this interview was
conducted over email from June 2021 to January 2022 as part of a project to
document literary publishing. see my list of interviews and bibliographies of literary publications past and present here
Nikki Reimer is a poet, artist, and non-fiction writer living in Southern Alberta.
Published books are My Heart is a Rose Manhattan, DOWNVERSE and [sic].
Work has appeared on stages, billboards, public art exhibits, pop-up bistro
menus, and in various magazines, journals and anthologies. Visit
reimerwrites.com.
ryan fitzpatrick is the author of three books and over fifteen
chapbooks of poetry, including Coast Mountain Foot (Talonbooks 2021) and
Fortified Castles (Talonbooks 2014). Over the last twenty years, he has
been involved in the poetry communities of Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto.
Currently, he is the editor of Model Press, an online poetry micropress founded
during the pandemic. You can find him at ryanfitzpatrick.ca.
Chris Patrick Carolan is an author, editor, and hovercraft
enthusiast, originally from Glasgow but currently based in Calgary, Alberta. He
writes science fiction, fantasy (urban and epic), and steampunk, though he has
also been known to turn to crime to make ends meet. Crime fiction, that is. THE
NIGHTSHADE CABAL was published by Parliament House Press in 2020 and was a
finalist for the Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence 'Best First
Novel' award. He can be found on Twitter as @cpcwrites but consider this fair
warning… it’s mostly wisecracks about McNuggets and Simpsons memes.
Q: How did
(orange) first start?
NR: It started when the UCalgary English department convened a meeting
to see if anyone was interested in reviving Grove, the previous
department undergraduate literary publication. The faculty advisor Frances
Batycki may have been in attendance. A bunch of us said we were keen, and off
we went. I think ryan and I took the leads because we were the keenest, but
ryan’s memory may be sharper than mine.
rf: Yeah, I think that's right. Grove was the most recent in what
was a chain of undergrad literary journals in the department. There was another
one before Grove called Sanskrit. Frances Batycki called a meeting that was
held in the English department lounge in Fall '99 maybe. Was it called because
there was some leftover money from Grove? It was attended by quite a few
people, but it ended up being Nikki, me, and Michael Thome who were the most
interested. Michael was more vocally interested in being involved than I was.
For me, at least, joining the undergrad journal felt more possible than joining
something like filling Station, which might as well have been on the
moon even though it was being run by people who were only a few years older
than us and also didn't know what they were doing.
Q: I don’t know anything about Grove. What was Grove? And
where did the title (orange) come from? It had always been my impression
that it had been lifted from that prior Calgary journal, Secrets from the
Orange Couch, yes?
NR: I must have a copy of Grove -- it was my very first
publication credit -- at home; I will look and report back. I believe Micheline
Maylor may have been an editor? And nope, we -- at least, I -- had no knowledge
of Secrets from the Orange Couch when we began. I think we were
riffing off “grove” and ended with “orange”... as in grove. A wee bit
cheesy.
rf: Well, I might’ve known about Secrets from the Orange Couch,
though I think I stumbled across it in MacKimmie Library right after we named
the magazine. We named the magazine (orange) as a play on Grove
for sure. I vaguely remember conversations about not wanting what we were
putting together to be like Grove, which was maybe not experimental
enough for our tastes, but we still wanted to nod to the continuity. It also
reminded me of the joke that nothing rhymes with orange. I do remember finding Secrets
from the Orange Couch and thinking that we had somehow chosen the perfect
name, since both Nikki and I were in Nicole Markotic’s intro poetry workshop
and Nicole was one of the editors of Secrets.
NR: I just found my Grove, and the editor’s note from Micheline
does mention a previous journal called Sanscrit. Someone should make a
lineage of journals associated with the UCalgary English department.
rf: For sure, Sanscrit then Grove then us then Nōd.
Q: Honestly, it is blowing my mind a bit that
(orange) wasn’t
deliberately a furthering of
Secrets from the Orange Couch (as I’d been
presuming for years now). In hindsight, how do you see
(orange) in
relation to those other journals, both prior and what came after?
