CrossCountry – a magazine of Canadian-U.S. poetry/CrossCountry Press (1975-1983): bibliography, and an interview

this interview was conducted over email from November 2021 to January 2022 as part of a project to document literary publishing. see my bibliography-in-progress of Canadian literary publications, past and present here

Jim Mele is a journalist and writer living in Connecticut.  He was co-editor of CrossCountry, a Canadian/US literary magazine and publisher, and also served as general manager of the New York State Small Press Assn., a non-profit created to distribute literary and artistic publications. He has traveled broadly both as a journalist and as a curious private citizen. His journalism has been recognized with numerous awards including three Neal Awards for op-ed commentary, and has published four collections of poetry and a critical study of Isaac Asimov’s science fiction. He holds a BA in English from Stony Brook University and an MA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York.

Ken Norris was born in New York City in 1951. He came to Canada in the early 1970s, to escape Nixon-era America and to pursue his graduate education. He completed an M.A. at Concordia University and a Ph.D. in Canadian Literature at McGill University. He became a Canadian citizen in 1985. For thirty-three years he taught Canadian Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Maine. His latest poetry title is South China Sea: A Poet's Autobiography (Guernica Editions, 2021), and he’s published nine chapbooks with above/ground press, including three in 2021. He currently resides in Toronto.

Q: How did CrossCountry first begin?

Jim Melé: Ken and I met as freshmen at Stony Brook University on Long Island about 60 miles outside of New York City. We remained close all four years, even hitchhiking across the country to California one summer and sharing a house in our last year.  We also both discovered a passion for poetry at Stony Brook although through slightly different paths. Ken found his enthusiasm through the classes of Louis Simpson, a Pulitzer winning poet and Yeats scholar, and me though a younger lecturer named George Quasha. But for both of us poetry was an exciting world.

When we graduated in 1972, Ken moved back to NYC to pursue music with a band and I went on to the creative writing program at the City College of NY, studying with the beat poet Joel Oppenheimer. By 1974, I’d moved on to my first job on a strange newspaper for merchant seamen and Ken had taken off for Montreal to study at Concordia and then McGill. Poetry still consumed us, and we began an active correspondence.

For me, I was beginning to read and then meet many of the young non-academic poets that filled NYC bars and other venues as well as discover the non-traditional poets that inspired them, poets like Jack Spicer, Gary Snyder, William Bronk, Ted Berrigan. And Ken was quickly finding his cohorts in the young Montreal poets like Artie Gold and Endre Farkas, as well as other Canadians like bp nichol and George Bowering.  Few of the Canadian poets were being read in the US, and most of the Canadian ones were somewhat removed from the active young poetry scene I was finding in NY. To Ken and me it felt like there were unnecessary parochial boundaries dividing two vibrant poetry cultures along meaningless national lines. Naïve on our parts, yes, but also true to a large extent.

And that’s how Cross Country started. We decided there was room for another small magazine that presented Canadian and US poets on a single stage.  The hope was to introduce both groups to broader audiences. We published the first issue in 1975.

Q: How did you get the word out for that first issue? Was all the work within solicited? Did you send out a call? And, given you were working with systems on both sides of the border, how were issues distributed?

Ken Norris: I THINK I was still in New York as we started to put the first issue together. I must have sent a letter to George Bowering, because he’s in the first issue (I think). And the Davinci chapbook poets are in it (Ezzy, Farkas, Ferrier, Lapp). I wrote an essay about Atwood. I’m pretty sure all the work was solicited, and that would have been by mail. I think there were distribution networks on both sides of the border to plug into. We recruited institutional/library subscriptions, and got about 100 of them, I believe.

JM: Yes, all the work was solicited.  Ken and I simply wrote letters to poets we admired and told them that we were starting this US/Canadian small magazine, and most sent us contributions. We ended up with a really diverse mix, probably the most diverse in the entire course of the magazine.  Besides Bowering and the Davinci group, it included Robert Kelly, Eve Merriam, Muriel Rukeyser, Tom Konyves, Phillip Lopate, William Bronk among others.  Established poets who had no idea who we were were incredibly generous.

Distribution was a problem, as it was and is for almost all small magazines. I took the magazine around to all the bookstores in NY that I knew. The important literary independents like the Gotham and St. Marks were open to taking a few, but also a number of others did as well, if with a bit of reluctance. The big boost came from library subscriptions, which we solicited by direct mail using some lists we managed to scrape up.  And we did the same with review copies, which began to bring us some individual subscriptions and submissions. I believe we also listed the magazine with some of the writers’ resource publications. 

Q: You both mention “the Davinci group.” Could you explain this reference? It isn’t one I’m aware of.

KN: Eldorado Editions. Four chapbooks came out in 1974, by Tom Ezzy, Endre Farkas, Ian Ferrier, and Claudia Lapp. Not that much was going on in Montreal, publishing-wise, at that time, so these were a big deal. I think they were an offshoot of Davinci magazine, which was edited by Allan Bealy.

Q: What kinds of response did you receive for those first few issues? Were there any responses you weren’t expecting, whether in terms of straight response, or even potential submissions?

JM: I don’t have any specific memories, but after the first issue we started attracting a large volume of unsolicited submissions at the US address.  And if I remember correctly, Ken had the same response in Canada. Subscriptions and single-issue sales were much slower building.

The second issue, published in the Summer 1975, represented a big step forward in my mind.  On a superficial level, the production quality was much improved over No. 1, which had been typeset on an IBM electric typewriter and printed on remanent paper stock.  More importantly, it was entirely work Ken and I had solicited personally and reflected the poetry that was exciting us. For my part, the poets I approached were enthusiastic about the idea behind establishing a Canadian/US poetry platform.

The next issue pushed things to an entirely new level.  It was focused solely on Montreal and was largely Ken’s baby, so I’ll let him talk about it.  But I do remember that we doubled the print run from our usual 500 copies and even so it was the first issue to sell out. Also by that time was I was involved in the New York Small Press Fair, an annual event that drew nearly 100 small literary presses as exhibitors and large crowds. Our Montreal issue attracted a lot of attention, selling every copy we’d brought to an audience we’d never have reached relying only on direct mail and limited bookstore sales.

KN: We’d get in trouble with poets like Robin Mathews soon enough. Some “Canadian nationalists” didn’t like what we were up to.

The Montreal issue (#3/4) was a lot of fun to put together. We built a bridge to the les herbes rouges poets—so there were ten Quebecois poets in the Montreal issue, including Claude Beausoleil, Yolande Villemaire and Nicole Brossard. The Vehicule poets would continue to collaborate with les herbes rouges poets for years.

