Showing posts with label Guy Birchard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guy Birchard. Show all posts
Saturday, July 11, 2020
some author activity: Boyle, Birchard, Barwin, Hofmann + Eleftherion,
Frances Boyle has some new poems up at FEED; Guy Birchard is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Gary Barwin has a piece on writer's block up on the AllLitUp site; forthcoming author Ava Hofmann is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; and Melissa Eleftherion is featured over at the sundress blog.
Sunday, April 12, 2020
Stephen Morrissey on Guy Birchard and Artie Gold
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Photo by Stephen Morrissey : Home of Mary Brown and Artie Gold at 3667 Lorne Crescent |
Before George Bowering was GB there was Guy Birchard, maybe the first GB, both named as such by AG, Artie Gold. Valedictions (2019), published by rob mclennan's above/ground press, is Guy's farewell to three deceased artists, poet William Hawkins, musician and visual artist Ray 'Condo' Tremblay, and our mutual friend, poet Artie Gold. I met Guy in the spring of 1973, I met Artie through Guy. I never met Ray Tremblay but one day my brother took a taxi in Ottawa that was driven by William Hawkins; somehow the subject of poets came up and Hawkins said that he had heard of me. It's a small world; we were all a lot younger in those days, we knew a lot of people. And now Guy's memoir has caused me to think about Artie once again, he was an imposing and domineering figure for many of us in the early 1970s.
Life seems to be a series of coincidences and cumulatively they can add up to something meaningful, or nothing at all. For instance, Guy says that he first encountered Artie at a reading by Michael Benedikt, but I was also at that reading, it was on 16 March 1973 in the Hall Building, the ninth floor I believe, and it may have been at this reading that I also met Guy, sitting a few rows behind me. Around that time, winter-spring 1973, Hopeton Anderson invited Guy to read at Karma Coffee House and that was the occasion on which Guy met Artie Gold; to get this sequence of events accurate, it was also at Guy's reading at Karma that Richie Carson, another poet of that era, invited Guy to read again at Karma. By then I knew Guy and he extended to me an invitation to read after he read (the reading was on the third week of April 1973), just as Hopeton Anderson had extended a similar invitation to Guy, all of these readings taking place at Karma. Karma Coffee House was located in the basement of the Sir Williams University Student Union Building.
Artie was an extraordinary person, there was an aura of excitement surrounding him, he was a genuinely creative person; I doubt most of us meet someone like Artie Gold more than once in a lifetime. One winter day he and I and my first wife took a train to Ottawa and visited the National Gallery of Canada. For years I had a copy of The Far Point, bought on that occasion, an article in that issue was my introduction to what was happening in poetry in Vancouver where many of the most innovative poets were living at that time. There are other, happy memories of Artie; it was a seminal time when we were apprentices as poets. But now, after reading Guy's memoir of Artie, what is for me an unpleasant and pivotal memory has surfaced. It is a memory that explains what happened to my relationship with Artie. I remember talking with Artie and him telling me that he had published more than I had and that he was more important as a poet than I was. It may have been true but do we say that to a friend? I have never said that to another poet and no other poet has said it to me, except Artie.
Remembering that comment by Artie I also realized that it is may have been around this time that my relationship with him began to diminish. Artie was getting ahead in poetry, considering his talent and his intelligence the only thing that could hold him back was himself, the baggage of his life; the baggage eventually won: he was now being published by Talon Press in Vancouver; he was giving readings in BC, Ontario, and Quebec; other better known poets had heard of him and made him a celebrity of sorts; he was one of three poetry editors at Vehicule Press, the other two editors were Ken Norris and Endre Farkas. Artie had now become a "somebody". I benefited by Artie's ambition, Artie, Ken, and Endre published my first book, The Trees of Unknowing (Vehicule Press,1978) and I am grateful to them and to the press for that.
So, Artie moved on and was an important poet with a future. Then, Si Dardick, the owner of Vehicule Press, fired his three poetry editors and installed someone else in the job; I don't know the details of this firing but I do know that the books the new editor published never interested me; the emphasis was now on formalistic poetry.
I still knew Artie after he was no longer an editor at Vehicule Press; I gave him readings for several years, beginning in 1976, at the college where I was now teaching, I knew he needed the money. From these readings he would go home with a little money and office supplies from the college. But there were other changes happening in Artie's life; his decline into poverty, worsening health, and increasing drug dependency is usually dated from when Mary Brown, who supported Artie, ended their relationship by moving a few doors away but still on Lorne Crescent; later she moved to a house she helped build in the country. Mary Brown died in 1999. But now I wonder if Artie's decline might also be dated from when he was no longer an editor at the press.
