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Editor-in-Chief: g.d. currie Administrative Editor: Patrick Outhwaite Managing Editor: Zoe Shaw Faculty Advisor: Eli MacLaren Promotions Editor: Jennifer Mancini Webmaster: Mihai Patrascu Design: [tin_factory] with le_weasel Scrivener Creative Review Spotlight 2 October 2019 Scrivener Creative Review is a journal of arts and letters based in Montréal, Canada. For general inquiries, please visit us at scrivenercreativereview.com, or contact us by email at scrivener.creative.review@gmail.com Scrivener Creative Review McGill University 853 Sherbrooke St. West Arts Building Montréal, Québec Canada, H3A 2T6 Printed by Solutions Rubiks Inc., Montréal
Scrivener Creative Review gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided by the Fine Arts Council, the Dean of Arts Development Fund, the Department of English Students’ Association, the Students’ Society of McGill University, and the Arts Undergraduate Society.
Contents Introduction 3
Prose
4 6 12 16 21 24
Poetry
27 28 31 32 35 36 38
A letter from the Editors Nancy Marrelli and Simon Dardick: Celebrating The Word An Interview with Adrian King-Edwards Eli MacLaren: An Enlightening Word David Tacium: Memoirs of Rue Milton Zoé Duhaime: Learning to Browse Darren Bifford: A Few Remarks on a Small Bookshop
Daniel Galef: Things I Have Found in Books Louise Hill: Ode to the Bibliographer Pearl Pirie: Kids in a Candy Ilona Martonfi: Hygge at the Word Hut Timothy Quigley: Like a Jazz Singer Jeffrey Mackie: For The Word Noah Zacharin: we went to the word
Art and Photography 26 / 30 / 40 34 37 42
Contributors
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Louise Hill: Bend / Browse / Reflect Jassim Ahmed: On The Word François Émond: Mots de ville Zoé Duhaime: Milton St. Biographical notes
Additional photo credits: Susan Moss, pp. 4-5 and 7, The Word p. 15, David Tacium p. 18.
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Copyrights are retained by the artists upon publication. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the copyright holder’s express permission.
Dear Reader, Since 1975, The Word Bookstore has insulated us from every angle with a comprehensive, eclectic, and electric stock of gently-used books. If you have been lucky enough to visit the teal-bricked shoebox on Milton Street—which expands into a palace as soon as you enter—you likely have some stories your own. Over the summer, the editors of Scrivener have opened their ears to friends of The Word, old and new, and the founders themselves, for some of their best anecdotes, recollections, and tributes. That is what you will find here. The Word binds people into a beautiful, composite story of book-loving, bookselling, and bookmaking. It contains everything the bibliophile could desire, from priceless first editions in pristine dust-jackets, to hand-stitched chapbooks lovingly arranged in the display by the window. You’ll find us there as well. Nearly forty years ago, The Word took out an ad in one of the first issues of Scrivener. Back then we were an oversized, awkward thing, printed pro bono on the presses of a now defunct Westmount newspaper. We can’t help but wonder what it was that Adrian King-Edwards saw in us. We are honoured to still have a place on his shelves after all these years. Like The Word itself, Scrivener could not persist without the care and support of the Montréal community. We would like to extend special thanks to Christopher Lyons for his aid in researching the contexts in which The Word came to be. Finally, our warmest thanks to our editors, contributors, sponsors, printers, and, of course, to Adrian and the staff of The Word who have made this issue possible. One last thought before you go: the pieces collected herein are vivacious, strange, and sometimes challenging. In collating this issue, the Editor-in-Chief strove to produce a comprehensive mosaic of the community which The Word has fostered over the years. He would therefore like to make it clear that the views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent those held by the staff of The Word or the members of our Editorial Board. Please direct all concerns and criticism to the Editor-in-Chief. As ever, all praise should be directed to the wonderful folks at The Word. Yours,
g.d. currie Editor-in-Chief
Zoe Shaw Managing Editor
Introduction 3
Celebrating The Word
Nancy Marrelli and Simon Dardick Stand on the threshold of The Word and pause before you enter. It’s a world of books, readers of books, lovers of books, and people who know a great deal about books. The Word is more than a place to buy books, it’s a community. Adrian King-Edwards has been selecting the books and selling them here for decades and he knows what he’s doing. So does Donna Jean-Louis who selects children’s books, Scott Moodie who seems to have been here forever, and Brendan King-Edwards who grew up in the store and has taken on more responsibility as time goes by. The community, of course, includes buyers of books—students, profs, obsessive readers, occasional readers, and those in search of the rare and unusual. Finally, this very particular community includes the writers and the publishers. All the pieces fit together and work together like a carefully constructed jigsaw puzzle to create a special world of books.
Above: Adrian King-Edwards and Donna Jean-Louis. Left: Brendan King-Edwards.
As publishers, we have been privileged to work with The Word. The only new books for sale here are recent poetry titles by Montréal poets. And the poetry corner has included so many of our Véhicule Press titles. Poetry has a very special place at The Word. There are legendary poetry book launchings with people packed into the store to hear both the poets and Adrian’s erudite and entertaining introductions.
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As friends, we wouldn’t miss the annual Christmas party with people crammed into the store and spilling out onto the snowy sidewalk. As the community gathers and chatters everyone takes at least a few minutes to browse the shelves. In the background to the store itself is the antiquarian book business, run so astutely by Adrian, and assisted by Donna for children’s books—all chosen with such exquisite care, and deep knowledge. That knowledge makes Adrian a treasure for monetary appraisals of books for individuals, libraries, and archives. As an archivist, Nancy has been pleased to be able to turn to him. The Word and its valued staff are a hub for the literary community. Their generosity and goodwill are known far and wide by writers, booksellers, and publishers. Adrian has been involved for many years with the Writer’s Chapel Trust working with Simon and others on this important initiative celebrating Canadian authors. Both Donna and Adrian are deeply committed to their work with Christ Church Cathedral, giving very generously of their time and talents. But Donna and Adrian are also valued friends and companions—we share
meals, experiences, woes and joys, great book finds, and expeditions to flea markets and garden centres in the big van that ALWAYS has boxes of books (sometimes very many boxes of books) that we have to move around as we try to wedge in a few trees—yes trees—we’ve just purchased on sale. We value what our friends do and the book community around us all. We salute the many contributions of The Word to our shared literary world. We can’t imagine it not being there.