Right from the get-go, I asked a lot of Canadian poets for poems, and they rarely refused. I remember the time I asked Al Purdy to send me a few poems, and he sent me the entire manuscript of Piling Blood. He told me to take the ones that I really liked. Frank Scott invited me over to his house and we dug up a couple of unpublished poems. In the Montreal issue we published a section of John Glassco’s long poem Montreal. Interesting things happened with just about every issue.

Q: The basic argument for the journal, as I’ve always understood it, is simply poets from either side of the border engaged in a larger conversation with each other. How could anyone have a problem with that? I suppose the next question to ask: prior to this, how easily was writing travelling across the border? How easy or difficult was it for someone in either country during those days to purchase a book from a poet in the other country?

JM: On a personal level poets on either side of the border would trade books with each other, but Canadian poets were largely unavailable in bookstores unless like Leonard Cohen they also had a US publisher. And I believe it was the same in Canada, at least for any poet not with a major commercial publisher. I think the interest was there, but there were practical barriers that went beyond unfamiliarity.  Sending even a single box of books across the border into Canada or into the US was an expensive, long and complex process that required paying duties and hiring a customs broker to handle all the paperwork.  If you didn’t follow the rules, it was likely the shipment would be seized. That happened to us with Lionel Kearns’ Ignoring the Bomb. Ken sent me a box of copies to distribute that never emerged from US Customs.  Literary presses in the 1970s and 80s just didn’t have the resources or experience to navigate customs. The one exception might have been Coach House since I do remember seeing their titles in a few major NYC literary bookstores.  For the most part we relied on my car trips to Montreal to bring CrossCountry across the border.

KN: Those were different days. Xenophobia could masquerade as nationalism. Lionel's book got seized because they thought it was anti-nuclear propaganda. Weird things happened sometimes.

Globalization changed all that. We wound up being on the right side of history.

JM: In Lionel’s case that was probably true, but the legal correspondence with US Customs and the proposed bills from customs brokers as well as warehousing bills were awe inspiring.  The big publishers on both sides supported and promoted those trade barriers as business strategies.  No exceptions for small literary publications unless they were small enough to slip under the regulatory gaze.

Q: You mention Eldorado Editions. What other publishers or publications were around during those days? What publications did you see CrossCountry in conversation with, if any?

KN: I was an editor at CrossCountry and CrossCountry Press while also being one of the poetry editors (along with Endre Farkas and Artie Gold) at Vehicule Press. So there was that.

In a time of Canadian nationalism, we kind of stood out. I think there was a magazine called New that was also publishing Canadian and U.S. poetry. And I always had a soft spot for Unmuzzled Ox. And I liked what 52 PIck-Up was doing. And, of course, Coach House.

At that time I was also the Quebec regional rep of CVII.

Through Artie we came into contact with Geoffrey Young and The Figures. I became a big fan of Stephen Rodefer’s poetry. And we had a bird’s eye view of the language poetry scene, which we liked and didn’t like.

I can’t remember if we published any poetry by Stephen Rodefer and Lyn Hejinian in CrossCountry. I certainly wanted to.

JM: NY was swarming with literary presses in the 1970s and 80s, and CrossCountry was in the mix through things like the NY Small Press Assoc and the Small Press Book Fair.  But there was little Canadian content beyond what we were publishing.  We did have loose connections with Unmuzzled Ox, publishing a chapbook by its editor Michael Andre and a collection by Larry Zirlin, one of the editors at SOME/Release Press.

Q: What moved you into publishing chapbooks and books as an extension of the journal?

KN: Grant money. We were eligible for National Endowment of the Arts grants.

But the first two chapbooks were one of mine and one of Jim's. We were able to get them printed cheap, so why not do them? Under The Skin was my second publication, after Vegetables.

JM: As Ken said, we became eligible for grant money from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Arts Council.  And a production/printing organization subsidized by the NY council was created to help support literary and arts publishers, which gave us access to typesetting facilities and low cost quality printing, so we started expanding into chapbooks first and then full-length books to complement the magazine.  We eventually published 15 books along with 16 issues of CrossCountry.

Q: It is one thing to run a journal with a border between you, but how was it running a publishing house? I know of at least one book that disappeared through the mail. What were the difficulties in attempting to produce chapbooks and books?

KN: As I remember it, most of the CrossCountry Press titles were produced in the States. So there really wasn't a border between us. The funding for the books was in the States, and the book production was in the States. There were a few exceptions. Artie’s some of the cat poems and John McAuley's Hazardous Renaissance and Mattress Testing were printed at Vehicule. I remember typesetting some of the cat poems AT Vehicule. 

Ignoring The Bomb was a co-publish with Oolichan. They had the title in Canada and we had it in the U.S. Oolichan produced the book.

All the rest of the titles were produced in the States, with Jim overseeing their production.

So, at the time, I felt like book publishing was working like a dream. But I wasn't doing most of the work. Jim was doing most of the work.

JM: Yes, most of the resources – money and physical production capability – were in the US so that’s where most of the books were produced.  The major hurdle wasn’t the border – it was distribution in both countries.  The book distribution business was set up to accommodate large publishers with sales, promotion and fulfillment staff.  Unless they were really committed to giving visibility to small literary presses, bookstores didn’t have the resources or will to deal with them.  And to be truthful most of us running small presses didn’t have the experience or will to address that side of publishing.  So we had to rely on direct sales to libraries and interested individuals that managed to find us.  We had a few successful titles – the Baudelaire essays and McFadden’s chapbook The Saladmaker were two I recall offhand, but for the most part even the good reviews many of our titles got were not enough to attract the audiences they deserved.

Around 1981 I began working part-time as the general manager of the NY State Small Press Association, which was created with public and private grants specifically to distribute literary and art books.  At its peak it had titles in stock from well over 100 presses.  But it never evolved into an operation that could stand on its own and compete with major publishers, so once the grants ran out it faded away.  That’s also when Ken and I moved on from CrossCountry to other projects.

Q: Did either of you notice a difference in response to books from either side of the border? A couple of years back, Jay MillAr at Book*hug mentioned a stretch of time when the books they published by American writers did well in the United States, but not in Canada, and the books they published by Canadian writers did well in Canada, but not in the United States, despite their entire catalogue having equal distribution and marketing in both countries. Had you a version of the same?

JM: Pretty much.  Among the Canadian titles, Artie Gold’s cat poems and David McFadden’s three attracted the most interest from US readers.  And when we participated in US book fairs, there seemed to be a lot of curiosity about both the magazine and the Canadian authors.

KN: Hmm. I think I would say No. We were small press. Responses to small press tend to be quirky. Individuals on either side of the border would chance upon a title and register a response to it. We weren't being swept up in large-scale cultural trends.