NR: I don’t know if I can give a satisfactory answer to this question,
rob. I’ll admit that I haven’t studied what came before or after thoroughly
enough to make any claims. ryan is the more intellectual of the two of us, and
may have more to say. I did feel some jealousy at how professional Nōd appeared
to be. I remember trying to figure out how to get sponsorships and ads so that
we could become a grown-up magazine; I could have used a mentor.
rf: Hmm. I think that if we were picking up on the earlier vibes of Secrets
from the Orange Couch (or Absinthe, or even filling Station),
it had something to do with what Nicole and Fred were putting into the air as
our teachers even though they weren’t pumping up their own small press
histories. It’s not like Fred was bringing copies of Tish or Scree
into class or anything. Instead, he and Nicole would nudge folks into producing
things and then those folks would nudge other folks and so on. I remember
someone (maybe tom muir) telling me that filling Station started because
Fred put the idea into the head of a few students and they ran with it. As for Nōd,
I remember feeling some annoyance at how professional they seemed to be,
maybe because I felt (and still feel) that poetry should be a little
unprofessional. I like that (orange) was kind of unpolished. After
(orange), the scene seemed to get more professional across the board.
Not just Nōd, but Dandelion became a bigger fixture in the
community and filling Station was getting squeezed by funding bodies to
professionalize.
Q: How was the argument for the journal formed? Was it seeking to be a
repository for the kinds of work that was being produced around Calgary during
that time? Were you seeking a particular aesthetic or poetic?
NR: It wasn’t intended to be Calgary-centric. I think we had some
inklings of wanting to publish work that pushed back against what was at the
time a more dominant lyric movement, but we also really had no idea what we
were doing. I do admit some jealousy towards journals like PRISM that
are more embedded within the institutions they are part of, and where folks
start as volunteers, and gradually learn how to run a magazine. We were just a
bunch of scrappy kids photocopying our little magazine at Staples and trying to
figure out what we thought was good. On the other hand, that’s pretty punk rock
of us, which was very much in line with the Calgary I remember from that time.
Q: I think the “scrappy kids” aspect is what gave the journal character.
How was work gathered for that debut issue? Were people solicited or was a call
put out?
rf: Did we put out a call? I just remember asking people. Half
the writers in the first issue are just people who were in our class.
NR: Gosh, I don’t think we put out a call for the first issue, no, we
must have asked folks we knew. I do remember a later call for submissions poster
ryan made with the line “submission is necessary”. Our vibe was pretty
cheeky.
rf: I probably have a copy of that poster somewhere.
Q: Do you remember the response to those first few issues? And how were
issues distributed? You say you didn’t want the journal to be Calgary-centric,
but how did you get the word out, especially to anyone beyond the city’s
borders?
rf: I always thought we were very local. This is probably a better
question for Nikki.
NR: I thought we were too, though when I flipped through the issues for
this discussion I saw quite a few contributors from other parts of the place we
call Canada. But some of those people were friends, or friends of friends. We
may have tried to get a call for submissions put onto some of the literary
listservs that were active at the time. I think either Natalie Simpson or Jill
Hartman wrote to a number of “big name” writers who were kind enough to submit
as a favour to us -- Erin Moure, Nicole Brossard.
I seem to remember walking around to the used bookstores in town and
trying to get them to carry us. The UCalgary Bookstore stocked us. I wrote a
brash press release that got our inaugural launch party onto A Channel. Our
activities made it into FFWD magazine a few times, which had been one of my
goals for us. Otherwise, yeah, we mostly spoke and responded to what was
happening locally around us.
CPC: I remember a lot of hand-selling copies to anyone who came to our
events. I always preferred to lurk in the background at the readings, so I spent
a lot of time at the table trying to get people to buy the latest issue. It
felt like a very DIY punk rock way to get literature into people’s hands! I
don’t know what percentage of our circulation came from selling at those
readings and launch parties, and I don’t think we ever sold out a print run,
but it was certainly fun.
Q: What else was happening during that time? Who else was around?
NR: filling Station was around and established at that time, and
the Single Onion reading series. derek beaulieu was running house press. Jill
Hartman, Ian Samuels, Tom Muir, and Natalie Simpson were all local writers I
looked up to. Rajinderpal S. Pal and Richard Harrison were older, established
writers and good folks who were mentors to me in the art of literary event
organizing and hosting. We were all involved in the UCalgary writing classes,
so literary events the department hosted were a part of the milieu, and our writing
instructors Fred Wah and Nicole Markotic. I seem to recall a joint event with
Single Onion at a warehouse in Bridgeland? ryan, what am I forgetting?