Marrelli and Dardick 5
The Living Word
An Interview with Adrian King-Edwards Scrivener: There seems to be an endless supply of stories from the origins of The Word. What stands out for you as particularly special about those early days? Adrian King-Edwards: The magic thing about that time period was the sense of community. We really wanted to be part of the English poetry scene in Montréal, so we very quickly started carrying people’s books, having readings, and selling books out of our apartment. The English poetry community in Montréal in the 1970s was maybe a dozen people. You could fit the entire community in your living room. It was an immense amount of fun. We made friendships from that time that have lasted the rest of our lives. Artie Gold,1 who was the best of the Véhicule poets, lived near The Word. He was immensely interesting, incredibly irritating, and often just pissed you off completely with his behavior—but he was intellectually amazingly exciting. He was in the store three or four times a day when we first started. He was permanently there, to the point where I was wondering whether it was my store or his. One afternoon, Fraser Sutherland2 came to our door. He had just started Northern Journey, which was an incredibly influential and important magazine, and he wanted to know if we wanted to carry it. I thought: We’re on the right track! John Newlove3 was in town for a while and used to come into the store almost every Saturday. He would get a six pack from the dépanneur, sit in the chair until the six pack was finished, and discuss history with whomever was willing. John Glassco4 was in the store often, too. He lived on Jeanne Mance. When he would come in to sell me books, he would ask me how much I would give him for something and I would say, “twenty dollars,” and then with a twinkle in his eye, he would ask how much I would give him if it was signed. We had Véhicule readings most Sunday afternoons. Those poets were all gung ho and just starting out, just like we were. I think that sense of community is what I look back on with the most nostalgia. They were really exciting times. I had the sense that these were people I knew as friends, but they were also important people. 1. Artie Gold (1947–2007) was a Montréal poet who rose to prominence in the 1970s on the back of his innovative, vibrant verse. The Véhicule poets include Endre Farkas, Tom Konyves, Claudia Lapp, John McAuley, Stephen Morrissey, and Ken Norris. Many of them are still writing poetry. 2. Fraser Sutherland (1946– ) is a Canadian journalist, editor, and poet. Northern Journey (1971– 1976) published the works of many significant Canadian poets, including Earle Birney, Gwendolyn MacEwen, and Margaret Atwood. 3. John Newlove (1938–2003) was a Canadian poet whose most influential works were published in the 1960s and 70s. He won the 1972 Governor General’s Award for his volume Lies. 4. John Glassco (1909–1981) was a Montréal-born poet whose work often featured scenes from the Eastern Townships. To some, he is better known for his volumes of erotica, which he published under various pseudonyms.
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SCR: The Word did more than give these poets a place to read. There was a time when you were publishing chapbooks as well. In particular, I’m thinking of Artie Gold’s 5 jockeypoems. Were there others? AKE: That was Luci’s5 doing. She was hugely into poetry. She was working on her master’s degree at McGill, particularly on Charles Olson, so her interests had a huge influence on the store. She was very keen on Artie’s work and she was the one who chose his work, designed the collection, and published it. We did a few other collections in limited editions—for Fraser Sutherland and August Kleinzahler.6 SCR: You’ve been at the heart of the Montréal poetry scene for decades now. How has it changed since you first started out? AKE: It is immensely larger. There’s a huge number of English language poets now. Part of this is the work of the Quebéc Writers’ Federation. They offered stimulus that encouraged young poets and writers to move to Montréal. They have a mentoring program and a whole infrastructure of support with events where young writers can get together. My impression is that there’s little pockets and groups: poets that hang around at Argo, at a café at NDG, and Ilona Martonfi does readings at the visual arts center in Westmount. It’s great! There’s a space for everybody. Some people prefer to deal in isolation but if you want community it is easier to come by than it used to be. SCR: I think one of the most wonderful things about The Word is its accessibility. You seem to have something for every customer, no matter their budget. Was this the impetus behind your dollar and fifty-cent racks? AKE: I have a passion for books. If someone calls me up and they have books, I get excited. And I get great pleasure out of selling books. Every day we make a huge effort to put good books out for customers. I love seeing people’s joy when they buy books from us for a dollar or fifty cents. Often, I will have the opportunity to buy an immense library from a seller or from someone’s estate. I will buy the best books for a couple thousand dollars, and then the rest I get for free. Those are the books I can put out for a dollar. All I have to do is carry them home. We have scouts that bring us books, and we try to help them out. Traditionally, a book scout would have had five or six stores that they would sell to. Now that there are fewer book stores, that opportunity has evaporated. The scouts are hard pressed because even if they have been working with us for twenty or thirty years and have brought us really good books, they are eventually going to bring us books that we already have. So I help my good scouts out by offering to buy the 5. Lucille Friesen and Adrian King-Edwards co-founded The Word Bookstore in 1975. 6. August Kleinzhaler (1949– ) is a New Jersey-born poet known for his jazzy, energetic style and pugnacious subject matter.
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remainder of their lot. I buy the books for a dollar each and put them up for a dollar. That way our customers are happy and our scouts are happy. The really good scouts are out all the time looking for books. The other day, one of my scouts brought in a 1946 Edgar Allan Poe paperback that he got from a man’s estate in Westmount. It had been sitting on this man’s shelf for his entire life. It was mint! It had never been opened, never touched—it had gone on the shelf and stayed there. It was incredible. You see things like that every once in a while: a signed Robert Frost, or Robert Frank’s The Americans. When I go out for house calls myself, which I do two or three times a week, I am always excited about what I am going to find. It’s important to have books redistributed. And it’s wonderful. You can help both the people who are desperate to get rid of books and the people who really want books. We bring them together so that the books can go off and have a new life. SCR: I know I’ve filled a couple shelves from dollar books alone. Many of them are chapbooks and volumes of poetry with print runs in the low hundreds—often inscribed by the author! These books held an immense sentimental, if not financial, value. How do you decide which ones go up for a dollar? AKE: I have to be really careful that books in that section aren’t from any local poets. For a local poet to come in and find that a book that they had signed and given to someone is being sold for a dollar because that person has gotten rid of it—it’s pretty sad. I have multiple copies of books by a lot of local poets and it’s a bit awkward. I don’t want them thinking that people have been abandoning their books. There was a poet who was actually buying back copies of his own work because they were out of print. I gave them to him at half price but I went through them very carefully to make sure that they weren’t presentation copies. It’s a sensitive issue. But, on the other hand, one of the old Véhicule poets was so ashamed of his first book that he came in and said that he would give me ten dollars to buy it back so that he could destroy it. I thought that I was on to a good thing, so I tried to barter him up to fifteen. He walked out. That wasn’t a smart move. SCR: We’ve talked a bit about cultural changes that The Word has weathered. Have you noticed any significant changes in your customer base? AKE: When we started out print culture was way stronger. If I advertised a big sale just with a poster in the window, it would bring in a lineup of fifteen or twenty people. You couldn’t imagine that happening now. No one will read the poster in the window, and no one will line up to buy a collection of books. I don’t know what would generate a lineup like that now. “60% Off Everything”? Probably not even then.