Forty-three people across North America would discover and respond to David McFadden's A New Romance. We were really presenting a North American argument. At that time, we were trying to dissolve the differences between U.S. and Canadian poetry.

The Tish poets and the Coach House poets made the most sense to me of the poets in Canada, and they were cut more from North American cloth rather than from Canadian cloth.

Readers. My old friend Burt Hatlen used to say that we have more readers than we think we do. Poetry circulates in a really unusual fashion. I think borders and nationalities tend to be meaningless, and these days I think we concede that every poet establishes their own tradition that has nothing to do with nation-states. But the most influential poet in my life since I was seventeen is the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. And after him it's probably Lorca. I'm a Canadian poet who reads a lot of Canadian poetry, but it isn't all that I read, and the local isn't maybe even all that important much of the time.

CrossCountry was an invitation to discuss how poetic tradition works. Again, I would say that we were making an argument for North American poetry, and in a way that American poetry doesn't subsume Canadian poetry. We were interested in a mode of presentation in which Robert Creeley and George Bowering, say, would be seen as equals.

JM: That was certainly our intention with CrossCountry, magazine and books both.

Q: What prompted your movement into special issues, whether the postcard issue, the detective issue or the “New Romantics” issue?

KN: The first special issue was the Montreal issue (#3/4). We got a grant to do that one.

The Postcard issue gave me a chance to work with the designers at Dreadnaught Press. Coach House specialized in “visual arts” postcards, and there were some other poetry postcards making the rounds.

The Postcard issue was 20 postcards, 10 Americans and 10 Canadians. Margaret Atwood sent us a poem for that one, George, David McFadden. The Vehicules got into the mix: Artie, Tom, Endre, myself. I think there was a William Bronk poem. Jim and I were BIG fans of William Bronk.

The postcards got a lot of use. Back then, a writer’s life took place in the mail. It was all letters, submissions, acceptances and rejections. The postman was my favorite person.

JN: The detective issue was just fun. I was reading a lot of pulp noir from the 1930s and 40s (with enthusiastic prompting from Artie Gold) and other poets responded to the proposal so we commissioned an art director I knew to create a pulp cover and deco initial caps, and we were off.

The New Romantics was a response to a trend we saw among the poets we admired, a modern take on the romantic movement of the 19th century and a reaction to the abstract, cerebral work that predominated the academic journals.

Q: Your Montreal issue included a section of poems composed in French, with a French-language editor on the masthead, alongside a selection of poems composed in English. What were the interactions between the English-language and French-language poets in the city at that time? How was the issue received?

KN: The collaboration with the editors of les herbes rouges was a one time event. But it established that my crowd, the Vehicule Poets, was interested in working with their crowd. Claude Beausoleil, one of the poets in the Montreal issue, went on to be the French “editor” of the poetry on the buses project. With Lucien Francoeur and Claudine Bertrand, Endre Farkas and Ruth Taylor and I edited Montreal Now, a mag/reading series in the mid-1980s. In the early eighties, Michel Beaulieu and I used to go out for a weekly lunch in Chinatown, to discuss what was going on in poetry in the entire city. Michel took me to vernissages, where I had the opportunity to talk with poets like Gaston Miron and Nicole Brossard. I was very interested in the Quebecois scene.

Our generation of Montreal Anglo poets probably had more contact with our Quebecois peers than Klein’s generation did, or Dudek’s generation did. A number of the Vehicule poets had books that were translated into French. And most of the les herbes rouges poets had books appear in English.

JM: This was really Ken’s project so I don’t have much to add. We talked a bit about it being impossible to do something that claimed to capture poetry in Montreal without participation by Québécois poets. But we also recognized why some might not want to be included in an Anglophone magazine no matter how good our intentions. Ken did a great job of handling that conundrum.

Q: Tell me about the les herbes rouges poets! I know absolutely nothing about them.

KN: At the time (mid-70s) they were the young avant garde, like we were. The Hebert brothers (editors) also included Nicole Brossard in their selection. There are books translated into English by Claude Beausoleil, Yolande Villemaire, Andre Roy and Francois Charron. I think also by Philippe Haeck and Roger Des Roches. They’re all old now, like we are. Claude passed away recently. Guernica Editions published quite a number of translations of their work. As you know, many of Nicole Brossard’s books have been translated into English.

Q: In hindsight, what do you see as the takeaway from your time together doing CrossCountry? What do you feel the journal and press most accomplished, or made possible?

KN: Jim and I were friends at university (SUNY at Stony Brook) and we were also poetry friends. So, CrossCountry gave us a way of making our enthusiasms real. Running CrossCountry, the magazine, gave us a way of proselytizing for the poetry that we loved; it also got our names out there, as editors and as poets. So, there was a bit of career-building.

And running the press REALLY gave us a way of getting behind the poetry that we loved.

It’s hard to explain how “insular” Canadian literature could be back in the early seventies. I think we let in a lot of fresh air, and also backed up the Tish poets and the Coach House poets in seeing American poetry as a valid influence upon Canadian poetry. Robin Mathews chastised Raymond Souster and me for cultivating American influences. I thought that was really stupid at the time, but his line of argument got some traction among the nationalists.

JM: At the time US poetry was exploding (in a relative way) beyond the traditional voices as small presses began aggressively popularizing a much broader and more diverse perspective on what poetry could be. For the most part Canadian poetry was not part of that new mix, maybe because there were so many new voices competing to be heard.  Opening a venue in the US for the vibrant new poetry scene growing in Canada was exciting. And consciously choosing to downplay, if not ignore, nationalistic claims to relevance was both our reason for creating CrossCountry and what in the end I consider our real achievement.

Q: What was behind the decision to end the journal and press? Were the two shuttered simultaneously? Was it really just a matter of the two of you wishing to move on to other projects?

KN: Things were winding down around 1983 or 1984. By 1985, I was moving back to the U.S., to teach Canadian Literature at the University of Maine. That put us both on the same side of the border.

The magazine ran sixteen issues. Those that make it past twenty usually make it to a hundred. We didn't have that kind of energy.

And the press had made its statement, with twenty-something titles. We wound up not being in it for the long haul. I edited at Vehicule Press for six years and at CrossCountry Press for eight. In 1984, Leonard Cohen suggested to me that I focus on my own work, and when he said that I was ready to hear it.

JM: As Ken said, it wound down slowly over a few years.  He’d moved from Montreal to Maine, and I’d moved from New York to Connecticut. I’d also taken on a new job at a business magazine that proved highly immersive and more than full time. And I was a new parent.

We’d had a good run with both the magazine and press, and it was time to make room in our lives for the next stages.