rf: Are you talking about that one reading at that place right on
Memorial? The Emerald Cafe? I vaguely remember something like that. Couldn’t
tell you anything else about it. Anyway, it felt like there was a lot going on,
some of which in retrospect was pretty short lived. filling Station was
around, but I was only vaguely aware of it when we started. Nicole gave us all
an issue of it in class one day, I think. Dandelion was just about to be
folded into the English department at that point, but wasn’t really a presence
around town until after that. I found the microstuff more compelling. Jill and
Natalie were in a writing group called the Phu Collective with Lindsay Tipping,
Darren Matthies, Trevor Speller, and Tillie Sanchez (and Julia Williams, who
seemed like a non-member of the group). I remember being really impressed by
them because they had gotten an article in ffwd. And they had chapbooks
in the University bookstore! Really, they were all just folks who were a year
or two ahead of us in the English department. Single Onion had just recently
started and maybe Ian Samuels was involved in it at that point, but it was
pretty focused on lyric work and spoken word centered on a crew of Sheri-D
Wilson, Kirk Miles, Fred Hollis, and some other folk. Some folks from our
circles moved in and out of Single Onion a little later--I remember getting to
read for them at different points because André Rodrigues and Jocelyn Grosse
were on their collective. I think tom and derek were starting EndNote with
russ rickey at that point, maybe? There was House Press of course, but there
was a ton of other chapbook publishing going on too. I remember a class reading
at the Beat Niq jazz bar in the basement of the Grain Exchange and the piano on
the stage was covered in chapbooks that people had made. That was mind-blowing
to me.
NR: No, it was called the Daniel Sponagle Centre for Contemporary Art
& Mischief; the space i Bridgeland. That was closer to when we folded; maybe
you were in Korea at that point ryan? I agree with you about the energy and
excitement around the microstuff that was happening. Nicole Markotic had Jill
Hartman come to our poetry class to show off the tiny perfect chapbooks she was
making, and it blew my mind that it was possible to create in that way. EndNote
was so great!
rf: Okay, the Sponagle place rings a bell, but maybe only from an email
or something.
Q: From the outside, at least, this really did seem like an explosive
period in Calgary poetics, with a huge array of writing and publishing and just
general literary (and small press) activity. How did it seem from the inside?
What did Calgary have at that time that other centres didn’t?
rf: I’ve given this a lot of thought and, at the risk of riling up some
different folks in Calgary, I think, at least for me and maybe for (orange) in
general, the central thing defining the shape of Calgary poetry is the
University and its creative writing program. In many ways, good and bad, the
scene has been defined by the pitches and shifts brought about by the program
and the way it created a shifting ground for creative production. I didn’t
realize this until I moved to Vancouver, where the poetry scene I was involved
in was deeply multigenerational. I’m sure Nikki can speak to this difference
too, but for me it threw Calgary’s scene into relief. In contrast, Calgary felt
like it had a revolving door. People were constantly arriving and leaving and,
in one way, this made it easier to get involved in things and to work yourself
up to being a bigger fish in a very small pond, especially if you could adjust
quickly and knew how to make your own fun, because there were fewer big
institutions and small presses than bigger centers. There was a lot of room to
try things. That said, the lack of institutional root work in the early 2000s
also created this effect where small arrivals - a new prof, a
writer-in-residence, a crew of undergrads, a motivated local - could also shift
what was possible as a writer in the community. The scene I remember in 2000,
when I started writing and going to readings, was completely transformed by the
time I left in 2011. I imagine it’s very different now.
NR: I 100% agree with this take. I felt like it was my job to be a
shit-disturber, back in the day. Calgary had and has what gets variously termed
the cowboy ethic or the maverick (as in Aritha van Herk’s book, not as in the
fledgling separatist political party), where anything is possible if you’re
audacious enough to attempt it. There’s something kind of great in that. But
there’s also a decontextualized now in that, which misses the importance
of legacy. I spent nearly a decade in Vancouver before returning to Calgary and
I deeply miss the intergenerational community in Van, and wish Calgary could
have something similar. I didn’t recognize the Calgary lit scene at all when I
returned in 2012, and I’ve seen it shift and morph again over the past nine
years, very much driven by connections to the UCalgary writing program. Calgary
has some phenomenal and groundbreaking writers living and working here now, but
I don’t so much get a sense that there is any one or two singular, cohesive
communities. The writers and artists working and curating out of Shelf Life
Books are the closest thing to community for me. Though it's possible I’m just
an outsider now, so I don’t see what exists. I remain committed to my own
writing practice, and to supporting community when I can, but one has different
energies and availabilities in midlife.