Interview 9
SCR: It’s funny you should mention the changes in print culture. Lately, one of our funding bodies suggested that we find alternative means of distributing Scrivener. It seems that printing is viewed by some as a non-essential expense. AKE: Really? It’s so exciting to have Scrivener in a printed edition! That’s unusual now. When we started out, there was a huge number of little magazines and periodicals and anthologies. Every week there was something new. I am a member of an association of antiquarian book dealers and at one of our recent annual gatherings somebody was giving a talk and said, “You probably don’t realize this, but some of our members still have open stores!” As if that was the bottom of the heap. Most people have given it up. But having an open store is a lot of fun. I much prefer everything in print, that’s my bias, but Brendan is constantly showing me the benefits of advertising online and on social media. He’s always selling stuff that way. It seems that people don’t buy books unless they see them on social media because that’s how they interact with the world. SCR: Is that how they interact with The Word as well? AKE: I actually see people at the dollar pile who won’t buy the book that they’re looking at until they take out their phone and check it online. You would think that most people would take a chance on a dollar book and use their own judgement. Couldn’t they just read the blurb on the back? No, they check it on their phone. Actually, something funny that has starting happening in the last five or six years is how young people enter the store. The front door has a handle, which makes them think they have to pull it, but it’s actually a push door. Students who come by will just pull the door. They won’t try to push. Then they’ll check on their phone to see if the store is closed—they won’t look at the sign, they won’t peer in the window. Even when we’re waving at them. You might not think so, but there is Wi-Fi in the store. You just have to ask. It’s actually often older people who ask for it. I think the younger ones just assume that we don’t. You probably also think that we don’t take VISA. Well, there are some special occasions when we do. But a lot of people will come into the store and try to use their card to pay for two fifty-cent books. In those cases we’ll just say: “Take them. Pay us next time.” And they say, “Really? Are you sure? I will! I will come back!” [laughs] SCR: That happened to me once! Do you often have trouble with folks who are bewildered by the way you operate? AKE: It happens sometimes. Inevitably, parents will come in with their kids that are students at McGill. The other day, a young woman who is very literary and who loves The Word came in with her father. He came up to me and asked, “Where’s your sports section?” She looked at him and said, “Dad, this is a high class book store! There’s no sports section!” If I had really wanted to push it, I might have said,
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“well, we do have chess books,” but I could tell she was too embarrassed. The store is a social place for a lot of people, especially people who live on their own. If they have something that’s bothering them, they’ll often come into the store and talk to us about it. I honestly ask people how they’re doing, and some people will honestly tell you. I think that for some people it’s like going to the bar and talking to the bartender. Sometimes I even get up and give them a hug. SCR: Do you have any favourite customer stories? AKE: It was fifteen or twenty years ago—time goes so fast—and I was having lunch at home when I got a call from Luci, who was at the store. She told me I had to come over right away. I thought something was wrong so I dashed over as fast as I could in the rain! I asked her what was wrong and she said, “Look who’s here!” I looked over and there was little Mavis Gallant7 browsing through our novels! After she had found something, I asked her where she was going and she said that she was headed back to her hotel. She asked if I could call her a cab so I countered, “Can I drive you?” I took as circuitous a route as I could back to the Delta Hotel and we had a really nice conversation. The Word’s employee, Ian McGillis, had just published his first novel, so before she got out of the car I gave her a copy of it and said, “Here, this is my employee’s first novel!” Of course, I didn’t expect to hear back from her but two weeks later I received a lovely little letter about how much she had enjoyed it! So, I passed that along to Ian. He’ll probably put it in his archive someday. There was another man in the Philosophy department at McGill, who bought books from me for thirty-five years. He built a huge collection. And then he fell in love with a woman in Switzerland. So he decided to move there. Talk about tears: hand-wringing, heart-wrenching. He had to leave the books behind! So, I went and bought his library. It was fantastic... for me. [laughs] SCR: Thank you for your time, Adrian, it’s been a pleasure. One final question: do you have any advice for folks looking to found a successful bookstore? AKE: Be on time. If you say that you’re going to show up at two o’clock, be there at two o’clock. Return people’s calls as soon as you can. If you make a mistake, apologize and fix it quickly. We are sitting ducks for McGill Management students who have to go and do projects about small businesses. Five or six of them will come in and interview me in the back of the store using all of these management terms. I don’t even know what they’re talking about. Inevitably, their final question is: “What’s your vision for the future?” I always look them straight in the eye and say, “You know, I would really like a smaller place—one that’s a little more selective.” 7. Mavis Gallant (1922–2014) was a Canadian writer of short stories and Companion of the Order of Canada. Though she lived in France for most of her life, many of her stories are set in Montréal, where she was born.
Interview 11
An Enlightening Word Eli MacLaren
One of the most impressive achievements of Fleury Mesplet (1734–94), a native of Marseille and Montréal’s first printer, was his building of a literary community. He published the first wholly French newspaper in Canada, La Gazette littéraire (1778–79), before founding, more lastingly, the Montréal Gazette in 1785, which soon earned a reputation for perceptive commentary on public affairs and its daring criticism of church and state. His printing office and bookshop, located on rue de la Capitale and later rue Notre-Dame, became an intellectual hub, a space where the writings of Voltaire, above all, could be read and debated. In his essay on Mesplet in volume four of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Claude Galarneau dubs Mesplet’s establishment “the centre of the Enlightenment in Montréal … the point of convergence for Montréal’s intelligentsia and … an important source of information for the public.” It is no exaggeration to regard The Word Bookstore / Librairie le Mot on Milton Street as Mesplet’s heir, and not merely because it sells the works of Voltaire in English and in French. The Word is one of Montréal’s literary hubs, a centre for the community, a point of convergence where thinkers meet in person and in print. Everyone who receives the bookstore’s electronic newsletter will know how many special events go on there, from book launches by local writers, to seasonal parties, to the rush on required books for courses at the start of each term, but as important as any of these is the ordinary business that happens at the store every day – the felicitous discovery of a desirable book by the browsing customer. Books light the way to regions far beyond and deep within us. They provide what Alice Munro, at the end of “Differently,” in Friend of My Youth (1990), calls an “accidental clarity” – insight into who we wish to be, knowing who we are. For this personal enlightenment to occur, the book must come to hand: it must be selected and stocked, described and recommended, shelved and displayed, encountered. Historians of the Enlightenment, such as Robert Darnton, Adrian Johns, and Richard B. Sher, have demonstrated the extent to which that capital-letter movement in the eighteenth century depended on the selling of books. Its humble lowercase equivalent continues today through the crammed but orderly main-floor shelves, the summertime sidewalk display, the open boxes, the piles on the chairs, the special case above the cash, the narrow staircase, and the mysterious upper room of The Word, not to mention the special tables that the shop sets up at book fairs, the further collections at the owners’ house on Aylmer Street, or the mini-van parked out front (“our warehouse”). We take an inkling of a writer’s work into The Word, and we emerge with a volume of it, shining. This is your experience of The Word, and it is mine. What do we find there? Cheap editions of the classics, collectors’ editions of canonical authors, fine editions from small presses, rare ephemera, poetry chapbooks,