 

CrossCountry – a magazine of Canadian-U.S. poetry bibliography:

No. 1. Winter 1975. Editors: Jim Mele, Ken Norris. Contributing Editor: Robert Galvin. Poems by Terry Stokes, Tom Konyves, Mary Morris, Carmen Vigil, Frederick Feirstein, Robert Kelly, Jim Mele, Thomas Danisi, Eve Merriam, George Bowering, Marguerite Harris, John Hollander, Ken Norris, Phillip Lopate, Robert Galvin, William Bronk, David Lehman, Richard Elman, Muriel Rukeyser, Claudia Lapp, Ian Ferrier, Tom Ezzy and Andre Farkas. SURVIVAL IN THE WRITINGS OF MARGARET ATWOOD by Ken Norris. Art Work: Debbie Creamer, Ruth Bauman and Simona Oelbaum.

No. 2. Summer 1975. Editors: Robert Galvin, Jim Mele, Ken Norris. Poems by Barbara Holland, David McFadden, Artie gold, Janet Marcus, Ken Norris, Jim Mele, Dan Gabriel, richard sommer, Matt Tolland, Robert Galvin, George Jonas, Alden Nowlan, George Woodcock, Claudia Lapp, Allen Ginsberg, Raymond Souster, Kathleen Chodor, Fraser Sutherland, Len Gasparini, Monica Raymond, John Robert Columbo, Janet Sternburg, David Bromige and Terry Stokes. Review: Jim Mele on Terry Stokes. Artwork: Debbie Creamer, Allan Bealy, Ken Gugliolmo, Paul Adam and Bill Luddy.

No. 3/4. 1975. Editors: Robert Galvin, Jim Mele, Ken Norris. Editeur français: Marcel Hébert. Editorial Assistants: Tom Konyves, Jill Martinez. Art Direction: Faigy Fudem. Layout & Typesetting: Si Dardick, Guy Lavoie. Special Issue: Montréal. Poèmes en français: Claude Beausoleil, Yolande Villemaire, Renaud Longchamps, André Beaudet, Normand De Bellefeuille, Phillippe Haeck, André Roy, François Charron, Roger Des Roches and Nicole Brossard. Poems in English: Stephen Morrissey, David Skyrie, D.G. Jones, Artie Gold, Morgana Fair, Tom Konyves, John McAuley, Matt Tolland, Claudia Lapp, Gary Livingston, Gertrude Katz, Louis Dudek, Andre Farkas, Richard Carson, Martin Newman, R.G. Everson, Richard Sommer, Carol H. Leckner, Shulamis Yelin, Ken Norris, Tom Ezzy and John Glassco. Reviews: Joanne Harris Burgess on Hutchman, Glassco, Gordy, & Sutherland; Michael Springate on Yelin, Thornton, Leckner, & Katz; Carol H. Leckner on Metcalf, Woods, & Kent; Tom Konyves on Gold, Burgess, Solway, Van Toorn, & Plourde; Ari Snyder on Ferrier, Farkas, Ezzy, Lapp, Norris, & McGee. Art Work by Daniel Pearce, André Desjardins, Jill Smith and Allan Bealy.

No. 5. 1976. Editors: Robert Galvin, Jim Mele, Ken Norris. Poems and prose by George Bowering (a serial poem, an interview, a review), David Ignatow, Ralph Gustafson, Peter Cooley, Opal L. Nations, ken Norris, David McFadden, William Bronk, Louis Dudek on Ezra Pound, Terry Stokes, Rochelle Ramer, Richard Elman, D.W. Donzella, Jim Mele, Artie Gold & Goeff Young, Barbara Holland and J. Michael yates. Reviews: John McAuley on Seymour Mayne, Jim Mele on William Bronk & Peter Cooley, Tom Konyves on J.B. Thornton McLeod. Short Reviews & Excerpts. Graphics by Debbie Creamer, Leavenworth Jackson and Bill Luddy. Cover photo by Scott Bowron.

No. 6/7. 1977. Editors: Robert Galvin, Jim Mele, Ken Norris. A Special Reprint Issue. The Lady Poems, by Terry Stokes. The Saladmaker, by David McFadden.

No. 8/9. 1977. Editors: Robert Galvin, Jim Mele, Ken Norris. Poems and prose by Steve McCaffery, Colette Inez, Jared Smith, Morgan W. Nyberg, David McFadden, Jean Berrett, Artie Gold, Al Purdy, Shulamis Yelin, Opal L. Nations, Anne McLean, Lionel Kearns, Arthur Stone, Constance de Jong, Wilbur Snowshoe, Tom Konyves, F.R. Scott, Earle Birney, Murphre Roos, George Bowering, Patrick Lane, Andrew Suknaski, Vladimir Banjo, Jim Mele, Rochelle Ratner, Ken Norris and bpNichol. An interview with bp Nichol by Jack David & Caroline Bayard. Reviews: Colin Morton on John Pass & Brian Brett; Ken Norris on Tish; Elliot S. Glass on poetry in the Barrio and Pedro Pietri.

No. 10/11. 1978. Editors: Robert Galvin, Jim Mele, Ken Norris. Murder, Mystery and Poetry – A Special Detective Issue. Contents: “The Black Mountain Influence,” George Bowering; “IF They Hang You,” Murphre Roos; “Danger Came on Rainwet Streets,” Eugene McNamara; “A Reading of Rex Stout,” Mona Van Duyn; “For Raymond Chandler,” John Love; “The Dead Line,” Larry Zirlin; “Detective Work,” Abigail Luttinger; “The Investigator,” Joseph Bruchac; “The Private Dick,” “Moonlighting,” Jim Mele; “A Man From The Water,” David Young; “Whodunit,” Florence Trefethen; “Private Eye,” Artie Gold; “Gruber,” “There Was No Knock on the Door,” Andre Farkas & Ken Norris; “Poem ‘Murder’: A Scenario,” steve mccaffery; “A Theater Piece,” Rene Magritte; “Nat Pinkerton,” “The Surrealists’ Use of Detective Fiction,” Rochelle Ratner; “The Occupant,” steve mccaffery; “Some Evidence of Foxing,” Paul De Barros; “The Case of the Missing Secretary,” Arden Kahlo; “Archer,” Sydney Martin Dore; “Motive, Opportunity & Weapon,” Ken Norris; “The Glass Key,” “Missing Persons,” Mark Jarman; “The Chaplin Kidnap,” Opal L. Nations; “Murders in the Welcome Cafe,” Andre Farkas.

No. 12. 1979. Editors: Robert Galvin, Jim Mele, Ken Norris. Special Postcard Issue. Poems on postcards by Margaret Atwood, George Bowering, William Bronk, Siv Cedering Fox, Tom Clark, Andre Farkas, Robert Flanagan, Artie Gold, Anselm Hollo, Tom Konyves, Patrick Lane, Gerald Malanga, David McFadden, Jim Mele, Ken Norris, Murphre Roos, Terry Stokes, Peter Van Toorn, Geoffrey Young and Larry Zirlin.