CPC: I think I can speak to Nikki’s point about community, having always
felt myself to be something of an outsider on the local lit scene. Back when we
were working on (orange) and I was doing my undergrad, there wasn’t
actually a whole lot of space in the literary community or academia for what I
was interested in, and I didn’t realize at the time that there’s something of a
gulf between literary writing and genre fiction. I didn’t find what I was
looking for until several years later, but Calgary actually has a very healthy,
active, and transgenerational genre fiction writing community. Science fiction,
fantasy, horror, crime. We’re home to both the When Words Collide festival,
which draws upwards of 700 attendees each year, and the Imaginative Fiction
Writers Association, which has been going strong since 1988. We’ve got some
strong genre small press stuff going here, too, with folks like Seventh
Terrace, Coffin Hop, and Tyche Books regularly putting out great work. I think
a lot of this comes back to what Nikki was saying about the cowboy/maverick
“can do” attitude here, which is still very much a thing. Whatever you’re
looking to start, Calgary remains a place where you can build something if
you’re ready to roll up your sleeves.
Q: How did the journal evolve as the issues progressed? I suspect there
were considerable shifts once certain editors left and others joined in, which
is the very nature of a university-associated publication, but what did that
mean for the journal itself?
NR: I think it changed flavour and tone a little bit with every issue,
which I see as both a strength and a weakness. Had we carried on for another 16
or 32 or 64 issues, we may have settled into something like an editorial voice.
I do think there was always an underlying playfulness to who we were and what
we created together, though. And the through-line was me, come to think of it.
Some issues were more traditionally narrative than others, but we did try to
maintain a spirit of experimentation in who we solicited and published. It was
also very cozy -- friends of friends joined the editorial team, family members
and romantic partners of the editors contributed artwork.
rm: How did your experience working on (orange) alter the ways in
which you saw your own writing, and writing practice (if at all)?
NR: I think it gave me a sense of the possibility of a writing life for
myself outside my university classes, both in that writing could be a living
breathing thing, that it could exist, and that it could be a thing that I could
continue to do. Getting to publish interesting writers at various stages of
their careers helped me see that I could continue and grow my own voice and
practice.
CPC: I didn’t start submitting my own writing until years after (orange)
had come to an end, but I do think being on the editorial side of the process
definitely helped. I came away with insights into editorial decision-making I
might not have picked up elsewhere. I’ve since been Managing Editor on two
anthologies of prose fiction, and reflecting on it now I think I picked up a
lot of the cat-herding skills I used on those projects from watching Nikki at
the helm of (orange). So, thanks for that… and sorry for any of the
times I may have made your job harder than it needed to be!
rm: How and why did the journal cease publishing? And now, all these
years later, how do you feel about the experience?
NR: Like ryan mentioned earlier, people come and go, and I think those
of us who were left just burnt out. Our tie to the university’s English
department was never clear to me – they gave us an office space to work from,
but what we really needed was mentorship that would have taught us how to be
financially and organizationally sustainable. We had no governance models. We
burned bright and fast and then we folded. I look back on it fondly, though.
I’m glad I had the chance so early in my own publishing journey to learn things
like how to organize and host readings, and read and select from submissions,
build literary community, and work with excellent folks like ryan and
Chris.
CPC: I remember resources being very scant. Nikki mentions we had office
space, but I don’t remember ever seeing it. I do remember editorial and
production meetings at places like the Hop in Brew, our various apartments, and
even my parents’ kitchen table. Lots of folding pages and stapling, and of
course a lot of laughter. We did as much as we could as cheaply as we could,
surreptitiously printing the issues on office photocopiers when no one was
looking. Heck, I seem to recall someone – I want to say it was Christiaan van
Blommestein, but don’t quote me on that – went out and bought an extra large
stapler because we didn’t have one big enough to reach the spine of the folded
pages. That was how little support we had from the English department. We
bought our own stapler. Meanwhile, Dandelion was also affiliated with
the UofC English department, and they were putting out a very
professional-looking glossy magazine. I don’t want it to sound like there was
bad blood between the two magazines or anything, because I truly do not believe
there was, but maybe a little jealousy on our part. Or maybe that was just me.
Sometimes it seemed like we spent more time trying to scrape together a little
money to print our issues than we did working on the mag itself. I think that
constant grind led to a lot of the burnout Nikki alludes to. But ultimately, in
a lot of ways, I think Nikki was the heart and soul of (orange). She was
certainly the throughline for the entire run. I don’t remember exactly how or
why the decision to cease was made, but I can’t imagine our little magazine
under anyone else’s leadership.
