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The Small Presses & Little Magazines: Montreal, Quebec

 

 

 

FIRST STATEMENT (1942-1945; continued as NORTHERN REVIEW, 1945-1956)

 

First Statement was founded by John Sutherland and his friends, R.G. Simpson, Mary Margaret Miller, and Audrey Aikman in September 1942 while studying at McGill University. One story about the founding of the magazine suggests that Sutherland was prompted to start First Statement after several of his poems were rejected by Preview. Although he admired the Preview-group, there was always some opposition and rivalry between the two magazines.

 

From the very beginning, First Statement was "A Magazine for Young Canadian Writers" as the original covers indicated (the tagline was later changed to "A Canadian Literary Magazine"). Sutherland offered a forum for these writers even before he had found the writers he wanted to publish. Initially, the magazine published poetry by members of the editorial board as well as members of the Preview group, like P.K. Page, Patrick Anderson, and Neufville Shaw.

 

The early issues of First Statement have an overall sense of lacking a definite editorial direction or purpose. Sutherland opened the magazine to every variety of writing, and openly critized Preview. It wasn't until the ninth issue that we see a marked change in the magazine. This change was introduced by the appearance of poems by Irving Layton, and then subsequent poems by Louis Dudek, Miriam Waddington, and Raymond Souster. Sutherland had finally found the native Canadian literary youth he had been looking for.

 

In 1943, Sutherland acquired a printing press, and once the magazine came to be printed it began to change, gradually ceasing to be what Louis Dudek termed "a fighting rag." [1] However, the two magazines still differed on opinions of what Modernist poetry should be: while Preview preferred a more British-inspired impetus, First Statement was influenced by more American Modernist sensibilities. The poets of First Statement saw themselves as "working-class poets."

 

The addition of a printing press also allowed the magazine to grow and eventully turn into a book publisher. The first book that was published under the First Statement Press imprint was Irving Layton's first book, Here and Now (1945).

 

The issues in the final two years of First Statement present interesting work and editorials. There were several articles on Nietzchean philosophy, the First World War, the limitations of poets who were attached to academic institutions, and the issue of what constituted modern poetry.

 

Ironically, after much rivalry (and 33 issues of their periodical), First Statement merged with Preview to form Northern Review in 1945, with Sutherland as managing editor.

 

[1] John Nause and J. Michael Heenan. "An Interview with Louis Dudek." The Tamarack Review, No. 69 (1977), 30-43.

CONTACT (1952-1954; press 1952-1967)

 

Contact was founded by Irving Layton, Raymond Souster, and Louis Dudek in 1952. This magazine was created in response to a growing dissatisfaction with the publishing outlets that were around, such as Northern Review. Its founders felt that a new magazine and press was needed that had a policy of wider orientation and international focus than was circumscribed by the conservative policies of John Sutherland.

 

Contact featured translations, experimental writing from both Canada and the United States, the odd poetry review, and placed an emphasis on poetry that expressed vigour and excitement. Dudek hoped that Contact would provide a new start for poetry, and that it would be a place for a "new" generation of poets to come into contact with each other to advance poetry beyond what had occured in the 1940s. "MAKE IT NEW" was the unofficial slogan of the magazine.

 

The magazine published works by poets such as Leonard Cohen, Ari Boxer, Alden Nowlan, D.G. Jones, Phyllis Webb, Gael Turnbull, Eli Mandel, Henry Moscovitch, and Daryl Hine among others. Contact provided a forum for advancement for a handful of poets who were ready to move ahead in their writing styles. However, this was not the group of poets that Dudek had hoped for; this group of the "new" generation did not arrive until the 1960s with the arrival of Canadian "New Wave" poetry.

 

Overall, Contact magazine had ten issues over its short lifespan of two years. Its final edition came out in February of 1954.

 

Contact Press, however, continued until 1967. Launched at the mid-century, it published all the major Canadian poets of the period, and transformed literary life and small-press activity in Canada by its openness to a variety of poetic styles and its assertiveness of the poet's role in the production of his own work. Appearing in mimeograph format, paper editions, and occasionally in cloth, Contact books were utilitarian in design and typography.

 

In 1956, Souster edited an anthology of younger poets, titled Poets 56, and in Montreal, Dudek launched the McGill Poetry Series which featured Leonard Cohen’s Let Us Compare Mythologies under the Contact imprint. While its main thrust was in publishing the new work of individual poets, Contact also produced a milestone anthology, Canadian Poems 1850-1952, co-edited by Dudek and Layton in 1952, and an avant-garde manifesto of young poets published as New Wave Canada: The New Explosion in Canadian Poetry (1966). Some of the writers who were published through the press were F.R. Scott, Margaret Atwood, George Bowering, and John Newlove.