No. #13-15. 1982. Editors: Robert Galvin, Jim Mele, Ken Norris. Poems and prose by Lew Welch, Gloria Frym, Artie Gold, Stephen Rodefer, Christopher Dewdney, Geoffrey Young, Liz Lochhead/John Oughton, Ken Norris, Jim Mele, Paul Kahn, George Bowering, Richard Elman, Gerri Sinclair, Tom Hawkins, Diana Hartog, Robert Galvin, Stephen Bett, Lyn Lifshin, Norman Fischer, Penny Kemp, Susan Mernit, Rochelle Ratner, Jim Smith, Peter Brett, Erling Friis-Baastad, jack Hannan, Peter Van Toorn, bill bissett, Louis Dudek, Frank Davey, bp Nichol, John McAuley on Philip Whalen, Artie Gold on Gloria Frym and Ken Norris on a Baker’s Dozen Poetry Books.

No. #16. 1983. Editors: Robert Galvin, Jim Mele, Ken Norris. Special New Romantics issue. Contents: Jim Mele, “The Art of Discovery” (essay), David McFadden, “Night of Endless Radiance” (poem) and Ken Norris’ “Acts of the Imagination” (poem).

CrossCountry Press (books and chapbooks) bibliography:

Ken Norris, Under the Skin. A CrossCountry chapbook. 1976.

Jim Mele, An Oracle of Love. A CrossCountry chapbook. 1976.

Terry Stokes, The Lady Poems. A CrossCountry chapbook. 1977.

Ken Norris, Report on the Second Half of the Twentieth Century. A CrossCountry chapbook. 1977.

David McFadden, The Saladmaker. A CrossCountry chapbook. 1977.

Jim Mele, The Sunday Habit, 1978.

Artie Gold, some of the cat poems. 1978.

John McAuley, Mattress Testing. 1978.

John McAuley, Hazardous Renaissance. 1978.

Endre Farkas, Romantic at Heart and Other Faults. 1979.

David McFadden, A New Romance. 1979.

Larry Zirlin, Awake for No Reason. 1979.

Ken Norris, Autokinesis. 1979.

Michael Andre, Letters Home. A CrossCountry chapbook. 1979.

Murphre Roos (Jim Mele), Sonnets & Other Dead Forms. 1980.

David McFadden, My Body Was Eaten by Dogs: Selected Poems, ed. George Bowering (simultaneously published by McClelland and Stewart). 1981.

Charles Baudelaire, Fatal Destinies: The Edgar Allan Poe Essays. 1981.

Lionel Kearns, Ignoring the Bomb: New & Selected Poems (co-published with Oolichan Books). 1982.

Jim Mele, The Calculation of Two. 1982.

Paul Metcalf, Louis the Torch. 1983.

Mouse Eggs (1976-81): an interview with Ken Norris and Endre Farkas, and (incomplete) bibliography,

this interview was conducted over email from December 2020 to May 2021 as part of a project to document literary publishing. see my bibliography-in-progress of Ottawa literary publications, past and present here

Ken Norris was born in New York City in 1951. He came to Canada in the early 1970s, to escape Nixon-era America and to pursue his graduate education. He completed an M.A. at Concordia University and a Ph.D. in Canadian Literature at McGill University. He became a Canadian citizen in 1985. For thirty-three years he taught Canadian Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Maine. He currently resides in Toronto.

Endre Farkas was born in Hungary. His family escaped during the 1956 Hungarian uprising, and settled in Montreal. He has collaborated with dancers, musicians, actors, and the other Vehicule Poets. He has published two novels, eleven books of poetry and two plays. His work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian and Slovenian. He has read and performed widely in Canada, the United States, Latin America, and Europe, and has created performance pieces that have toured across the country and abroad.

He has also translated the poetry of Bari Karoly.

His book How To was nominated for the A.M. Klein poetry award in 1983.  He is the two-time winner of the CBC radio Poetry “Face Off” Competition.

His collaborative book and videopoem with Carolyn Marie Souaid, Blood is Blood, was the winner of Zebra’s International Poetry Film Festival (Berlin) in 2012.

His two novels Never, Again and Home Game were published by Signature Editions in 2016 & 2019 respectively. Home Game was shortlisted for the Hugh MacLennan prize for Fiction. He is a proud non-card carrying member of the Vehicule Poets and Mouse Eggs.

Q: How did Mouse Eggs first begin?

Ken Norris: Great question. I don't remember. Maybe Artie [Gold]. Artie had a sign, didn't he? A sign in his study about Mouse Eggs?

Endre Farkas: Ken, being the Vehicule historian, is probably the best person to answer this. I think Artie suggested the title. I think it was our prolific time and our looking to publish what we wrote toute suite. The sacredness of the immediacy. And in keeping with the Vehicule spirit of “if you want it done, then do it.” I don’t think it was a conscious decision but it was the Vehicule Poets’ house organ. Invitation was by mimeo. Serious little mags were popping up all over the country (I think) but not “playful” ones. Maybe TISH was our predecessor? (at least in name). And we had the “means of production.” Ken, correct me (he will) if I’m wrong.

KN: Artie had a sign, and he had a guy to draw the covers: Marc Nerenberg.

I was a Ph.D. student at McGill, and I had access to a ditto machine, and stencils. Endre had access to a ditto machine and stencils at John Abbott.

The Vehicule Poets were all talking to one another before we were the Vehicule Poets. We were all running magazines. But we wanted to do something that was instant and immediate. That was Mouse Eggs. Circulate the stencils this week and run it off next week. There were no editors. Everybody who was given stencils self-edited. Everybody also typed up their own stuff. Endre and I were the producers of the product. We ran the mimeograph machines and stapled the issues together. I think it was a run of 50 copies. Sold exclusively at The Word.

Was the Gallery the drop-off site for the stencils? I don't remember. Did we mail them in? Back when the postal service worked? Maybe.

Q: Endre: you mention TISH, but had you other models for Mouse Eggs? What else was going on around you in Montreal at that time? Had either of you seen copies of TISH, or had you only heard tell of it?

EF: We also put “Typos copyright of poets.” No, we didn’t mail them. At least I don’t remember doing this though John (McAuley) & Stephen (Morrissey) might have. Yes, John was publishing Maker & Stephen Montreal Journal of Poetics.

I had heard of TISH (Canadian Poetry class with Michael Gnarowski, and George Bowering was in Montreal at the time, so I might have seen a copy or two. I’m sure Artie had copies. George was already connected with Artie.