My long forgotten memory of Artie's comment to me had other repercussions on our relationship; it explains to me my distance from Artie in the years that followed. For instance, I continued knowing Artie but on a more formal basis, the old familiarity we once had was gone. Nothing lasts forever, everything changes. When he stored his boxes of archives in our basement, around 2005, I offered to give him a receipt (of all things!) and this surprised Artie as much as it surprised me at the time; however, I didn't want any problems with Artie and I didn't want Artie coming back at me saying I had polluted his papers with cat dander, an alleged trigger for his COPD (not asthma). When I bought groceries for Artie, or clothes, or what have you—this was when he had friends supporting him so he could remain living autonomously—if I said I didn't have the time to go to several shops that day to buy him croissants or cans of chick peas he wouldn't push me to do it, he just agreed and let it go, in fact, I noticed he was uncharacteristically meek in accepting what I said. No good deed goes unpublished is one of my mottoes and it included Artie Gold.
Artie died in February 2007 and later that year a small group of us scattered Artie's ashes at places we thought significant to Artie. One of the people at this gathering told me that when she separated from her husband Artie phoned to offer his sympathy, at first this was an incredible thing for Artie to have done, she must have felt supported by Artie's phone call; but, more importantly, it must have at first felt doubly compassionate as it was from someone who was rarely compassionate about anybody. The point of this anecdote is that literally thirty seconds after Artie expressed his sympathy he returned to his favourite subject, himself. We both laughed at this, it was "good old Artie" being himself.
When I first saw Artie's cover drawing on his last chapbook, The Hotel Victoria Poems (above/ground press), I thought it was prescient, that this was the same bed in which the police discovered his body on Valentine's Day in February 2007. But I was wrong, Guy tells me this image appeared on a postcard he received when Artie was still living on Lorne Crescent, it is not the same room and bed where he died in 2007. Artie was a friend of our youth, he was one of the first real poets some of us met on this journey in life.
Labels:
Artie Gold,
Guy Birchard,
review,
Stephen Morrissey,
William Hawkins
Friday, February 28, 2020
new from above/ground press: Montcorbier, by Guy Birchard
Montcorbier
Guy Birchard
$5
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Shy Canadianismo by nature (“having none hath no care to defend it”), Guy Birchard has been just a mother tongue poetry bum these many years with small official second language.
This is Birchard’s second chapbook with above/ground press, after VALEDICTIONS (2019).
To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com
Guy Birchard
$5
In
this the thirtieth year of my life
Having
stomached all disgrace
Neither
most foolish nor half wise
Notwithstanding
all the clouts
Received
At
the hands of Thibault d'Aussigny
Bishop
though he be, making the sign of the cross
Down
the street, he's no one to me.
Nor
Monsignor nor my lord
I
had from him nowt but shite
I
owe him nor fealty nor homage
Am
nor his serf nor bitch
Who
fed me on corn dodgers
And
water one whole summer
Proved
pure stingy, "beneficent" less than tight,
God
render unto him what he to me.
And
if anyone objects
And
calls this blasphemy
Well,
feel me, it aint idle
Bad-mouthing
I
have worse to say
If
that's mercy he was showing
Jesus
king of paradise
Commend,
body and soul, the like to him.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Shy Canadianismo by nature (“having none hath no care to defend it”), Guy Birchard has been just a mother tongue poetry bum these many years with small official second language.
This is Birchard’s second chapbook with above/ground press, after VALEDICTIONS (2019).
To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com
Saturday, November 9, 2019
some author activity: Birchard, mclennan, Tracy, Notley, Schmaltz + Rosenthal,
Guy Birchard has a new poem in the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog; rob mclennan has had two poems up at Stride magazine here, and here; forthcoming author Dale Tracy is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; above/ground press authors Alice Notley and Eric Schmaltz (among others) will have work included in the next edition of Best American Experimental Writing; and Sarah Rosenthal has new work in ELDERLY #30.
Thursday, September 19, 2019
new from above/ground press: VALEDICTIONS, three essays by Guy Birchard
VALEDICTIONS
Three essays by Guy Birchard
on William Hawkins, Ray ("Condo") Tremblay and Artie Gold
$5
September 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Guy Birchard: I am by birth a deracinated Canadian: Don't panic, stalwart sons—no fault of mother's, no foul of father's—don't jump to conclusions, gentle maidens. The issue is unremitting agon and zero-sum. Reason not the conundrum.