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paperback fiction, first editions, children’s books, art books, history, philosophy, books of photographs, graphic novels, treasures, trifles, high challenges, boxes of invisible light. Accidental clarity. I have found myself surprised to be stepping up out of that low shop on Milton Street with a Faulkner novel, with a box set of The Jesuit Relations, with a miniature Bible (5 x 3 cm), with maps of the journeys of Frodo Baggins, even hand in hand with John Milton himself – and this surprise is precisely what the store has in store for everyone who walks in off the street. “There’s an excellent bookshop a stone’s throw from McGill,” my uncle advised me, upon hearing that I was heading to Montréal. I believe these were his first words in reaction to my news. He was a civil servant in Ottawa, a literacy advocate, a collector of fine wines, the godfather of my second child, and, when in his cups and generally only then, an expert on Canadian poetry. He died a few years ago and left me many of his books. I wonder how many of them he found at The Word. As for Adrian King-Edwards, a native of White River, Ontario, and founder of The Word, I met him at Miltonmass, the party given by Professors Maggie Kilgour and Brian Trehearne on or around the ninth of December each year. Since then, with an incalculable mix of cunning and beneficence, Adrian has managed to tempt and supply me with rare books and imprints related to my particular field of research. Through him I have acquired several precious items that have shed light on the history of Canadian authorship, publishing, and reading. A pamphlet advertising Charles G.D. Roberts’ 1925–26 Canadian recital tour and the launch of the Ryerson Poetry Chap-Books series by the Toronto editor, Lorne Pierce. Most of Al Purdy’s books, including his second and fourth, both Ryerson Poetry ChapBooks, both printed before he had cemented his reputation or his style. Another Ryerson Poetry Chap-Book by Doris Ferne, one of the women of the Victoria Poetry Group of the Canadian Authors’ Association, who encouraged a young Anne Marriott to be a writer. Unique correspondence regarding James Reaney’s collection, Twelve Letters to a Small Town (1962), the final Ryerson Poetry ChapBook. Song in the Silence and Other Poems (1947) by M. Eugenie Perry, an author who has vanished from critical view but achieved a beautiful and ground-breaking exploration of disability. The McGill Chap-Book (1959), which contains contributions by a young Leonard Cohen. Without access to such materials, I would never have been able to write a study of Pierce’s series; without owning them, opening their uncut pages with a knife, marking them up, gazing at them on my shelf, being able to consult them on a whim, and having them to turn to in the evening after closing the harsh light of my laptop, the difficult, slow task would have been all the slower and more difficult. What the study contains of value, it owes in large part to the boxes of invisible light found at The Word. Rare books purveyed by Adrian, Donna, Brendan, and the rest of the staff have undoubtedly helped me, but the utility of the bookshop to my career is not the final note that I would strike here. Nor is it humour, although I have left the shop with many entertaining anecdotes, such as Adrian’s impression of a student who returned his books after dropping my course on early Canadian literature,
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ENGL 228. (“If I had known that Leonard Cohen was not going to be on the syllabus, I would never have signed up for it!”). The final note is delight. We must proclaim the pleasure of the book, the pleasure of buying it from shops like The Word, of having it and reading it and sharing it with the next person. This delight is, I know, part of what drives the current editorial team of Scrivener, devoted as it is to producing two printed issues of the magazine each year, for sale and circulation and, yes, storage on a shelf. Allow me to flesh out what I mean with one last example. With my uncle’s godson I have just finished reading Île mystérieuse (1875) by Jules Verne. It is a magnificent tour of the South Pacific in the nineteenth century. It is a magnificent tour of the human spirit. Of course in some respects it is dated, but in others it possesses a sublime potency of life and amounts to a veritable novel of novels. I recommend it to you, and if you are fortunate you will find a copy at The Word. It is no luxury to read such a book, to turn from the anxiety and disarray of daily life to the pleasure of quietly turning its pages: it is a heritage and a birthright. Tracing its telegraphic wire of meaning through to the end, I am persuaded that, yes, I am yet unchanged To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days, On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues, In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, And solitude. I am unchanged, thanks to The Omnific Word.
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Memoirs of Rue Milton David Tacium
When I started at The Word as Adrian’s first paid employee in August of 1980 there was nothing streetwise about me. I had just emerged from an ambitious if mad master’s degree on Proust and Dante and was fairly steeped in the leaves of literature, with no plan for my life other than to stay surrounded by books. I was content to have a job that wasn’t a career. I could walk home unencumbered after the shop closed, with time and psychic space for myself. The work was often manual. Sometimes I was sent up to the attic, out of bounds to customers to this day. The mounds of dusty paperbacks made navigation problematic. One day I dislodged an old toilet that hadn’t been in use since the Chinese family moved out (the ground floor was once a laundromat); it set off an avalanche that boxed me into the corner. On this job I always ran the risk of getting side-tracked by some volume that had caught my fancy, and this time I was gone long enough to arouse such suspicions. Entombed in tomes, I could just make out Adrian’s stern interrogative monotone calling my name from afar. Later, after he’d helped dig me out, the episode made us giddy, and for me it was a sort of baptism, a symbolic dunk into a world within the world. For fourteen months the plate-glass window of the dark-green shoebox on Milton spared me the need to seek outside company, open a newspaper, turn on the news. It was my screen, and through it all flowed in to us. While shelving books I would overhear snippets of l’air du temps. That was how I learned of the shot that was fired at President Reagan. That was the first I heard Pope Jean Paul II had been attacked. I still recall that grim December day a distraught customer came in informing us John Lennon had been shot. You just knew this was one of those landmark assassinations, up there with Martin Luther King, the Kennedys, Ghandi. That the two aforementioned attempts had failed while Lennon lay in a pool of blood on West 72nd Street only confirmed my worldview: the worst was bound to occur. Sometimes the worst would hit our community. In January we lost John Glassco to a heart attack. He had been living in the ghetto over on Jeanne-Mance and was a faithful customer. His Mémoirs from Montparnasse had blown me away, but only much later, as I became versed in my own experience, did I discover eery affinities to the man. These are, at least according to rumours of his later life in Montréal, too kinky to be gone into here. Perhaps this memoir of mine owes something to him. The world was a dark place and poets were not its unacknowledged legislators—Auden was right to call Shelley out on that—but I had verse at my fingertips and my only desire was to immerse myself in verse. Evelyn Waugh notes somewhere that many a writer of prose starts off writing in verse. I was certainly an example. Most mornings, before opening shop at 10 a.m., I would write for a couple of hours in my Victorian semi-basement flat on Hutchison, a floor I shared with
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a high-class French waiter who was to die of AIDS six short years later. It seemed to me during my months at The Word there was only one issue to resolve—not whether to write poetry or prose, but what sort of poetry to write, formal or free. No idle question, it split poets into two camps, made natural brothers and sisters into sworn adversaries. The formalists said it took a Walt Whitman to make art of free verse. The freesters scorned the old school stiffness of poetasters bound to their conventions. Both conversed with me, in vivum and through their texts, exhorting me, offering precept and example. In the flesh, the practitioners of free verse were a far more common species. They made up the bulk of the Véhicule poets, the ones who gave monthly readings of their latest chapbooks, who came and browsed and bought—although there was one, Ken Norris, who, having just returned from a lengthy stay in the South Sea Islands, proudly told me he no longer read anything at all. From now on he would write and write only. Hmm, I thought. The most flamboyant was Artie Gold. Artie lived just one street up, on Lorne where it hooks up into a back lane so peaceful as to evoke the illusion of a weekend in the Townships or the Laurentians, though a mere block from where the Alouettes now play football. Artie was an inspired manic genius who seldom missed a day at The Word, the accordion hinge of the door a sprung rhythm as he barged in, always already reciting. He liked to riffle through coffee table books on de Chirico or Jackson Pollock. The Word was a stop along his daily beat of Montréal, just as his idol Frank O’Hara used to case the streets of New York. Artie’s libido for life was straight out of Frank Harris, Henry Miller. One day I overheard him chatting with Elizabeth Spencer, whose claim to fame went back to her 1960 novel Light in the Piazza. At last word, the Southern dame of letters is still writing at ninety, but this was forty years ago and she already seemed a pale flower. It was like matching a toy poodle with a Rottweiler. Ms. Spencer got off lucky, buying Artie’s latest book with a promise she’d read it. A genuine parasite, Artie owed his survival to the cooking and cleaning of Mary Brown, mother of a former girlfriend. I was too distracted by Artie’s verbal fireworks to study the psychic underpinnings of the arrangement, how Mary tolerated being called Brown as she fed and sheltered her erstwhile potential son-in-law. My own still somewhat constipated nature, however, tended to cling to iambs and anapests. I’d made personal acquaintance with poets of a certain international stature, and all but one were proponents of formal prosody. (The exception being Allen Ginsberg, who’d held a hand out to me in St Mark’s in the Bowery and said with a glimmer, “Hi, I’m Allen,” inviting me to an after-hours party. It felt like I was selling my soul just by accepting, but that’s another tale). My poetic mentors were, in order of appearance, the English poet F.T. Prince (1912–2003), the expat Canadian Daryl Hine (1936–2012), and the Eastern seaboard James Merrill (1926–1995), son of the founder of Merrill Lynch. It was Merrill who wrote of his flat in Connecticut, “The only feet that patter here are metrical.” These poets had two things in common, apart from their devotion to poetry as verse: they had all known my idol W.H. Auden personally, and they had all set foot in The Word.