KN: Artie had copies of TISH, and he would let me “examine” them in his study. I couldn’t take them out of the room. So I’d seen TISH. And I THINK the Frank Davey edited reprint of TISH 1-19 came out in 1975, around Mouse Eggs time.

Booster and Blaster had been a few years earlier, but I wasn’t around for that. I was newly arrived in this incarnation.

Mouse Eggs wasn’t like anything else in Montreal. We just wanted an outlet for work that was hot off the pen. I think the “holiday” themed issues came later.

Q: How were the first issues put together? Were you soliciting work, or did you put out a call? How was work gathered?

KN: I remember handing out ditto sheets to the Vehicule Poets, maybe down at the Gallery. I think everybody got two ditto sheets, two pages. To put whatever they wanted on their pages. So it definitely started with the 7 of us, and maybe 14 pages. So the work was self-selected, and then everyone could be surprised. Including the guy who was putting the issue together, me or Endre. I believe the fourth issue was done in concert with the Spring Poetry Marathon, and maybe that was the Second Annual Spring Poetry Marathon, held at Vehicule Gallery (the first one had been at Concordia). And everyone who participated was given a page. So that was our biggest issue, and our most inclusive issue. I believe Augie Kleinzahler has a poem in that issue, along with LOTS of other people. I remember it as being forty pages, and difficult to staple!!

Q: The Vehicule Poets anthology through John McAuley’s Maker Press was published in 1979, not long after the initial run of the journal. How important was mouse eggs in helping the seven poets in the “Vehicule Poets” shape into an informal group?

KN: Good question. I believe there is a collaborative poem in the first issue of Mouse Eggs written by our seven. That’s the first “collaborative act” of the group, and it gives birth to Mouse Eggs. So I see Mouse Eggs as THE central document of the Vehicule Poets. It’s lighthearted, but it’s also a serious collaborative act. It’s the construction of the clubhouse. It’s the unofficial official organ of the Vehicule Poets.

Q: Moving through the bibliography for mouse eggs, what strikes me is both the incredible pace with which new issues appear, as well as the geographic range of writers, which suggest that word was getting out about what it was you were doing. You’ve contemporaries from across North America appearing in the pages of mouse eggs, but no elder poets, whether Bowering or Blaser or Davey or even Louis Dudek, who was around the Vehicule vicinity. Was this deliberate, or was the journal really one of ongoing happenstance?

KN: Let’s compare Mouse Eggs to CrossCountry for a minute.

In CrossCountry I was interested in getting ALL of the older poets in Canada and America into the pages of the magazine. Heavy-hitters and newcomers. I mean, I got a poem from F.R. Scott who was close to eighty at the time.

Mouse Eggs wasn’t really a magazine. Every issue was a moment in time. It’s Valentine's Day—let’s go!! What have we got?

Who have we got? Here’s the photograph of that moment; now let's move on to the next moment.

I agree--there was an incredible pace. I like what you said about "ongoing happenstance"—that is it exactly. I put poems in Mouse Eggs I would never try out anywhere else.

At McGill, Dudek was talking to me constantly about “permanence” in poetry. Mouse Eggs was as ephemeral as you could get. We were just leapfrogging from holiday to holiday, whim to whim. I tried my hand at writing a few forgeries. There’s a Tom Konyves poem that wasn’t written by Tom Konyves. There's a John McAuley poem that wasn’t written by John McAuley.

CrossCountry was getting money from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Canada Council. Mouse Eggs wasn’t getting money from ANYBODY. Endre was mimeographing issues at John Abbott and I was mimeographing issues at McGill. These days they would probably say that we were stealing paper. But things were looser then.

Louis probably would have been offended if I asked him for poems for Mouse Eggs. We weren’t The Tamarack Review. We were maybe like First Statement, but without the John Sutherland editorials. There was no editor. There was no cohesive aesthetic. It was just meant to be fun. Poets having fun, as opposed to working on their careers. At that time none of us had a careerist bone in our bodies.

Q: Once the Vehicule Poets were formed as an informal group, what did that mean, exactly? Was this a way for the seven of you to distinguish yourselves from the other poets working in the city? Was it a marketing tool for readings? What did it mean to the group of you?

KN: In a way, the Vehicule Poets became aware of themselves by being denigrated by other folks in town who called them “those fucking Vehicule Poets.” And what they meant were those poets who were running the Press and the Reading Series down at the Gallery. And it was, “Oh, they must be talking about us.” And “Oh, they must be talking about the group of us.” And the “us” was the three of us who were editing books for the Press: Endre, Artie, and I. And the “us” was the folks who were running the Reading Series, which was Claudia, Endre, Artie, John, Stephen, and Tom. So when people are talking about “the fucking Vehicule Poets” that must be who they are talking about.

So that’s the way that we were aware of the fact that we were being talked about and being dismissed all together.

In late 1978, we called a meeting at Artie’s house to discuss whether we all wanted to appear in an anthology together. Everybody showed up. Everybody talked about it for a couple of hours. And we decided that we DID all want to appear in an anthology together. So we applied the label “The Vehicule Poets” to the anthology, and it was published by John’s Maker Press in 1979.

But Mouse Eggs started coming out in 1975, before we were ever officially “the Vehicule Poets.” We were just a bunch of friends doing a mimeographed magazine together.

Once we were a group, what it meant was that, when Artie died, and they ran his obituary in the Globe & Mail, they called him Artie Gold, Vehicule Poet.

You should read my poem “Montreal, 1975,” which is in South China Sea. I talk about what it was like for me to find the other six. I say that once we found one another we were “no longer alone / in the vast soup of being.”

So there’s THAT. And that, for me, was significant. I suddenly had friends. I suddenly had friends in poetry. I wasn’t going to have to conduct “a career” on my own. We didn’t THINK in careers then. Did we think “in marketing”? I don’t think so. We were just stating the obvious—we were 7 poets who were hanging out with one another and collaborating with one another.

And one of the things we were collaborating on was Mouse Eggs.

EF: I don’t remember ever consciously thinking about being a Vehicule Poet as a way to distinguish myself from others. Ken is right us being dubbed the Vehicule Poets was derogatory.  I think Tom liked the label because it suggested motion, moving ahead. (Read “No Parking.”) We didn’t ever have a meeting about the name or writing a manifesto. Our manifesto, if you can consider it such, was our experimenting: Tom with his videopoetry, me with my collaboration with dance and music, Stephen in his work with a visual artist, John with concrete poetry, Ken in collaboration with Tom, John, Stephen and me. Claudia’s “radical” work was eroticism and feminism. I thought and still do that Stephen Morrissey poem “regard as sacred the disorder of my mind” was as close as we got to a manifesto. I consider it our unofficial anthem.