Cigarette Cards (Vermont: Longhouse, 2009), Further than the Blood (Boston: Pressed Wafer, 2010), Hecatomb (Brooklyn: Pressed Wafer, 2017), Aggregate: retrospective (Bristol: Shearsman Books, 2018), Only Seemly (St. John's: Pedlar Press, 2019).
To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com
Three essays by Guy Birchard
on William Hawkins, Ray ("Condo") Tremblay and Artie Gold
$5
published in Ottawa by above/ground pressHawkins was the capital's chief charismatic in the early 1960s, that's a fact. Even before I knew he was a poet, even before I would've much cared, aged fourteen or so, ogling fetish objects, guitars I could no more afford than play, down the Treble Clef basement on Bank Street worked Hawkins, drawing attention away from the Gibsons and Guilds and Martins somehow upon himself.
Then when I was sixteen and fin-de-siècle Ernest Dowson finally turned me on to verse, there was Hawkins, the first and sole livin'-breathin' parish poet already on my radar.
I've bought and sold a hundred thousand books in my time but I keep The Poems of Ernest Dowson (London: John Lane, the Bodley Head, 1919; eighth edition) with Aubrey Beardsley's gilt decorative green buckram boards, filched (for shame) from the Ottawa Public Library, and Hawkins' first six titles. I had Hawkins, Poems 1963-1965 (Ottawa: Nil Press, 1966) memorized without trying, I read it so many times in high school. Got it, of course, at Shirley Leishman Books on Gilmour Street. Saw Two Longer Poems: The Seasons of Miss Nicky by Harry Howith & Louis Riel by William Hawkins (Toronto: Patrician Press, 1965) on C.C.J. Bond's bookshelf out at his house and that impressed me enough that I went and got a copy and hand-lettered the unprinted spine in red ink just the way C.C.J. had his. Quickly scored Shoot Low Sheriff, They're Riding Shetland Ponies! Poems 1959-1964 (no place: no press, 1964) and Ottawa Poems (Kitchener: Weed/flower Press, 1966). How fascinated I was that year by the televised, crude, mock-Gjon Mili proto-rock-video of the "Young Man of the Year" moodily reading Ottawa Poems from CJOH studios. (In about 1970, the first press I ever submitted a callow book-length manuscript to was Weed/flower—because it had published Ottawa Poems.) Much later, I tried to sell a duplicate copy to a pre-eminent Ottawa second-hand book dealer. Hawkins' stock was so low circa 1990 that that dealer wasn't interested, at any price. Couldn't give it to him... Wouldn't be that way anon. John Oughton (go on, say the brother's name) gifted me with a review copy of The Gift of Space, Selected Poems 1960-1970 (Toronto: new press, 1971) that he wasn't going to tend to, in which is to be read disturbingly, concentrated for a cold eye to assess, the self-sabotage that cancels artistic progress. (I myself saw the inside of the Donwood Institute, hired as part of a control group testing varying dosages of antihistamine in the treatment of barbiturate freaks and alcoholics. Where sagged Hawkins in therapy in the commissary.) And lastly, I was given one of the twenty-eight signed copies of The Madman's War (Ottawa: S.A.W. Publications, 1974) by its esteemed printer, Cam Christie. All shall remain safe in my possession as long as I live.
September 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Guy Birchard: I am by birth a deracinated Canadian: Don't panic, stalwart sons—no fault of mother's, no foul of father's—don't jump to conclusions, gentle maidens. The issue is unremitting agon and zero-sum. Reason not the conundrum.
Cigarette Cards (Vermont: Longhouse, 2009), Further than the Blood (Boston: Pressed Wafer, 2010), Hecatomb (Brooklyn: Pressed Wafer, 2017), Aggregate: retrospective (Bristol: Shearsman Books, 2018), Only Seemly (St. John's: Pedlar Press, 2019).
To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com
Labels:
Artie Gold,
chapbook,
essay,
Guy Birchard,
Ray Tremblay,
William Hawkins
Saturday, July 13, 2019
some author activity: Barwin, mclennan, Smallfield, Birchard + Etherin,
Gary Barwin has a new poem up at Burning House Press; rob mclennan was interviewed in Paul Brookes' Wombwell Rainbow Interviews series; Edward Smallfield has new poems posted at The LiT magazine; forthcoming author Guy Birchard is interviewed in the "12 or 20 questions: series; and Anthony Etherin has new work up at Burning House Press.
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