Tacium 17
As for Frank Prince, whom I’d known since 1974, he owed his start to a personal recommendation by the then Faber editor T.S. Eliot, who had also arranged a meeting back in the ‘30s between the young Prince and W.B. Yeats, then 80, in Sligo. I trembled before such lineage. It was as if by six degrees of separation a direct line connected me all the way to Paul Verlaine, whom Yeats had gone to visit in Paris as a youth. It was poets of their ilk, from the Elizabethans to the present day, who lined the back wall of The Word. The locals sold on the racks by the front window, as if many were called inside but few chosen, the back wall being canonic. (A third category were the rejects, for though Adrian would never throw away a book, he would offer some five for a buck on the outside windowsill). My mentors spoke dissuasively of free verse. Frank, for whom the most perfect line of English poetry was in Pope’s Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, “Even mitred Rochester would nod the head,” used to urge it upon me that the demands of verse forms intensified the feeling that was already there. Measured verse as discipline for a drifting mind. This quarrel over poetry in free vs. formal verse overlapped a personal existential quandary hitting me just then with full force, vis-à-vis my sexual orientation. This dubious analogy wasn’t entirely of my own invention. Frank’s idea of formal verse ran parallel to his views on sex. He liked to quote Rupert Brooke at me as saying homosexuality was “second rate.” (Never mind the rumours, rife to this day, concerning Rupert’s sexuality). Like free verse, homosexuality was the easy way out, whereas there was nothing more complex and challenging than a full formal relationship with a woman. Frank may have derived his conviction from Yeats himself, who had spent several years in torment over Maud Gonne, his muse of the inspired lines “The folly that man does / Or must suffer, if he woos / A proud woman not kindred of his soul.” By this account, I still had thirty years of folly to look forward to. Coincidentally, the poet I considered Montréal’s best, also a regular in The Word—David Solway (though he’d have passed the laurel on to Peter Van Toorn)—said to me one day that there was nothing more difficult yet worthy of striving for in life than the love of a woman. It all chimed with what I’d flipped through one day in a potboiler called Sex & Morality from the psychology section over by the new gas stove, about how unreal homosexuals were, pathetically trying to preserve themselves from expectations on their manhood, which they perceived as excessive. Homosexuals were those who sought a cheap means to achieve orgiastic desire without commitment. They were poor sods doomed to paltry emotional returns. I knew one thing for certain: women were nothing if not challenging. They were at best so bright and beautiful, only to prove more complex than higher algebra. Maybe those The Word drew in were not a representative sample of womanhood. How to forget one as outstanding as Delise Allison, the Englishwoman in her mid-50s who’d lived several years in Kenya? She would drop in on her way to her apartment on Hutchison from the Redpath Natural History Museum, which she curated. Saviour of squirrels, lover of cats (one of hers was called
Tacium 19
Pythagoras Pyewacket Smith) and young men, she put me onto Benjamin Franklin’s On Choosing a Mistress, which listed eight advantages of an older woman, the most important her gratitude. I wasn’t the first to be smitten by her delights. Leonard Cohen had once written a poem just for her (When the streams come... when the oceans come... —“The only one of his I ever liked,” she always claimed, her taste in poetry running more to Ogden Nash). I seemed to thrive on women as colossally improbable as Delise, women with charisma who proved as unattainable as a major publisher. Most never found out from my lips the turmoil they were causing. Like Marina M, twenty-nine-year-old fine arts student who often appeared in the store with a brown paper grocery bag of novels and biographies. Marina took cash. Marina dictated my mood, fabulous one day, a no-show the next. I got to know her and her mother; her vivid account of her ex-boyfriend tested the boundaries of my sanity until I despaired of hers. Fairer still was McGill News editor Charlotte H, 35, pure and fresh in her loose-hemmed taffeta skirts that swirled down just below the knees, her sensuous sandaled feet tapping out all the meter I could ever desire. Her poetry was a mix of New England Quaker and Haight-Ashbury acid trip (she’d lived there in 1968 before moving to a commune twenty miles from Taos, New Mexico). I never got close enough to make a Maud Gonne of her either. Nor of Andrea, not even close: the brilliantly enticing Hungarian Alpha-girl with her nine-foot boa constrictor named Basil already had the squeeze on Geoff, immured in philosophy and the classics, who was to take over from me as The Word’s best man. Nor Joëlle G, the stunning Swiss woman just one year older than I but oh how much more versed in the love game! Joëlle related to me at some level deeper than her many men because, I guess, I just wasn’t threatening to her. Only to me would she confide what I didn’t need to hear: viz., she was lesbian at the core, heterosexual only in practice. For I often wondered, in my struggle to define myself, whether I wasn’t straight at the core and only in practice homosexual, only occasionally. My first fumbling experiences left me feeling I had betrayed who I was. Probably I was just hungry for experience or, to put it less romantically, starved for sex, tossing and turning at night for lack of appeasement, a highly conductive live wire. Was having sex with a guy just the easy way out, sort of like writing free instead of formal verse? You took what came to you (certainly much more easily come by in downtown Montréal than where I hailed from), there were no rules to obey, you had to re-invent everything every time, only maybe to have to settle for a residual feeling of something not quite satisfying. In any case, you’re not ready to get too involved with anyone when you’re not sure who you are. If I wasn’t living romance in any conventional sense, at least my intense short-lived encounters were schooling me in life’s comedy, not to say sharpening my sense of the tragic. I was finding it humbling to be stirred by anyone, for it put me at their mercy, shattering prior definitions of myself. Since the source of attraction was seemingly not dependent on gender, I figured I was most probably bi, even though I repeatedly heard that there was no such animal
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—as if versatility spelled a lack of integrity. Moreover, there was nothing facile about being moved by a guy’s beauty. Nor was it obvious what to do about it. For example, the slim dark-complexioned youth who started dropping in almost every day in search of French classics in translation simply made my throat catch every time he walked in. French writers, he confided, were “all so nuts”. I befriended this rebel of a kid, who turned out to be all of sixteen, living with his mother in Pierrefonds and working in a downtown pet shop, devoting my lunch hour to hanging out with him, inviting him back to my place, until he almost turned into my Rimbaud. It seemed the only thing giving shape to my adventure was the self-imposed structure of formal verse. But that it had to be heterosexual was plain myth— or bad analogy. After all, there was an obvious homo-erotic current in the verse of all my models, Frank Prince included. My favourite Auden poem, “Lay your sleeping head, my love/Human on my faithless arm”, was inspired by a lad. Just as were most of Shakespeare’s sonnets—another story again. Gender preference was perhaps just a kind of super-structure atop the motor of desire. And formal verse, a poetic super-ego trying to attach some sense to free-wheeling libido. It is tempting to put a Freudian slant on the question. The Word was such a Freudian place, albeit with a plush armchair in lieu of a couch in the middle of the floor. It still strikes me as a forum more fitting for Freud than for Marx, though if you stare upon it from across Milton you might notice a leftward lilt. My mentor Auden also leaned left, at least as a young man when he was writing his finest poetry. By the time he penned “In Memory of Sigmund Freud,” in 1939, his early enthusiasm had dampened but his verse was as formal as ever. “To be free / is often to be lonely,” it says, and ends: Our rational voice is dumb. Over his grave the household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved: sad is Eros, builder of cities, and weeping anarchic Aphrodite. When he came to talk at McGill some thirty years later he was a high Anglican alcoholic with little time left to live. But in 1981 I had Auden on the brain. I fancied him in the far corner where the poetry meets the history section, leafing through a text he might come to the counter to purchase.
