based on remembering the past and on becoming a poet; and it was Keitha who I was thinking of when I began that essay but it developed into a life of its own and became a personal memoir; writing, editing, remembering, and then it's ten years later but the essay has found its own voice and content. 

Keitha had a Celtic background as I do, and for the Celts memory, the ancestors, family history, and spirit are all important. You might not set out to record the lives of your ancestors, you just do it, as you breathe or have lunch or sleep. It's what we do, it's a natural thing to do, one foot is always in the past and the ancestors are never far from thought. It was a natural event to remember Keitha in the time preceding her death; it was as though she was paying me a last visit before moving to the great unknown.   

Memory is like a dream or a poem, what you remember is subjective and may say more about you than you realize. Two people have the same experience and remember it in different ways, one positive, one negative. Sometimes the memories of siblings conflict, and at those times siblings seem to come from different families. And then, after remembering Keitha in 2012, I thought of Louis Dudek and, again, long forgotten memories returned to me, riding a city bus with him, sitting with him in his office, that particular memory changed my life and I have written about it elsewhere; and I thought of another old friend, George Johnston, what a kind and generous person he was.  

But how much can memory be trusted? I stand behind the veracity of all of my memories but when other people who shared experiences with me give their version of certain events, sometimes they contradict what I remember, sometimes I don't recognize anything they remember, sometimes they add to and enlarge my memories, sometimes we have false memories. But even a false memory has some truth about it, just don't base your life on a false memory; sometimes memories are like poems or dreams. Without memory everyone would be immediately forgotten after they die, as though they never existed, this is something all poets know and our books and poems are a pause in the inevitable act of forgetting. 




Sunday, September 12, 2021

Starting out from Véhicule Art

Poster showing interior of Véhicule Art Gallery, 1974

 

With thanks to Klara du Plessis who got me

thinking about the old days at Véhicule Art Gallery

1

 

The mission of Véhicule 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 Véhicule Poets; we are still friends over forty years later. The Véhicule Poets are a direct result of Véhicule Art Gallery; Véhicule 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 Véhicule poetry reading series came into existence after the reading series at Sir George Williams University had ended; however, the readings at Véhicule 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 Véhicule 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 Véhicule 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 Véhicule 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 Véhicule; 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 Véhicule 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 Véhicule 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 Véhicule 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 Véhicule 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 Véhicule 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 Véhicule Poets. 


2


Véhicule 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 Véhicule 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 Véhicule was in 1973; I gave readings every year at Véhicule Art, and my last reading there was in 1980. In fact, I am surprised at how many readings I gave in those years, at Véhicule 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 Véhicule 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 Véhicule Art Gallery; as well, this new poetry, this new approach to poetry, influenced and encouraged the creative work of the Véhicule Poets. Of course, the formalist poets in Montreal disliked everything about new American poetry, West Coast poetry, the Véhicule Poets, and the readings at Véhicule 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 Véhicule 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 Véhicule Art, Powerhouse Gallery, high schools, and other venues; I still remember these reading-performances, especially those given at Véhicule. 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 Véhicule 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 Véhicule Art.

            One of the most memorable poetry performances I attended at Véhicule 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 “Véhicule 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 Véhicule 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 Véhicule - Concordia literary society production, held on 16 May 1975 in H-820 of the Hall Building; the Marathon readings moved to Véhicule 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 Véhicule events that were of a literary nature; other than Véhicule 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 Véhicule 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 Véhicule 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 Véhicule 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


 

 


 


Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Remembering Keitha MacIntosh




The last time I met Keitha MacIntosh was in the early-1990s, it was at a Greek restaurant that she often frequented and where she sat for hours drinking tea and correcting her students’ papers. This was the first time I’d seen Keitha for many years, from when I used to give poetry readings to her classes at Vanier College in the early 1980s. In early September 2012 I heard from Keitha’s daughter, Susan Hull, that Keitha had passed away.