Peter Van Toorn referred to the Vehicule Poets as “the messies” and to himself, Solway & Harris as “the neats.” What he meant by “messy” was that that we didn’t focus on craft and form. It was a “fun” and “derogatory” term at the same time.  I think he and the other “neats” were wrong. We were probably as, if not more, concerned with craft. We just weren’t reproducing/manufacturing the old forms. We were interested in “making it new.” And we were having fun. Serious fun. And Mouse Eggs was one the ways we were having it. And for me that was important.

Marketing? The closest I got to doing that was going to the Atwater and Jean Talon markets to buy fresh fruits and vegetables.

Q: What do you feel the journal accomplished, and what was behind the decision to end it? Did it simply run out of steam?

EF: I honestly don’t remember.

KN: The first “series” of Mouse Eggs was twelve or thirteen issues in 1975 and 1976.

We came back to it for a “second series” in 1980 and 1981. I still don’t remember how many issues were in the second series, but I am guessing that it was three or four.

We had a lot of fun doing Mouse Eggs. It was only produced in batches of 50 copies. We were mostly doing it for us. It wasn’t going for any kind of cultural impact. We wanted to have fun, and fun was had. It was probably less fun to do the second series, which is why there were fewer issues. The second five years of the Vehicule Poets was less coherent and less energetic. We were still hanging out in twos and threes, not so much in sevens. Claudia left for the States, and I was in the South Seas a lot.

Mouse Eggs bibliography [incomplete]:

Mouse Eggs, one dozen. Poems by Ken Norris, Tom Konyves, Artie Gold, Stephen Morrissey, Jim Mele, Claudia Lapp, Peter Kaye and andre farkas.

Mouse Eggs, two dozen. “SPECIAL HOLIDAY ISSUE--CHRISTMASS,” 1976. Poems by Raymond Filip, Ken Norris, Artie Gold, Tom Konyves, s. morrissey and Patricia Walsh.

Mouse Eggs, three dozen. “Valentine’s Day.” Produced as Stephen Morrissey and Pat Walsh wedding announcement. Poems by John McAuley, Artie Gold, andre farkas, Harland Snodgrass, Ken Norris, TEEK (T. Konyves), Arnold Snardon and stephen morrissey.

Mouse Eggs, four dozen. _____. Produced to coincide with the Second Annual Spring Poetry Marathon. Poems by Mona Elaine Adilman, G.C. Ian Burgess, Muriel Byer, ritchie carson, Catherine Cole, Frances Davis, Donna Dimaulo, Raymond Filip, Gilbert Gelinas, Artie Gold, Bob Johnson, Gertrude Katz, T. Konyves, Helen Kosacky, claudia lapp, Carole H. Leckner, John Lehndorff, Orin Manitt, C.W. Marchant, John McAuley, Elizabeth Metcalfe, stephen morrissey, Dick Mundel, Ken Norris, Leslie Nutting, Inge (Mrs.M.) Packer, Edward palumbo, Robert Rayher, Elizabeth Richards, Allen Roth, Ray Shankman, Harland Snodgrass, Ari Snyder, richard sommer, Paul Walker and Pat Walsh.

Mouse Eggs, five dozen. Easter, 1976. Poems by John McAuley, Ken Norris, janet kask, Jim Mele, andre farkas, Jesus of Nazareth, Jr., Artie Gold and Geoff Young, Murphrie Roos, Jim Joyce and T. Konyves.

Mouse Eggs, six dozen. “Mouse Warnings,” 1976. Poems by Susan Blaylock, guy birchard, Helen Kosacky, stephen morrissey, Patricia Walsh, G.C. Ian Burgess, Marquita Crevier, T. Konyves, claudia lapp, andre farkas, Ken Norris, Robert Galvin, Artie Gold,

Mouse Eggs, eight dozen. “Back to School,” 1976. Poems by Mash, penny chalmers, T. Konyves, claudia lapp, Guy Birchard, ritchie carson, andre farkas, Artie Gold, Maurice Zerkon, Sean Seamus Wilmut, Jeffrey and Colin Morton, Henry Hershfelf, Michael Largo, Ken Norris and T. Konyves.

Mouse Eggs, nine dozen. “Trick or Treat,” 1976. Poems by Hopeton Anderson & Guy Birchard, Jim Mele, S. Morrissey, John McAuley, Opal L. Nations, Ken Norris, T. Konyves and Barry Cornwall. “ENDGAME by Samuel Beckett, A Review,” “Oct. 24, 1976. Powerhouse Gallery, St. Dominique” by T. Konyves.

Mouse eggs, ten dozen. “Christmouse issue,” Poems by guy birchard, morrissey/Walsh, stephen morrissey, Artie Gold, Opal L. Nations, Ken Norris, T. Konyves, Tom Cornmash, andre farkas, Helen Kosacky, Bill Davis, James B. McGinniss, Carol E Cohen, Mike Breiner and Tinker Greene.

Mouse Eggs, eleven dozen. “The Tattooed Mouse,” February 1977. Poems by T. Konyves, Opal L. Nations, Ken Norris, john maccawley, stephen morrissey, artie gold, August Kleinzahler and guy birchard.

Mouse Eggs, twelve dozen. “Reuben’s Garage,” April 1977. Poems by claudia lapp, Opal L. Nations, Stephen Morrissey, Tom Konyves, Andre Farkas, Ken Norris, Artie Gold and ritchie carson.

Mouse Eggs, thirteen dozen. “Baker’s dozen,” June 1977. Poems by Artie Gold, stephen morrissey, Ken Norris, Opal L. Nations, Ken Norris, T. KonYves and Andre Farkas.

Mouse Eggs, one dozen, Series B. “breaking through to the EIGHTIES,” circa February/March 1980. Cover and back cover by Artie Gold. Poems by Stephen Morrissey, Ken Norris, Tom Konyves, Endre Farkas, Claudia Lapp and John McAuley.

Mouse Eggs, Second Gathering (Raiders of the Lost Mouse issue) 1981.

Language Matters: Interviews with 22 Quebec Poets, eds. Carolyn Marie Souaid and Endre Farkas

God knows the creative process is a mystery. To make something out of nothing, to see a world in a blank page, to hear imagined people speak, to touch things that aren’t there, to taste what is not yet baked, to speak volumes or write an image is something to wonder at, something awesome to behold. Yet these are the things that artists do every day. These are the tasks, pleasures and pains that artists, including poets, undertake. Transmitters of acts of the imagination, poets use language to make their unique works of art. But how do they do this?

