This is the fifteenth
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.
Bespoke, Be Spoken
I am likely the
last poet in the country who published rob mclennan before being published by him. I was, however, back in Victoria in
1999, already acutely aware of the generative role he played with his
publishing venture—the presses, zines, anthologies, and now blogs and more.
above/ground (rolled out in 1993) is the hub of a wheel made up of an
extraordinary range of poets, each taking a turn as a spoke in its constantly
regenerating progress, rolling over the years, now decades. Poets learn to
speak in public, to become spoken, through getting published. For 25 years,
mclennan has created space for poets to write themselves into authorship, or to
become spoken of, often for the first time in one of his constantly appearing reviews
or scene surveys. To ride the metaphor to its last spoke, he has carved roads
into this country and built vehicles to travel them.
I was the Managing Editor of a small
press zine (Laughing Gland, edited by Lori Emerson, whose issues (I realize in
retrospect) suspiciously resemble above/ground), and remember well the meeting
when Lori presented work by rob. We were excited to publish those poems, and
fascinated by the package of leaflets and chapbooks of other people’s works
that he sent with them. We passed them around, read them carefully over coffee
and cigarettes. It was the combination that struck me the most — the ethic of
creating a space for other writers while finding a place for yourself. Self-expression
and other-promotion. It all seemed perfectly positive, generous, and strangely
misfit as I dropped copies here and there around the campus and town, watching strangers
pick them up read or toss them aside.
A few years later, above/ground
published a chapbook of mine. It was a collection of poems responding to the
legacy of the explorer David Thompson, who cut the Canadian/American border.
rob mailed a box (Canada Post owes him at least his image on a limited edition
stamp for all he has spent on postage), a real Staples box full of folded and
stapled chapbooks. I guiltily remembered the short run of zines we had mailed
him years before (It was, I confess, my job to balance the budget, and limit,
therefore, the print run—but take notice of rob’s method of constant bigheartedness,
of overabundance and wildly free circulation, and emulate it freely. He’s doing
it right.).
I
marveled at the simple, bespoke object filled with my words that he had made. I
promptly started handing out copies to ever and whomever crossed my path. I met
people by doing so. What a delightful pleasure it is to give your own small
book to people you barely know or don’t at all. Christian Bök calls chapbooks
and books expensive “business cards” for future services, but they are, really,
more like greeting cards: greetings, here
I am, this is some kind of record of me and where my mind sometimes strays,
come have a conversation. I marvel at the range of rob’s imagination that
sees the contours and recognizes the value of each of the imaginary worlds in
the almost-a-thousand objects he has made.
When I first started publishing with
above/ground (or should that be, ‘surfacing’?), it never dawned on me that
literature could fashion communities, that giving away things brings constant
returns. This was my entrance into the gift economy. In the wider literary
world in Canada, I was made quickly aware of the fiercely guarded aesthetic and
social fiefdoms. But rob, all the while, was creating communities across such
pale garrisons. I, one of his minions, have probably handed out thousands of
copies of his chapbooks and zines filled with writing by countless authors I
have never yet met—except that I feel I have met many of them through his maze
of pathways that cross the space above/ground. I don’t know them, but I have
met them, and share a common space.
My first three poetry readings were
all with rob, including the very first that happened to be in St. Catharines,
where I moved a few years later and have stayed ever since. I even ended up
taking over that literary series where we read and curated it for a number of
years. I have become in a much, much smaller way, a local bike builder (in the
literary sense) here in town, trying to build a space for writers of all types
and sorts to speak themselves into authorship. rob sends me messages – whose coming, what can we do? Still
carving borders every bit as real and imaginary as the one cut by David
Thompson, still extending his hub into all the marvelous worlds one can find
above/ground.
Gregory Betts is
the author of Avant-Garde Canadian Literature, six books of poetry, and editor
of six volumes of experimental Canadian writing. He curates the bpNichol.ca
Digital Archive. He is a poet and professor at Brock University in St.Catharines, Ontario (but will be the Craig Dobbin Professor of Canadian Studies
at the University College of Dublin next year).
Gregory Betts is the author of four above/ground press
titles, including The Cult of David Thompson (2005),
The Curse of Canada (2008) and Who Let the Mice in Brion Gysin (2014)
as well as another title to release later this month. He also appeared in the
four poet anthology READ YORK (2004),
and as an above/ground press broadside (#221, 2004).
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