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Learning to Browse Zoé Duhaime
I am lucky to have grown up in a city with an enormous secondhand bookshop, perched near the ocean. The main branch had three separate storeys, and there was another of its kind several blocks away. Many of its contemporaries in my city have since shuttered and disappeared into the bricks as we feared, but this one has held strong. It has many strengths, but part of its charm is the ceaselessness. I could never hope to pick up each book on its shelves before the whisk of new arrivals and departures, a shifting kaleidoscope of books fit to envelope a girl. For most of my life I visited only the fiction section of this shop, and to call it a section is laughable, disdainful. Fiction was kept on the outside wall of its main room, which meant that the authors within the ‘A’ were, in volume, more than triple the totality of my personal collection, perhaps in width four wingspans, and twice my height. A good walkthrough, just to make eye contact with the colours on the shelves, would take an hour, and that is without stopping—as you should— to read. And so, while knowing now the labyrinthine bookshop of my hometown, an empire, I would like to write about the many worlds within a smaller shop. It was by good fortune that I moved nearby The Word. The summer of my arrival in Montréal I had been lamenting to anyone who would listen about the particular sadness of leaving a personal library on the other side of a country, and having to bring only twenty books. At the time such scarcity seemed appalling—I had been used to gluttony, starstruck and washed over by the endless spines of my secondhand bookshop, a hoarder of unread baubles that I would pick up because I thought I should. Imagine my delight, finding that The Word was only five minutes away. This was the entirety of the season: I do not remember much else, the summer having been overtaken by reading, dreaming about reading, and walking through the poplar gauze on my way to new books. The first time I found the shopfront on a walk, I thought perhaps I would find an essay collection I had been thinking about. This is how I had always approached bookbuying, you see: either I would stand in the stacks with my phone opened to Goodreads, or I would go in with a list and swoop towards things I already knew. I did not find that collection. I did not even find what I had imagined my ‘backup’ read to be, nor anything else by the two authors. In the cool afternoon of my first discovery, I was embarrassed that I had asked for something that now, in hindsight, would probably never have been there, and I was frightened by the shelves around me. I had spent most of my adult life ashamed that I hadn’t read more seriously—meaning thoroughly, canonically, considerately—and the works before me were daunting. I was frightened to read one thing before the other, and I was frightened that if I started somewhere troublesome that I could be forever blown off-course by
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my own unrefined tastes. I knew enough to have a general lay of the land, but not enough to leap freely from story to story. As a friend once said: I watched myself reading, and couldn’t disappear. The next time I visited I did not ask for anything; I laid my hands on spines I didn’t know, and tipped them over, like a boat, so that I could read their backs. When I came to the bottom of the shelf, I sat down, cross-legged, and looked at the jewels along the floor. They didn’t have the seasonal, glittering dross my hometown indiscriminately sold, which though wonderful in its own ways, clotted my tastes and took up my time. There is only so much time to read books, after all, when you’re in school, when you work, when your father is dying, etc. Sometimes a string of books against your taste can poison your appetite for fiction, but alone as I was, I ventured boldly forth. I didn’t know it at the time, but what I was experiencing was trust. I trusted The Word to have collected excellent writing, and I trusted myself to know it. I was learning to browse. At first I bought some things that I thought I ought to, but those are not the tomes which unhinged my tidy bibliophilia. That can be blamed on a little volume from the bottom shelf, in the ‘W’s by the cash register and patient owner. This book was wrapped in a tawny sleeve, upon which two upturned hands were printed, The Logogryph (2004) by Thomas Wharton. The paper felt thick, as though for watercolours, and the publisher’s mark was a stylish ‘g’, for Gaspereau Press. It felt like this was my first time meeting a Canadian book in the wild, and the synopsis was sparse. I bought it immediately, and the bookseller told me that there were always treasures near the bottom, out of sight, that this was a lovely little book. It was the first time I could recall buying a book without meeting it first through a review, unspoiled by the opinions of others, and I read it by myself one day, at Square St. Louis, but really worlds away, for The Logogryph has many parts, many places, and I was pulled into the revel by the fountain. That was the first chapter of what has been the happiest year of reading in my life. My world came loose at the bind, and I was free to wander. Of the gifts The Word has given me: to pay attention to publisher’s marks, to notice what comes out of our country and where; I learned a sense of canon, so that wherever I go I feel as though I have a steward, that I am following a guide but also that I am leading myself; it is the first place where a bookseller brought me a special edition from their private stores, and where I held it like a bird’s nest, so in love with the green paper that I was scared to breathe; it is in that shop where I had the first glimmer of what it feels like to collect, to belong to the gently mad. And firstly but finally, a gift so simple it hardly seems to belong to the list above, I was taught to browse. Within that little shop, I was taught simply to look.
Duhaime 23
A Few Remarks on a Small Bookshop Darren Bifford [1] It can happen after a time that one admits having acquired enough books. It’s time we had a talk; you have a problem. You will never read them all. Consider the moving costs, the labour of packing and unpacking, the love of your children… [2] When I was younger I yearned for large used bookshops. I recall wandering around the stacks of Powell’s Books in Portland. I was seventeen and on a road trip to California. I needed a map to navigate the gigantic rooms and several floors, the square footage of an entire city block. A box in the backseat of the car barely held the quantity of books I’d accumulated by the time I returned to B.C. My friend and travel companion, already sensing the obsessive excess of my book buying, called me over to the Classics room within which thousands of books were stacked. In his best mock-serious tone he held my hands and said: “you’ll want to get all of these.” [3] Now, however, institutions like Powell’s or The Strand fill me with an acute sense of revulsion. The vast mass of remaindered texts in bins, old biographies of some forgotten celebrity or another, Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy, battered copies of Gibran, accusations against the very idea of reading instead of living, instead of looking life directly in its human face. Book browsing becomes an existential battering, the sheer number of books effecting a strange transfiguration upon themselves from their individual meanings to a collective meaninglessness. I wonder what exactly I’m looking for, and why. [4] It’s useful, however, to distinguish between a bookshop and a dump. (Here, of course, I’m thinking about The Word). A bookshop is not a room full of books. Any room might very well be filled with books and simply remain, dispiritedly, more like an immobile box than anything else. The space occupied by a good bookshop is like the form of a poem. How large the bookshop is—how many books it manages to contain on its shelves—is akin to the length of a poem, and has as much relevance to its quality. No one these days has much patience for a new epic poem. I prefer poems that manage to be what they are in the space of roughly a page. A compressed experience that has little room to waste your time.
