Early Days of the Montreal Small Press

NM: I think overall people were aware of each other but it was not, there was some interaction but I don’t think there were a lot of shared projects. They were certainly some translations and at that time we tended to do face-a-face where you publish the English on one side and the French on the other, which is not very popular at all anymore. In fact, any kind of bilingual publication is considered a kiss of death at this point.

LR: We still see some here at Expozine although not a lot.

NM: No, it’s considered a marketing nightmare because neither community likes it apparently. I don’t understand why but that seems to be…

LR: What the smart ones are doing now are wordless comics and zines, but this would only apply to more abstract material.

NM: I think there was great awareness between the Anglophone and Francophone communities but I think people were very busy with what they were doing and tended to be more within their own community.

LR: But the resource sharing again like the occasional printing was similar to what it is today I guess. I mean when you are too small to be completely separate then…

SD: Absolutely. There is one printer I would like to mention, Chez Ginette Nault. She and her husband were just incredibly unique people who I brought one book I think is a spectacular book and it’s…

AKE: The book is so good that we both brought a copy.

SD: It’s In Guildenstern County by Peter VanToorn, who was just a phenomenal poet. This was printed by Ginette Nault and it’s done in colour; they did really lovely work, and they did a lot of English poets.

LR: To this day, a lot of our regular (Expozine) exhibitors have printed with her up until… I think she might have packed it up about two years ago…

SD: Is that right? That is incredible. Yeah, I think she must be of a certain age.

LR: What about the… October 1970. From what I understand there was a lot of opportunistic rounding up of folk, did that touch on anyone you know like authors and poets? Any creative types on the Anglophone side, colleagues that you knew from the scene, caught up in any of that?

SD: It was mostly… it happened to our friends, mostly political friends and friends who were in the media who were picked up. But not too many poets. It’s a shame! They should have. No, it wasn’t the literary types.

LR: Another thing I wanted to bring up is how we see a continuum from the 60’s in a way, the idea that we are seeing today at Expozine, has roots in practices like cooperative presses, working together for events, promotion, posters and sharing space.

SD: You are right, because I think the diversity that we were talking about when we were describing the scene in the 70’s in around Véhicule art gallery, I think Expozine is quite unique. Somebody came by our booth today, at our kiosque saying that they’ve been to one in Toronto and it’s just a totally different tone, and I think you have the same kind of exciting cultural tensions and achievements that you have here.

LR: Just to verify while you guys are in the room, what about the Beats in the 50’s? Weren’t people putting out small press of published works in the 40’s and… I’m trying to think the community and the practices that evolved in your era or in the mid 60’s to mid 70’s are more the ones that led to what is happening today? I know you only came to Montreal in the mid 60’s. Was there anything similar as far as you know before that?

SD: You had Louis Dudek and Irving Layton, they were tremendous and there was the McGill 490 Review and there was…

AKE: The whole modernist movement started with Louis Dudek and Irving Layton and that was a period of huge activity, obviously prior to this but I think that there was a gap. One of the central figures here was Artie Gold, infamous Artie Gold. In the late 60’s there were poetry readings, huge poetry series at Concordia which you know, just prior to this made a big influence and George Bowering was there, and the Black Mountain poets would come and read, huge names from the States and that made a big difference and influence on Artie Gold.

NM: Incidentally, these are available at the Concordia Archives. There was a tremendous program when the Hall Building was opened in 1966. It was one of the first university buildings in Canada that was, at the time, wired. It was wired for audio and video and they recorded almost everybody who came to the university. A lot of those things have survived. We did transfers of many things from audio and videotape. There is still more to be done but there is a lot of it, which has been done, and those materials are available for consultation at the Concordia Archives.

LR: One thing I find interesting is when you talk about zines or fanzines — most likely a word that did not exist when you guys were talking about small press publications, or I guess chapbooks perhaps would have been the word used then. But when I see a mix, such as DaVinci which is a mix of different artists, graphics, poetry, abstract writing, collage, all mixed together and printed independently –that’s what we would call a zine.

AKE: There are a huge variety of things. This was again my friend Fred Louder, who produced a little monthly zine, magazine, periodical, which was 4X4. So we would have four local poets with four poems each. And this would sell for $1.50. Very attractive. It is actually quite a collectible because August Kleinzahler is in it, and he’s become a very important poet in San Francisco.

Four by Four, A Selection of Poets. 1982.

A lot of these magazines or periodicals would attempt to give community information, when the readings were, you couldn’t Google all that kind of stuff, you had to get it from something like this.

SD: These are my examples. I love show and tell. These are a series of… when you think about them, they are very slight, they are eight pages with a cover. Very simple design, they were called Quarterbacks, sold for a quarter, designed by Glen Siebrasse, who actually designed books with Louis Dudek as part of DeltaCan. He became Delta (I think), and we printed his books under the name of New Delta. He was kind of a shadowy figure, whatever happened to Glen Siebrasse? But these books are lovely, these were printed in 1970. So that’s pretty early. And as you can see there are a lot of equivalencies to today (holding up the zine).

LR: We already talked about the fact that you had a offset press or a Gestetner press that was used, I don’t know if there were any risograph multicolour, that’s all the rage today, quite a few exhibitors printing on that at Expozine today. I am curious about where these were sold? Was it much like somebody would have to do today to publish their own zine, aside from putting it up on the web which wasn’t a thing then, so going out there on foot having a circuit of small stores that were accepting consignment? Magazine stands or news stands?

AKE: There were three basic places: The Word, of course the Double Hook, Judy Mapple’s store, she’s a huge supporter of local poets and another huge supporter of local poets, Mr. George at Argo and went back way before I was there.

SD: And the Mansfield Book Mart. You’d find them on the bottom bookshelf collecting dust.

AKE: Yes, when Jack Cannon was there. So I guess four places.

NM: But aside from this, certainly for women’s publications, which there were masses of small publications on all kind of women’s issues, some of them literary, some of them not literary, many of them not literary… You just got them wherever you got them, you went to an event and there were publications being sold. People sold their own stuff. They picked up the things, you went to New York and you might come back with 50 copies of something or you went to a demonstration in Boston and you found stuff, it was just everywhere. The stuff was just all around you. At all the events you went to, people you knew, it was very underground. The women’s publications were not being sold in bookstores anywhere that I know of.

LR: Or maybe at resource centers like Heads & Hands or something like that?

NM: Yeah, and the women centre which opened on Saint-Laurent, it was above where the Charcuterie Hongroise is today, that was where the first women centre was and certainly we sold publications there. I can’t remember where we got them. We just had them. And there were events, and at these events, these publications were sold. People would get together for common cause (a protest or discussion or concert) and at all these events, they sold these publications.

LR: Do you recall seeing Logos Magazine?

(all participants) Oh absolutely … Yes …