 

Contact Press is considered to be one of the most important small presses of its time.

 

Click here to listen to Michael Gnarowski talk about Contact Press.

YES (1956-1970)

 

Yes was a quarterly literary magazine produced in Montreal beginning in 1956. Its founding editors, Michael Gnarowski, Glen Siebrasse, and John Lachs did not set out a distinct editorial policy, rather they had an open-door policy and invited writers and artists from all over to submit their work. Yes initially published poetry but eventually expanded its scope to include short stories, prose, visual arts, and music. It was published in both Canada and the United States.

 

Yes continued the work that little magazines, like Contact, had started in expanding new poetry of the 1950s. The editorial in the first issue of Yes made it clear that the magazine was to be a medium for new talent:

 

Unfortunately the little magazine movement in Canada has shown a tendency to lapse in recent years. It is to be hoped that this mimeographed effort will initiate a new phase of activity in this field so as to provide a suitable outlet for the commencing Renaissance of Canadian Writing.

 

Our magazine is called Yes. This is its attitude. It has been created for the writing of the second half of the twentieth century which we believe will once again be the expression of positive values. The world is a yes place--let us then say so. [1]

 

In saying yes to literature of the twentieth century and to quality, the editors of Yes also said yes to the direction that had been established by the social-realist movement.

 

The magazine published works by A.W. Purdy, Jay Macpherson, Louis Dudek, Tom Poots, Michael Ondaatje, Milton Acorn, and Douglas Barbour among others.

 

As an eclectic magazine, Yes hit its stride in issues thirteen to sixteen, and seemed to be fulfilling its aims by 1967. But a two-year silence ensued after issue sixteen, and Yes did not reappear again until 1969 with the addition of a subtitle of '2nd Series' in order to distinguish the newer issues from the preceding run. By this time, the social-realist mode of writing had been eclipsed and a new fashion had been adopted by most of the young poets writing in Canada. The magazine continued to seek to work poetry back towards a more productive vein, but, unfortunately, the newly revived Yes only lasted for three more issues between 1969-1970.

 

[1]  Yes, No. 1 (1963), 2.

DELTA (1957-1966)

 

Delta was founded by Louis Dudek in 1957 only nine months after Yes began publishing. It was a poetry magazine that tried to inject some vitality into the Canadian literary scene. It tried to redirect the course of Canadian poetry through pertinent articles and criticism (often by Dudek) to foster energy and promote new movement among young poets. Delta encouraged experimental poetry and supported the idea that poetry should have clear relevance to its time and particularly to social issues.

 

Delta reflected Dudek's personality and tastes, and the magazine spoke strongly to those who shared his modernist views about poetry. He made a concerted effort to find poets who provided Canadian poetry with its next forward development, and like Contact Press, the magazine provided publication for those who had no access to commercial publishers. However, unlike Contact Press, Delta was concerned with Canadian poetry alone and did not have an international focus. Some of the young poets published in Delta were Daryl Hine, Michael Gnarowski, Al Purdy, George Bowering, Margaret Atwood, and Frank Davey. 

 

Delta Canada (Dudek's press) also published a series of chapbooks called "Quarterback" which were designed to help the poet, who was unpublished in book form, to achieve a wider audience, while at the same time exploring the directions in which Canadian poetry was moving. Some of the authors appearing in the series were Robert Currie, Bruce Elder, Richard Hornsey, Carl Law, Marilyn Grace Julian, Sharon H. Nelson, and D.C. Smith.

 

Delta was an important little magazine that broke new ground rather than following outmoded poetic traditions. It reflected Dudek's constant battle for freedom, honesty, and integrity in poetry as an art, and his opposition to the commercial degradation and the theoretical elaboration of the academic poetry of the time.

 

The magazine's 26 issues appeared irregularly over its almost ten-year run. The last issue was published in October of 1966.

 

PREVIEW  (1942-1945; continued as NORTHERN REVIEW, 1945-1956)

 

Preview made its initial appearance in March 1942, and was founded by Patrick Anderson, an Englishman who had come to Montreal from Oxford. The magazine's intent was to present "...Montreal writers who recently formed themselves into a group for the purpose of mutual discussion and criticism and who hope, through speculations, to try out their work before a somewhat larger public..." [1] Some of the permanent contributors to Preview include: F.R. Scott, P.K. Page, Bruck Ruddick, and Patrick Anderson.