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[5] Hence it’s the case that after nearly twenty years I usually find something worth buying when I stop in at The Word. A good bookshop compels return visits as a good poem does rereading. There’s always the sense that something has been missed or overlooked. If not a book, then a suggestion of another book that strikes like an intuition while you browse the stacks. Part of this, of course, has to do with the fact (as one eventually overhears the staff explain again and again) that it is very selective. I’ve seen many people lugging out of the shop the same boxes of books they carried in with them—as if a bookshop were a book drop. It’s a selectivity for which I’m grateful; it distinguishes between what has value because it will sell and what might sell only rarely but has value—say, a hard cover edition of William Epson’s The Structure of Complex Words or an out-of-print (and entirely under-read) edition of Jacques Maritain’s True Humanism, or Owen Barfield’s Poetic Diction found on the top corner of one of the poetry shelves one day when the book—mostly forgotten—had been recommended by W.H. Auden. [6] There’s been talk recently at The Word about replacing the old summer fan with a new fan. The new fan is rather slender; its blades are quiet; its speed adjustable. The old fan, having none of these qualities, forces one to walk around where it sits and roars. It may seem a little matter, such a change, but I think we must be wary against upsetting the ecological balance that sustains the life of a member of an endangered species. [7] Someday, if I’m lucky, I’ll have died but The Word will remain exactly the same. Then someone will take these books back to where I found them, a bit like the scattering of one’s ashes over the streets upon which one has walked a long time.
Bifford 25
Daniel Galef Things I Have Found In Books A five dollar bill. A lock of hair. A pink ribbon. A page torn from another book by a different author not in the library, whom I later looked up and read every work of. A receipt for laundry. A receipt for pizza. A receipt for books. A receipt for an un-losable bookmark. A business card belonging to one Mr Herbert G. Steubenmeyer, who works in a large company that doesn’t like to divulge what it does on little bits of cardboard, with a phone number scrawled in red ink on the reverse. Bookmarks bearing the names of every bookstore and library I have ever heard of, and then some. A bookmark bearing the name of a sewage treatment facility. A wrapper from a tea bag. A wrapper from a condom. A receipt for a bulk order of glossy paper rolls for receipts. A business card printed with the phone number found on the back of the business card of Herbert Steubenmeyer, and belonging to Catherine Warhart, who sells bits of the planet to people who will never look at it. Two suicide notes in the same hand, marking the third and fifth chapters of a collection of poetry. Little stiff forms that fall out of magazines and onto the floor. Memos, post-its, addenda, errata. A slip of crisp, white paper that was once baked into a cookie and says: Learn Chinese. There is no Chinese. But my lucky number is zero. Five yuan, ten euros, five Canadian dollars, and fifteen pesos, not all at once. A black and white photograph of a youth in uniform, with writing on the back too private to relate. Gum. Temporary tattoos from vending machines in waiting rooms I once had nightmares about. (Don’t ask how I know they’re the same rooms). Class notes. Shopping lists. Letters clearly intended for other eyes. An unsigned poem about futility and ephemerality, written in lipstick or blood. A handwritten book recommendation from an anonymous benefactor, whose taste turns out to be decent. These are, for the most part, true. I have a small drawer to prove it, filled with bits and snatches from the lives of others who may or may not exist. Scraps and snippets torn from context, untethered and whipping in a temporal wind trying to wash it away. Maybe someday this page will find its way into a drawer like mine, or a book, torn out and dogeared, with half of a secret scribbled on the back, marking someone else’s place between where they were and where they have yet to go.
Galef 27
Louise Hill Ode to the Bibliographer for E.M. et al.
In the place where the page-musk is an atmosphere, through earth to the box under the oaks, over pockmarked plains into pockets, under seas that bleed the black and warp the white, through singed strips that twinge of travesty, beside pulpy woven trays that smell like birth, down into the cellar where they locked it, up the mountain where they left it in the stone, over the ripped, split, pristine, and sacred, the speculating index sprints, riding the print to that one. It taps its hit, flips, and eyes awake to drink it. As they lap from left to right, the head nods, giving license to the other, harmonizer, who takes up whittled pencil, kisses it to paper, and makes it known. A sighed breath and a deeper nod of the head prompt both to recede from their posts, lift the half-moon spectacles— the badge of the trade—and soothe sated pupils. I am almost done this one. She can see it, soon as it always will be: sewn and set slim, in a sober colour, shipped across, over, under, to its place in the many, between two brothers— high up, in the middle, to the right. There, tanned and uncracked, it will wait for a long time.
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Until another index grips it, tips it, new eyes greet it, read it, and a soundless mouth swells with thanks. There, across the breathing human canon, they meet. She does it for
that one.
She puts her spectacles back on.
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Pearl Pirie Kids in a Candy under purpling skies how fast can bicycles sigh if a bi could psych— oh never mind. keep peddling. and as bikes are locked we dash, freckling, behind glass of The Word. my word! the timing is dramatic. claps of thunder and flashes. a tumble of 3 others come in after us shaking like chickens in a dust bath. a Hollywood sheet of water. we’re sweet, sure, but won’t melt inside this brick cave. except into shelves, dissolving into new finds, wish lists— blissed fingers flip deckle cuts. beside the red crest; I Didn’t Buy it On Amazon, breathe in that. might have to get a black tote to supplement my sack.
Pirie 31
Ilona Martonfi Hygge at The Word Hut Below the mountain on the other side of a river winter solstice, 45 degrees north, where the sun sets at four one room stable, attic loft an old Chinese laundry Montréal used bookstore 469 Milton Street McGill Ghetto readings and literary salons black rotary telephone what’s hygge about Adrian and Donna’s homemade hot Gløgg? Hygge at Yuletime it sounds like “hYOOguh” —it’s even harder to translate now that we have a name for it —warmth, togetherness, friends and in the Nordic darkness poets, novelists, and memoirists we’re hygge’ing right now with a glass of mulled wine: cinnamon, cloves, anise slivered almonds and raisins. Art deco armchair beside the warm stove, on a frosty December afternoon. Ah, så koselig.
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Laced ankle boots, wool mittens tobogganing on a snowy hill tucked under sheepskin, scent of freshly baked ginger biscuits hygge by curling up on a bench with a favourite book you bought from the lair, the glow of a log fire spruce lit with blue lights.
Martonfi 33
Timothy Quigley Like a Jazz Singer Like a jazz singer diving deep within a word distorting, inhabiting— walking through a room costumed in its letters— And others, Sliiiiiide intoverse as if it were a suit exclusively designed for their frame, While others, still, whoop-shoo-be-come-the-suit.
Quigley 35
Jeffrey Mackie For The Word I don’t know everything, I know what I like But I am open to suggestion. I used to know what I wanted to read Then I learned The world has many roads And books are maps to the new directions Books and readers companions to the journey. Book lovers, Before that term became a slogan Ready to suggest new maps In a shop of magic, a tradition and institution Going into the 21st Century, with People who became friends Welcoming and curating a community I am currently 6000 miles away But I will be coming home And the little store Is one of the places of home.
