This community garden is just two blocks from where I live, on Rosedale Avenue just above Cote St- Luc Road. This isn't a mini-farm, it's gardeners growing vegetables and flowers for their own use. These are quite large gardens, tools and supplies are stored in a locked shed, compost bins near the gardens. Photos taken in May 2015, but not much has changed since then.
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| Bee balm, cone flowers, and day lilies; photo taken in August 2021 |
Due to illness I didn't do much garden work this passed summer, I didn't even sit in the garden that much. I used to sit outside every evening, I'd be entertained by fire flies. The Covid lock down has been great for gardens, we've seen the return of birds not seen for some time, some urban wild life, and honey bees. I noticed, and I wonder if anyone can corroborate this, that in the morning during Covid , around eight or nine a.m., the air in the garden was so fresh and clean, something I have previously noticed only when living in the country. I've pushed myself and done more garden work this September and October than is usual. I've weeded, transplanted plants, put a row of hostas at the rear of the garden, hoed, dug, and watered. What a great time! Inside the house, I look out of my window and I see sunlight in the tops of trees, where the leaves have turned yellow and the autumnal leaves are brilliant when the sun is behind them. Keeping up my outside work, trying to prepare the garden for next summer, I weeded ground cover that came from a neighbour's yard, it was everywhere. I pulled it up, dug up the roots, and then I realized how large a space I had that was mostly wasted on ground cover. I'd been thinking of expanding the garden but always careful not to expand it too much or possibly I wouldn't be able to keep up with what I'd done, or I wouldn't want to do what had become extra work. But this area, by the side of the house path entrance to the garden, is large, and what a great discovery. I have cone flowers that I planted years ago and that have outgrown the space where they were planted. I moved several of these and it was interesting to see how much they had grown, they are very sturdy plants, and I moved about four of these plants to the new space. Something I just noticed that will be discussed another time is a rose bush I thought had died last winter, unbeknownst to me, it was still alive, and returned to life. Nature is resilient. I have not had a lot of success with roses but now this might be changing. Anyhow, I am very happy with the revitalized and renewed garden space just worked on. I thought this space was good before but now I know that, weeded, tidied up, it will thrive next summer.
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| Cone flowers were under the window on the left, some of them have been moved to the newly turned over flower bed; a few weeks ago I trimmed back ivy that covered the brick walls on two sides of the house; photos taken on 24 October 2021 |
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| All of this space was waiting to be cultivated; there is a row of miniature irises, bee balm that is now established, and some cone flowers |
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| On the far right are some raspberry canes and behind them is a lilac bush that wasn't expected to survive after being cut down to ground level about ten years ago; it is now coming back to life and thriving |
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| A bare piece of land doesn't look like much but the soil here is pretty good and I expect everything will thrive |
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| All photos taken in October 2021 |
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| An old 78 RPM recording from my father's record collection |
We've had a mild October this year, it was +20 C yesterday and most of the previous two weeks; however, it is raining today (on Saturday) and the coming days will be in the +10 C range. This means it's been great weather to get out and work in the garden, in my case moving or transplanting hostas. One of the advantages of perennial plants is that they are perennial, you buy them once and not only do you have them year after year, but they multiply, and then you can divide them and have more of the same plants; plus, you buy them only once so you aren't paying for them a second or third summer. Perennials are the gift that keeps on giving... Frugality is something the government of Canada needs to learn as we are now half way to a trillion dollar debt. Meanwhile, annuals look great for one summer and then, in October, they end up in the compost or the garbage; I've seen piles of geraniums thrown out, still in bloom, they could easily have been overwintered indoors and planted the following spring.
About five years ago I planted four hostas in the front of the house, as a border to the walk, as well as other hostas planted in the backyard; I decided to move two of these plants to the back yard garden and that's what I did last week. In fact, I also moved a few other hostas into this same long row at the very rear of the garden, it has the effect of pulling the whole garden together. This backyard, my Canadian cottage garden, is not very large and it doesn't get a lot of sunlight except where the house abuts the backyard and even what sunlight I get isn't guaranteed, it depends on the time of day; in other words, nowhere does this garden get twelve straight hours of summer sunlight on a single day as do the gardens of some of my neighbours. I don't have a great love for hostas; I like hostas, but... so, planting these hostas was a matter of convenience and even necessity, it is all that will grow where I planted them; also, they are perennials and there are many varieties of hostas, they will grow and flourish in the shade and I like them well enough.
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| You can see where two hostas have been removed, they were the same size as the hostas on either side of the remaining hostas; by the way, hostas are easy to dig up, even four or five years after first planting them the root ball was more or less intact. It is also easy to divide the root ball prior to transplanting them. |
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| Here we see the row of hostas only half planted; this is very poor soil and it's beside some cedars and below an apple tree, so not the greatest place to grow anything. |
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| Here is the completed row of hostas, they'll look better next year or the year after next. It was only after planting them that I realized how they completed the garden; the hostas gave a sense of enclosure to the garden as a whole, a sense of completion. |
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| I planted these hydrangeas and the hostas in the foreground last summer when I also dug this small island in the backyard. It isn't a lot of work to dig up small sections of grass and, one thing I've noted, is that an island also creates green space surrounding it, it creates paths. I enlarged this area this summer and, recently, I moved the hostas further away from the hydrangeas. By the way, the hydrangeas were moved from the front lawn area where they were too plentiful. I don't throw out any plants or bushes. |
It is inevitable that the Village Shopping Plaza will be demolished and become the site of spanking new paper thin wall condos! My new motto is "No More Progress, Please". Look at what has already been lost, stores, a restaurant, a place where people could meet and talk; it was, after all, the village shopping plaza, not the city shopping plaza but a community. Did people stop shopping here? Most likely, but whatever happened it was also the fault of whoever owned this complex, they didn't keep up with the times and then land became more valuable than the building and so, voilà , where we are today. Progress is not just exchanging the old for what is new and more profitable (excuse my naivete!), that is how we define progress in our society and it is a false definition. In the meantime, nature or urban wildlife is returning to this area, the other day I saw a hawk sitting on a railing behind the building.
Yes, I am back out walking, I aim for a daily walk, it is my favourite exercise. Here we are again at the corner of Cote St. Luc Road and Robert Burns Avenue, a property that continues to deteriorate. I suppose whoever owns this property is waiting for a buyer, or demolition and building permits, or architectural plans. In the meantime we have a building in which the electricity has been cut off and with the changing seasons the whole thing is in a state of decline and deterioration. Last week I saw a hawk sitting on one of the railings in the photograph below. Nature is returning to the Covid cities we inhabit. But nothing stands for long in the way of making money so these buildings must not only go, new buildings (condos, most likely) will be built here.
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| 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.
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| 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
