The Modern Poetry Collection
Archives & Research Collections
Carleton University
The Small Presses & Little Magazines:
Vancouver, British Columbia
blewointmentpress (1962-1983; continued as Nightwood Editions 1983- Present)
Founded by bill bissett in 1963, blewointmentpress was a book company that grew out of blewointment, a literary periodical established the previous year.
The press was noted for its lowercase, phonetic spellings and for its hand-decorated and mixed-media covers and inserts. It was also informed by bissett's view of the artist as oppressed by the state and the corporate ‘fascism’ of the larger presses.
In 1967, blewointment began to publish chapbooks by authors such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Maxine Gadd, Al Purdy, George Bowering, bpNichol and Gwendolyn MacEwen. bill bissett also published a significant amount of his own work under the blewointmentpress imprint.
There were a total of five volumes, with varying numbers per volume, which were published until 1968. Subsequent issues were released as unnumbered ‘speshuls’: notably ‘Fascist Court’ (1970), ‘Occupation Issue’ (1970), ‘Oil Slick Speshul’ (1971), ‘Open Picture Book nd the News’ (1972), ‘What isnt Tantrik Speshul’ (1973), and ‘End of th World Speshul Anthology’ (1978).
In the early 1980s bissett sold blewointmentpress to musicians David and Maureen Lee of London, Ontario, who briefly continued the press as Nightwood Editions, before in turn selling its backlist, in 1992, to Pulp Press of Vancouver. The press still operates under the name of Nightwood Editions and continues to publish new and dynamic Canadian literature in collaboration with authors to maintain the distinctive authenticity of individual works--which is in line with bissett's original intention for the press.
The activities of blewointmentpress met with wide acclaim, and have had a seminal influence on the Canadian literary community.
TISH (1961-1969)
TISH was a Canadian poetry newsletter, founded by University of British Columbia student-poets George Bowering, David Dawson, Lionel Kearns, Jamie Reid, Frank Davey, and Fred Wah in 1961. TISH grew directly out of three lectures given by Robert Duncan, an American poet associated with the Black Mountain College poetry movement.
The title of the magazine was suggested by Duncan. It is a phonemic inversion of a common four-letter word. This was a result of the editors desire to produce an unpolished literary periodical, "TISH was to be a record of ongoing literary activity, a record that preserved every roughness, insight, and stupidity that this activity enclosed." [1] The two immediate models for the magazine were two American literary mags, Origin and The Floating Bear; a more distant model was Louis Dudek's Delta.
The first issue of TISH was published in September of 1961. In Frank Davey's opening editorial, he describes TISH as a "moving and vocal mag," and that it did not simply exist just to publish the work of its editors but was "proof of a movement which we, the editors, feel is shared by other people as well as ourselves." [2] TISH published poems, short stories, and essays that the editors felt had a direct relationship to TISH's siring movement.
There are four distinct editorial periods in TISH's publication history: the first editorial committee operated from September 1961- March 1963 (the first nineteen issues edited by ); the second period from August 1963- May 1964 (edited by David Dawson, Daphne Buckle, David Cull, Gladys Hindmarch, Peter Auxier, and Dan McLeod); the third period from June 1964- March 1967 (issues 25-40 edited by Dan McLeod and others); the fourth period from February 1968- mid-1969 (issues 41- E/45 edited by Karen Tallman). The most important work done by TISH is contained in the first nineteen issues of the magazine. In these issues, a new poetics and a new orientation were first being worked out.
The editors of TISH also attempted a bried foray into book publishing under the name Rattlesnake Press / Tishbooks from 1961-1962. They published three titles in 1962: D-Day and After by Frank Davey, Sticks and Stones by George Bowering, and Songs of Circumstance by Lionel Kearns. Overall, Rattlesnake Press / Tishbooks was a stumbling, short-lived affair. TISH magazine had a far more lasting impact on the Canadian literary world.
What began in TISH radiated beyond Vancouver, and TISH alumni began new lietrary mags and continued to write in other parts of the country. TISH was the launching pad for a number of other publications including the alternative newspaper The Georgia Straight, edited by McLeod, the poetry newsletter SUM (1963–65), edited by Wah, the magazine of the long poem Imago (1964–74), edited by Bowering, the journal of writing and theory Open Letter (1965– ), edited by Davey, the prose journal Periodics (1977–81), edited by Marlatt and Paul de Barros, and the on-line journal Swift Current (1984–1990), edited by Davey and Wah, and described by them as the world's first e-magazine.
[1] Frank Davey, "Introducing Tish," The Writing Life, 152.
[2] Frank Davey, "Editorial," Tish No. 1-19 (Vancouver, 1975), 13.
OPEN LETTER (1965- Present)
Open Letter was the most interesting magazine produced by the TISH alumni and was founded in 1965 in Victoria, B.C. and continues to be published to this day. It was originally edited by Frank Davey and a varyinng group of contributing editors or associate editors (including George Bowering, David Dawson, Fred Wah, Steve McCaffery, and bpNichol).
It has become one of the most important avant-garde periodicals in Canada. Open Letter sought to bring together all the different strands of experimentation in literature and to unify them in a single web against the mainstream of Canadian writing. Although it has changed in format over time, it still maintains its purpose which was outlined in the first editorial written by Frank Davey: that the magazine would be "an attempt to combine within the pages of a periodical the features of both a symposium and a debate." [1]
Each series was composed of nine issues, and each series of Open Letter had an inherent sense of a "private world" wherein the editors wrote letters discussing and debating Canadian literature to each other. In the first series of the magazine, the former TISH editors began an internal debate on questions that must have been present during the early TISH years but that, in Open Letter, developed into open criticism of one another's aesthetics and work. In this way, Open Letter differentiated itself--where TISH had seemed monolithic, Open Letter showed poets asserting their individual styles and views of poetry.
In the 1970s Open Letter was one of the few connectors between the English-Canadian artistic community and that of Quebec, and one of few places in which young writers might expect to be reviewed. In the 1980s, in a scene in which the general Canadian literature periodicals were relatively conservative, and in which avant-garde periodicals like Tessera, Fuse, and Prairie Fire were highly specialized, Open Letter was one of the few periodicals in which literary critics and theorists were able to publish theoretical and theoretically explicit texts. In the 1990s and 2000s Open Letter has been a meeting place for writers with various concerns about poetics, race, feminism, and region.
[1] Frank Davey. "Editorial," Open Letter. 1.1. (1965), 3.