(orange) magazine bibliography:
No. 1. January, 2000. Editors: Nikki Reimer, Michael Thome, ryan
fitzpatrick, Shauna Carson, Marta Samusz. Layout: ryan fitzpatrick, Karen
Walker. Contributions by: Darren Matthies, Heather Edey, Chris Ewart, derek
beaulieu, Jocelyn Grosse, Lindsay Tipping, Jason Patrick Rothery, Leah Laxdal.
Cover drawing: Erin Fitzpatrick.
No. 2 [no date]. Editors: Nikki Reimer, ryan fitzpatrick, Shauna Carson,
Michael Thome. Layout: ryan fitzpatrick. Contributions by: Craig Boyko, William
Buchan, Rebecca Faria, rob mclennan, tmuir, Ian Samuels, Natalie Simpson, Leah
Laxdal. Cover art: Gavin Geist.
No. 3. [no date]. Editors: Nikki Reimer, ryan fitzpatrick, Heather Edey,
Leah Laxdal, Michael Thome. Contributions by: Christiaan van Blommestein, Brea
Burton, ethan cole, Paulo da Costa, Dean Heatherington, Andre Rodrigues, Tom
Sweetland, Fred Wah, Julia Williams. Cover design: Heather Edey.
No. 4. [no date]. C. Patrick Carolan: Fiction Editor and Layout/Design.
Dave Carruthers: Fiction Editor. Sarah-Joy Goode: Editor and Secretary General.
Nikki Reimer: Managing and Poetry Editor, defender of the colour orange as a
fashion accessory. Christiaan van Blommestein: Poetry Editor and Attorney at
Large. Contributions by: Emma M. (trans. Erin Moure), Orides Fontela, Andrew
Ross, Christopher Blais, Neil M. Hennessy, Louis Cabri, Nathalie Stephens,
Matilde Sanchez Turri, Margaret Wilcox, Nicole Brossard.
No. 4.5. [no date]. C. Patrick Carolan: Fiction Editor and
Layout/Design. Dave Carruthers: Fiction Editor. Sarah-Joy Goode: Editor and
Secretary General. Nikki Reimer: Managing and Poetry Editor, defender of the colour
orange as a fashion accessory. Christiaan van Blommestein: Poetry Editor and
Attorney at Large. Delia Shand: Volunteer. Brandy Zimmerman: Volunteer. Harry
Vandervlist: Faculty Advisor. Contributions by: Diana Stokes, Mark
Farrell, Andrew Wedderburn, Cheryl Sikomas, rob mclennan. Cover art: Jason
Christie.
No. 5. [no date]. C. Patrick Carolan: Fiction Editor, Layout/Design.
Dave Carruthers: Fiction Editor. Sarah-Joy Goode - Editor and Secretary
General. Nikki Reimer: Managing and Poetry Editor, cute as a bug’s ear.
Christiaan van Blommestein: Poetry Editor, Consigliere. Brandy Zimmerman:
Fiction Editor. Contributions by: Ken Kowal, Matt Robinson, Susana Molinolo,
ryan fitzpatrick, Jason Christie, Matt Santateresa, Salma Hussein. Cover art:
Jason Christie.
No. 6. Summer 2002. C. Patrick Carolan: Fiction and Art Editor,
Layout/Design. Rebecca Faria: Poetry Editor and Advertising Manager. Sarah-Joy
Goode: Editor and Secretary General. Nikki Reimer: Managing and Poetry Editor.
Christiaan van Blommestein: Poetry Editor. Brandy Zimmerman: Fiction Editor.
Contributions by: Bradley Somer, Erin Lorenz, Rael Bischoff, Jaime Maddalena,
Jocelyn Grosse, Janet Neigh, Ronnie R. Brown, Stuart Ian McKay, Heather
Tisdale-Nisbet, Michael Saad. Cover art: C. Patrick Carolan.
No. 7. Winter 2002. C. Patrick Carolan: Fiction and Art Editor,
Layout/Design. Rebecca Faria: Poetry Editor and Advertising Manager. Sarah-Joy
Goode: Editor and Secretary General. Stuart Ian McKay: Poetry Editor and Volunteer. Nikki Reimer: Managing
and Poetry Editor. Contributions by: Eunice Johnston, Ian Whistle, Mike
Dempsey, T. Anders Carson, Elana Wolf, Frances Kruk, Bradley Somer, Andrea
Strudensky. Cover photo: Nikki Reimer.