 I first met Keitha in the fall of 1972, in Richard Sommer’s creative writing class at Sir George Williams University. Perhaps she was fifteen years my senior, and we became friends during that time. The 1970s were an important time in Montreal poetry, it was the time of a poetry renaissance here. Keitha’s contribution to this renaissance is her magazine, Montreal Poems, that she edited and published. In it you can find the early published work of Artie Gold, Richard Sommer, Ken Norris, Carole Leckner, Ray Filip, Sharon H. Nelson, Ross Leckie, Marc Plourde, Steve Luxton, Claudia Lapp, Mona Adilman, Mary Melfi, Guy Birchard, myself, and others. All of these poets have since made a contribution to Canadian literature.


There is a large correspondence between Keitha and myself, archived in my literary papers at McGill University’s Special Collections, at the McLennan Library. From 1975 to 1984, in all, 137 letters went back and forth between us. We wrote to each other about other poets, Montreal Poems, and life in general. She wrote and published a poem about me, “Stephen's Day”, that I still find deeply moving. She shared with me her enthusiasm for writing and never doubted that I was the poet she believed I was.

After she married, Keitha and her husband ran a dairy farm in Dewittville, Quebec, but as Keitha became more independent she wanted a place of her own. She was a writer for many years before we met and her creative life began late at night when she was alone and writing. After the farm was sold she lived in a trailer until restoration of her 200 year old log cabin was completed. I visited her at the trailer and later at the log cabin. One evening, around 1981, I was invited over to meet Sharon H. Nelson; Keitha went on to publish some of Sharon’s work. After Keitha’s Poems of the Chateuguay Valley was published I reviewed her book in the Huntingdon Gleaner thinking Keitha would be happy with this recognition of her work; it was a mistake on my part as she was upset that her writing life was revealed to her neighbours. There was a firm dividing line between her writing and how much she wanted her rural community to know about her.

There are many women today who hold prestigious positions in business, academia, and government, but Keitha was born at a time, and in a society, that was conservative regarding a woman’s role in society. It is important to remember that Keitha was a highly intelligent woman; however, this very intelligence and her desire to be a writer made it difficult for her to accept the life of a farmer’s wife, a life that many other women (just as intelligent as Keitha) would have found fulfilling. What set Keitha apart from other women is a combination of things: she was introverted and very sensitive; her life was pulled in two different directions, her desire to fulfill her life and be a writer and the demands of a domestic life.

Keitha had been a registered nurse before earning her B.A. and M.A. degrees; she was a professor of English at Vanier College for twenty-two years. She was a writer for many years before we met. She read widely and she was an excellent teacher. She was a good and generous friend to many of us. She was always on the side of the underdog, whether for women’s rights, or for Natives and French Canadians who had been dispossessed by the newly arrived English, or English-speaking Quebecers whose rights had been denied by the French. Keitha was also active in promoting literacy and access to books. She co-founded the Little Green Library, located in Huntingdon, in 1972.

In the mid-1980s, Ray Filip, in one of his poetry columns published in Poetry Canada Review, referred to Richard Sommer, Keitha MacIntosh, and myself as the “invisible rural transcendentalists”, for all three of us now lived in the country and had withdrawn from much of the poetry activity in Montreal that we were involved in only a few years before. However, I continued writing and publishing my work and gave poetry readings in Toronto and Vancouver, and later again in Montreal. Carolyn Zonailo and I returned from the country to live in Montreal in 1997. When I met Keitha, at that Greek restaurant mentioned above, preparing classes and correcting student papers seemed to be taking up all of her time, except for weekly visits to a local country and western restaurant and bar where there was live music and dancing. She seemed happy enough, but more physically fragile than ever. Her health declined to the point where she had to take early retirement from teaching around 1995. Richard Sommer continued writing and publishing from his home in the Eastern Townships; he passed away in February of this year.

