This is the twenty-ninth
in a series of short essays/reminiscences by a variety of authors and friends
of the press to help mark the quarter century mark of above/ground. See links to the whole series here.
As both a
poet and an academic, I have the benefit (or the burden) of two offices: one in
a corner of my basement at home, where an aging and cobwebbed sliding door
leads out into our back yard, and another at my university. Sadly, perhaps,
they are both bursting at the seams, with books overflowing shelves and papers
piled on desks and spilling onto the floor. Sometimes I pick through the piles
that have accumulated, or quickly glance through them as I move things from one
pile to another, convinced I am getting something done. The papers are often broadsides,
pamphlets, chapbooks and zines, which you really do have to page through to
remind yourself what they are (as opposed to the books with their legible
spines).
More often
than not, as I re-encounter these publications, I turn them over and realise
that what I’m holding is an above/ground
production. It would be interesting to actually run a count of how many I have:
issues of Touch the Donkey and The Peter F. Yacht Club; chapbooks by
many poets; and—my favourites really, for their archetypal samizdat
simplicity—broadsides and little one-page pamphlets penned by, it would seem,
pretty much every poet in this country. These have been arriving in my mail literally
for decades now. I don’t know what portion of my archive would be composed of above/ground publications, but it would
be considerable. Maybe even embarrassing.
It’s
difficult to pick something out and say “this is so above/ground.” Its own sheer profusion is the hallmark of the press.
And I have often associated poetry with profusion (as opposed, perhaps, to
Pound’s “compression”): poetry is what spreads, is the form of encountering,
and moving past, boundaries. Is writing that always seems to be hailing more
writing—a continuous script, an unbroken conversation. above/ground is nothing if not profuse, nothing if not continuous.
It’s longevity and productivity are legendary and largely unparalleled.
Also
remarkable is the fact that the press’s forms and materials have changed little
over the years. There have been no aesthetic leaps, no advances in design, no
evolving production values. Simplicity is and always has been the name of the
game here. above/ground is “news that
stays news.” There was a time when poets could turn to certain journals to get
a sense of what was actually happening
in poetry at that exact moment. Then
certain websites came along to do that (Silliman’s blog, Jacket, Lemonhound). This
is exactly what above/ground has always
been—and remarkably continues to be, long after many of these others have come
and gone, or passed the nadir of their arcs of influence. above/ground is persistence incarnate. It is the pulse of poetry.
It’s where it’s at.
How
ridiculous would it be if all this—25 years and countless profuse and
persistent publications—was the work of one poet-editor. How crazy would that
be? No one would ever believe the story. I still don’t (though I feel like I’ve
met the guy … maybe he could help me with some storage issues I’m having).
Stephen Collis’s [photo credit: Lawrence Schwartzwald]
many books of poetry include The Commons
(Talon Books 2008; 2014), On the Material
(Talon Books 2010—awarded the BC Book Prize for Poetry), DECOMP (with Jordan Scott—Coach House 2013), and Once in Blockadia (Talon Books
2016—nominated for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature).
He has also written a book of essays on the Occupy Movement, and a novel. Almost Islands (Talon Books 2018) is a
memoir of his friendship with poet Phyllis Webb, and a long poem, Sketch of a Poem I Will Not Have Written,
is in progress. He lives near Vancouver, on unceded Coast Salish Territory, and
teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University.
Collis is the author of two above/ground press chapbooks,
including New Life (2016) and FIRST SKETCH OF A POEM I WILL NOT HAVE WRITTEN
(2017).
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