            This is one of the many questions we asked Quebec’s English-language poets over the four-year lifespan of the online literary magazine that we, along with Elias Letelier, founded on June 24, 2009, Quebec’s Fête Nationale. We were curious about their process but we also wondered whether living in Quebec and writing in the language of “les autres” meant anything aesthetically, socially, culturally and politically. We had a poetic and political agenda. Poetry Quebec, or PQ, was a conscious and deliberate nod (and wink) to Quebec’s separatist party, the Parti Québécois. We wanted through our tongue-in-cheek name and motto, “Je me sousviens,” to signal that Quebec’s English-language poets are Quebec poets who were, are and will be here to remember and be remembered. The name and motto were also a manifesto of our engagement.

There is something very familiar in the framing of the new collection Language Matters: Interviews with 22 QuebecPoets, eds. Carolyn Marie Souaid and Endre Farkas (Winnipeg MB: Signature Editions, 2013). The press release begins:

Is writing in English in Quebec a political act? An act of survival? An act of defiance? An act of futility? An act of celebration? For answers to these questions, look no further than Language Matters, a series of candid interviews with some of Quebec’s – Canada’s – most interesting and innovative poets, which launched on Tuesday, September 10, 2013. These are poets who write in the dominant language of North America, but are the linguistic minority in a francophone culture – a minority within a minority. Living in the birthplace of Canadian poetry that gave rise to A.M. Klein, F.R. Scott, Louis Dudek, Irving Layton and Leonard Cohen, how do these poets view themselves and their already marginalized art?

There is something familiar here, and even curious: but for the date mentioned within, this blurb could easily be included on the back cover of a similar collection of essays twenty, or even forty years earlier. Have the questions really not changed during that period (or for that matter, the poets one might cite as precursors?)? As someone who grew up just on the other side of the Quebec border, I’ve a curiosity about such questions of landscape and geography, and wonder if there should be further questions in other regions that should also be repeated to the writers within, to allow a different perspective on other types of geographies, their politics, language and considerations of local space. Over the years, co-editor Endre Farkas has worked tirelessly to promote, encourage and explore English-language poetry in Montreal specifically and Quebec and the rest of Canada generally, through his work as one of the original Vehicule Poets in the 1970s (the group that helped give rise to Vehicule Press, where he was one of the founding editors) to later founding The Muses’ Company in 1980, to editing, co-editing and/or contributing to anthologies such as 10 Montreal Poets at the Cegeps (Montreal QC: Delta, 1975), Montreal English Poetry of the Seventies (Montreal QC: Vehicule press, 1977), Vehicule Poets (Montreal QC: Maker Press, 1979), CrossCut: Contemporary English Quebec Poetry (Vehicule Press, 1982), Canadian Poetry Now (Toronto ON: Anansi, 1984), Voix Off (Toronto ON: Guernica, 1985), The Other Language: English Poetry of Montreal (The Muses’ Co., 1989) and Quebec Suite: Poems for and about Quebec (Winnipeg MB: The Muses’ Co., 1998). Farkas has spent decades working as an English-language poet in a geography and political landscape where he has been very much part of the minority, and through such, his efforts have allowed certain writers to become known and even flourish where they might not have otherwise had the same opportunities. But the question of the book becomes: have the questions one poses to writers in such a landscape really not changed over the years? It’s as though the framing of the collection doesn’t give nearly enough credit to the scope of the book’s content, and the engagement each author has with questions goes far beyond those suggested on the cover. When asked “Would you say that writing in English in Quebec [is] a political act?” in her interview, Erin Moure answers:

Not necessarily. Writing is always a political act, of course. Writing in English is not devoid of politics, for sure, in terms of the conditions of production and reception for that hegemonic language in the world. Writing in English in Quebec is also subject to conditions of writing in a society that speaks French. So there are political consequences, and social consequences, to writing in English in Quebec. Yet the act of writing in English, picking up a pen and writing, is not necessarily a “political act” for me, who grew up in English in Alberta. The act of writing in English and including French directly in the poem is a political act, though. The act of writing and speaking in Galician is a political act.

Originally conducted to be posted on their online Poetry Quebec (a website that arrived with much enthusiasm, but seems to have disappeared), the collection includes a selection of a series of interviews conducted over four years with poets Stephanie Bolster, Mark Abley, Erin Moure, David McGimpsey, Mary di Michele, Gabe Foreman, Catherine Kidd, Richard Sommer, Maxianne Berger, Steve Luxton, Robyn Sarah, Mahamud Siad Togane, Susan Gillis, Brian Campbell, Charlotte Hussey, kaie kellough, Moe Clark, Jason Camlot, Gillian Sze and Angela Leuck as well as interviews with the editors, Farkas and Souaid, themselves. The interviews (each including a poem or two by the interviewed poet) connect through a common concern with the intricacies of language (including multiple languages), and each speak of their engagements with Quebec writing, writers and the immediate landscapes in which they live. As Susan Gillis says in the space of her interview, “Living in English in Quebec is a political act.” She continues:

History and culture are living continuities. Writing and working and living in a minority language create an active engagement with those living continuities, a kind of claim-staking: Look, here’s my little corner of history and culture, alive and well and kicking. Not threatening, just being. I suppose for some Quebec nationalists, any other culture’s activity is threatening? Or the very notion of “just being” is false? I don’t see my work or myself that way, but that doesn’t mean others might not.

Originally from Calgary, Montreal-based “word-sound systemizer” kaie kellough provides an interesting perspective:

for an english writer, provincial boundaries dissolve. the nice thing abt writing & performing is that it can travel. if english writers were restricted to publishing & presenting their works in québec alone, then i might feel that working in english is a political act. but english writers can publish throughout north america: the markets for our work are much larger than the markets for french work. when my first book was published, it was launched in vancouver, ottawa, toronto, and montréal. further, i was eventually invited to read across the country - in halifax, calgary, gabriola (bc), saskatooooon, etc. [...] a french-language poet might get to launch a first volume in montréal, ottawa, and québec city, if lucky.

What does it mean to be an English-language Montreal writer, or more broadly, an English-language writer in Quebec? For some the question is essential, and for others, the question is a curiosity, nearly in passing. For some writers, these questions might be entirely irrelevant to the ways in which they write. Thanks to editors Farkas and Souaid, the question allows the answers to showcase the ways in which the landscape has shifted over the years, and just how much has remained the same. I’d be curious to hear others respond to these questions, such as Montreal-based writers Sina Queyras, Jon Paul Fiorentino and SusanElmslie, as well as some of the younger writers slowly emerging in the city, such as Helen Hajnoczky and Kirya Marchand. This is very much a collection built originally not as a book, but as a series of online one-offs which, when collected, might show the occasional gap or two. One hopes that further work, and/or a second volume might be down the road?