Keitha and I have a Celtic ancestry, her family is from Scotland, mine from Ireland. My family arrived in New Brunswick in 1837 and we’ve been in Quebec since the early 1840s. My grandson, Edmund Morrissey, is the eighth generation of our family to have been born in Canada. Keitha’s family has also been in Canada for at least eight generations or more. After she retired she moved to Vancouver where she lived for the next fifteen years; she was the matriarch and elder of her family, living with her daughter, her grandson and his wife, and her great granddaughter.

One day when I was in Vancouver in the late 1990s I saw Keitha, from a distance, walking on Broadway, but something held me back from greeting her. That was the last time I saw her. Was it just by chance that a month before Keitha passed away I wrote a long poem remembering her? I recounted in the poem much of what she had told me about her life and I reflected on what our friendship had meant to me. It is also forty years ago this month that Keitha and I became friends, and what a privilege it is to have been friends with Keitha! I believe that Keitha’s spirit came to me when I was writing that long poem about her, she was preparing to leave this earthly dimension; it was her way of saying, “Goodbye for now.” Yes, goodbye, old friend, and God bless you.

A Short History

by Keitha K. MacIntosh

You might say

            I am a new arrival

on this continent.

Six generations ago

            they came

the ancestors

            Calvinist Scots

with brimstone in their blood.

            They laboured well.

            They ploughed the fertile soil

and dug up sins

            and other aberrations

and kept them hidden

            in small closed rooms and tidy attics.

            Their calloused hands

sand deep

            and laid foundations

            for concrete forests

            and churches, gothic arched

with highland shepherds

            leading their flocks

            to everlasting servitude.

I find log houses

            among the apple trees

with lilac bushes

            at the door

Burdock Blood Bitters

            on the shelves

butter churns

            made of yellow pine

apple peelers candle molds yarn winders

            and ghosts

            of screaming child-birth

                        that rich the soil.

 (from Poems of the Chateuguay Valley, 1981, p. 17)


In Her Own Words:

In her author’s statement published in Poets’ Information Exchange Sampler (1976), Keitha writes the following:

“Born in Lachine, Quebec, I was a closet poet to begin with. My first published poem appeared in the Northern Messenger when I was seven but I hid the magazine so my family wouldn’t know! My Presbyterian ancestors frowned on the frivolity of poetry though any writing, however mundane, that earned money was acceptable. For the last fifteen years I have been publishing poems and stories while earning my bread by helping to run a dairy farm and doing nursing part-time. God grant me strength to continue to write about my people, so lovable, so destructive, so brave, so often misguided. I’ve published in Ellipse, Other Voices, Quebec Histoire, Anthol, Cross Country, Canadian Author and Bookman, among others. A collection of poems, The Shattered Glass and other fragments, is scheduled for 1976. Editor, Montreal Poems.”

Bibliography:

Short Stories:

Keitha K. MacIntosh. The Crow Sits High in the Lilac Tree (Kateri Press, Huntingdon, 1982). 37 pp.

Poetry:

Keitha K. MacIntosh. Shattered Glass and other fragments (Sunken Forum Press, Dewittville, QC, 1976). 48 pp.

Keitha K. MacIntosh. Poems of the Chateuguay Valley (South Western Ontario Poetry, London, ON, 1981). 24 pp.

Anthologies (incomplete):

Keitha K. MacIntosh. Montreal Poets’ Information Exchange Sampler. Edited by Matie Falworth. M.P.I.E., Montgreal, 1976.

 Keitha K. MacIntosh.Cross/cut, Contemporary English Quebec Poetry. Edited by Peter Van Toorn and Ken Norris. Vehicule Press, Montreal, 1982.

Editor and Publisher:

Montreal Poems, spring/summer 1974, number one

Montreal Poems, autumn 1975 (with an Introduction by Louis Dudek), number two [note: this issue was originally published in the spring of 1975; however, the printing job was unacceptable and these copies were destroyed; the same content was reprinted dated autumn 1975].

Montreal Poems, winter 1976, number three

Poesie de Montreal Poems, winter 1978, Women’s Edition

Montreal Poems, 1981, number five [only issue to have perfect binding; all previous issues were staple bound]

050724