 

Preview--along with rival publication, First Statement--provided one of the few publication avenues for modernist Canadian poetry at a time when Canadian literature tended to be dominated by a more conservative aesthetic. The poetry in Preview was clearly in the cosmopolitan tradition, and much of it is formal, stiffened by a rather elevate British diction. The writing is often highly metaphoric and metaphysical. This is what some critics and the poets from First Statement found artificial and unacceptable. [2]

 

Preview attempted to combine arresting imagery with social content. It presented the work of a small group of poets who shared similar ideas about literature, art, and politics. Despite the magazine's hardline on publishing writing that followed a certain aesthetic and political principles, Preview did open its pages to other writers, including: A.M. Klein, Raymond Souster, Miriam Waddington, and even occasionally First Statement contributors.

 

Much of the poetry published in Preview reflected a social consciousness and an awareness of the war and its larger implications. Patrick Anderson defined what he saw as the literary task of the Canadian writers during times of war:

 

Our task is clear: not only to help in the winning of the war by our literary work and our vivid enthusiastic embodiment of the issues for which it is being fought, but also to supply something of the personal, the graceful and the heroic to this half-empty Dominion. [3]
 

The outstanding characteristic of the work printed in Preview is a dedication to the economic and political issues raised by the Depression and the war. This consciousness is most clearly outlined in most of the articles about poetry that appeared in the magazine (for examples, see issues eight and twenty-one).

 

Preview published twenty-three issues, from March 1942 until 1945 (the last issue carries no date), before merging with First Statement  to create Northern Review.

 

Overall, Preview exemplified the personality of its founder and editor, Patrick Anderson. His insistence that poetry spring from genuine experience and be grounded in social realism is evident throughout the magazine.

 

[1] Patrick Anderson, "Editorial," Preview, No. 1, (March, 1942), 1.

[2] Ken Norris, The Little Magazine in Canada 1925-80: Its Role in the Development of Modernism and Post-Modernism in Canadian Poetry, (Toronto, 1984), 28.

[3] Patrick Anderson, "Ourselves," Preview, No. 11 (February, 1943), 11.

 

NORTHERN REVIEW (1945-1956)

 

Northern Review was the result of an uneasy marriage between Preview and First Statement. It began publication during the post-war period.

 

Theoretically Preview and First Statement merged, however it would seem that Preview was absorbed by First Statement under the new banner, since First Statement had more energy--and also happened to possess a printing press. Although the editorial board was split in a fair balance of the Preview and First Statement groups. John Sutherland is listed as managing editor, with F.R. Scott, A.M. Klein, Irving Layton, Patrick Anderson, A.J.M. Smith, Audrey Aikman, R.G. Simpson, and Neufville Shaw on the editorial board. The magazine also had regional editors, P.K. Page, Dorothy Lovesay, James Wreford, and Ralph Gustafson. In theory, the differences between the two magazines were supposed to be buried on behalf of the greater good, Canadian literature.

 

Much of the fire of the two earlier magazines had been lost with Northern Review; it was not the militant production of a small group and the editorial in the first issue points in the direction of the eclectic periodical. Initially, Northern Review was dedicated to the written arts, although later it also dealt with other aspects of Canadian culture.

 

In 1947 in the sixth issue of the first volume, Sutherland published a rather vitriolic review of Robert Finch's book, Poems, which had just won the Governor General's award. The article had explosive consequences and the tenuous "merger" was dissolved. All of the editors who had been associated with Preview (i.e. Shaw, Anderson, Klein, Scott, Smith, Page, and Gustafson) all resigned their positions. The seventh issue presented an abbreviated organization: Sutherland remained managing editor, and his associates were Audrey Aikman, R.G. Simpson, Irving Layton, Mary Miller, and John Harrison. A notice appeared at the back of the issue explaining the changes as "a difference of opinion about editorial policy, particularly concerning criticism and reviews." [1] Eventually, editors would quit one by one, leavung Sutherland his wife, Audrey Aikman in charge.

 

The changes in the make-up of the editorial board did not change the content of the magazine. Sutherland gradually abandoned the Modernist position of the 1940s, and Northern Review became a magazine that literally worked counter to Modernism. Most of what Sutherland published in the last five years of the magazine was peripheral to the evolution of modern poetry in Canada, and featured elements of his own personal beliefs (e.g. after he converted to Roman-Catholicism, there were a few poems about religious symbolism in literature).

 

The magazine ceased publishing in 1956, with Sutherland's death. Though Sutherland turned his back on it, Modernism did not go away. In a way, Northern Review served as a lesson for other little magazines and their editors; it represented what they did not want their magazines to become.

 

[1] Northern Review, 2, No. 1 (Oct.-Nov. 1947), 40.

 

 

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