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Noah Zacharin we went to the word bearers of the thirsty quill. deer at dawn, ibex on the veldt at dusk; hyena at midnight, throats quivering with possibility went to syllables clattering like shoreline pebbles went to court the djinn of metaphor, shift tectonic plates of slow rhythm. nothing was more critical: select and place the word beside worthy peers thus endure typhus, typhoon, boredom. we went to the word to breathe time suspended in honey of yellowing pages. its long-bearded elfin presence offered to slake our thirst. we went with coppers and confetti to pay the boatman, hear what the oracle had to say. as/ionized atoms sensitive to a sound’s charge as/meteorologists perceiving blues on the atomic level as/errant knights seeking the copse at the forest center we went to the word to spines thin as thermometers gravid with weather, pipettes of concentrated elixirs, imprinted vertebrae titling volumes to recall it now, it took place in perpetual haze we were 26-pound fish on a blazing day, drifting in a dim realm, with tranquil, wide-open eyes though the world thought little of our crafte so longe to lerne, we believed the tale, nightly bent to pull the sword from the underwood
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to the rhythms of a ringing bell, staccato keys, the carriage return. exotic train we rode: parallax to a point of rocking certainty. now we know the living are no more than urns of skin, draped on bone, stuffed with ash. yet once in a lifetime, with backs to Milton Street, facing stacks of Milton— John to Acorn— we read words we had penned, knew the joy of opening our mouths displaying our great flowers blooming in the dark soil. went to the word, bought books, thought books. with a vocabulary cavalry and The Book of Forms we went to the word to murder silence and leave it bleeding on those Montréal streets. and as sweet as summer could be, it was winter that mattered more: Aylmer, Prince Arthur, Milton. those streets after a snowfall. quiet, white pages where pigeons and sparrows made a humble and meaningful mark.
Zacharin 39
Contributors Jassim Ahmed is an artist who breathes dreams and emotions. Most of his work —whether it be a painting or a writing piece—is inspired by a desire to create something that he can touch and feel deeply, and then flex a small smile of joy. Find him on Instagram @jaxhmed or email: jassim.ahmed@mail.mcgill. ca. He’s open to collaborative work. Darren Bifford is the author of False Spring (Brick Books, 2018) and Wedding in Fire Country (Nightwood Editions, 2012). He’s also the editor (with Warren Heiti) of Chamber Music: The Poetry of Jan Zwicky (Wilfred Laurier UP, 2015). He lives in Montréal. Simon Dardick is Co-Publisher of Véhicule Press. He is a co-founder of QSPELL (now the QWF book awards) and a past president of the AELAQ. Zoé Duhaime is a writer and illustrator currently working on her first novel. She holds a B.A. from the University of Victoria and will be attending Ryerson University for the Certificate in Publishing this year. In a past life, she was a political cartoonist, a speechwriter, and a youth poet laureate. François Émond est Directeur artistique du magazine Québec Science pendant 18 ans, il a aussi travaillé dans le domaine de l’édition pour les magazines Commerce, l’Actualité et à l’Office du film du Canada. Formation en communication graphique à l’Université Laval à Québec et à l’Université d’Alberta à Edmonton. En ce moment il est à son compte.
Daniel Galef has published over 200 poems in Scrivener, The Raintown Review, Prevention, and New York Magazine. At McGill University he wrote or edited for dozens of university publications and won the Krivy Award for Excellence in Playwriting at the McGill Drama Festival. He is the official Webster’s Dictionary citation for the word “interfaculty.” Louise Hill is a hippie—minus the drugs and free love. Jeffrey Mackie is a poet whose work has been published both nationally and internationally. In addition to his own writing, Mackie hosted the popular Literary Report on CKUT radio for ten years. He is currently an Anglican seminarian in Montréal. Eli MacLaren teaches Canadian literature, poetics, and the history of books and publishing in the Department of English at McGill University. He is the author of Dominion and Agency: Copyright and the Structuring of the Canadian Book Trade, 1867–1918 (2011). He is one of the directors of the Montréal International Poetry Prize, which will hold its next competition in 2020. Nancy Marrelli is Co-Publisher of Véhicule Press, Archivist Emerita at Concordia University, and Director of Archives of the Italian-Canadian Archives of Quebéc.
Contributors 41
Ilona Martonfi is an editor, poet, curator & activist, author of four poetry books, her latest title is Salt Bride (Inanna, 2019). Forthcoming, The Tempest (Inanna, 2020). Published in five chapbooks, journals and anthologies. Artistic Director of the Visual Arts Centre Reading Series. Argo Bookshop Readings Series. QWF 2010 Community Award. Pearl Pirie lives in rural Quebéc. Her works have been published in three previous collections and selected for a number of anthologies. She has run a small press for over a decade. She gets to Montréal when she can. Visit her at www.pearlpirie.com Timothy Quigley’s short stories have appeared in the Chariton Review, Line Zero Journal of Art and Literature, La Ostra Magazine, Writer’s World, as well as online publications. His novella, Kissing the Hag, was released by Pixel Hall Press. He lives in Salem, Massachusetts, and teaches writing at Salem State University.
42 SCRIVENER
David Tacium is the author of the newly published novel Taking Down the Golden Boy, which is available at The Word and Paragraphe bookstores as well as on Amazon. Amateur violinist and polyglot, he taught for many years at Concordia and the Cégep Édouard-Montpetit. His PhD thesis in Comparative Literature—Le Dandysme et la crise de l’identité masculine à la fin du XIXe siècle—was published electronically by Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal in 1998. Noah Zacharin is a Montréal-born writer and musician. 8 CDs of original music, numerous appearances on other folks’ recordings, frequent tours to US and beyond. Before finding himself in Toronto, he was a widely-published poet, translator, and critic. He never stopped loving the words, and is getting his legs back. More at noahsong.com
Notes
Notes 43
44 SCRIVENER will return...
Image: Dariush Alexander, Idols are Fake (detail), 2019
The Capilano Review
Issue 3.39 on Collaboration Featuring new writing by Emily Carr, Junie Désil, Jónína Kirton, Chris Turnbull, Jami McCarty & Jacqueline Turner, artwork by Dariush Alexander and Hana Amani, a special tribute to poet Kevin Killian, and more. www.thecapilanoreview.com
F iddleh e a d The
Atlantic Canada's International Literary Journal
Looking for a literary slam dunk? Then memorize our new contest deadlines! We’ve changed our contest format from one contest with two categories to three separate contests! As part of this revamping, we’re introducing a creative nonfiction contest!
Creative Nonfiction Submissions Open March 1
Deadline: June 1
Fiction
Submissions Open June 1
Deadline: September 1
Poetry
Submissions Open September 1
Deadline: December 1
The Fiddlehead | Campus House | 11 Garland Court, UNB PO Box 4400 | Fredericton NB | E3B 5A3 | www.thefiddlehead.ca
PRISM INTERNATIONAL PRESENTS THE PACIFIC SPIRIT
POETRY PRIZE DEADLINE: October 15, 2019 JUDGE: Katherena Vermette
THE JACOB ZILBER
PRIZE FOR FICTION
DEADLINE: January 15, 2020 JUDGE: Kristen Arnett
CONTEST PRIZES: Grand Prize: $1,500 First Runner-Up: $600 Second Runner-Up: $400
We waive entry fees for Indigenous and low-income writers. Entrants receive a one-year subscription to PRISM. Visit our website for contest entry guidelines:
PRISMMAGAZINE.CA
Submissions open every Fall and Spring Back issues available For submission guidelines, upcoming events, or to contact our editors, visit our website:
scrivenercreativereview.com
contributors
Spotlight on: The Word Bookstore
Jassim Ahmed Darren Bifford Simon Dardick Zoé Duhaime François Émond Daniel Galef Louise Hill Jeffrey Mackie Eli MacLaren Nancy Marrelli Ilona Martonfi Pearl Pirie Timothy Quigley David Tacium Noah Zacharin
with a spotlight on