The Capilano Review : 50th Anniversary Issue(s) : 3:46-3:48

 

Last year, in anticipation of our 50^th anniversary, we invited over a hundred of the magazine’s contributors to submit a term of their choosing to our special anniversary issues, the first of which you now hold in your hands. These terms would be collecting, we said, alongside notable selections from our archive into an experimental glossary—a form we hoped would index the creative practices that make up our literary and arts community while elucidating, as our invitation explained, “some of the questions, shifts, antagonisms, and continuities that have marked five decades of publishing.” Returning to our prompt now, I can’t help but also consider the term “experimental,” itself a point of ongoing discussion at the magazine and one that has generated lively debate: What are our criteria for “experimental” writing? What does it look like on the page, and how does it sound? Who does it include? What kinds of risks does it take, and how does it take them? (Matea Kulić, “Editor’s Note,” 3.46, Spring 2022)

Anniversaries, much like birthdays, are a good time to assess, reassess, examine and celebrate, and Vancouver’s The Capilano Review did just that last year, offering all three 2022 issues as a single, ongoing 50^th anniversary celebratory project. Across a period that also included the shift from Matea Kulić to Deanna Fong as the journal’s main editor [see then-editor Jenny Penberthy's 2010 "12 or 20 (small press) questions" interview on the journal here], the three issues were released as “A – H” (Spring 2022; 3.46), “I – R” (Summer 2022; 3.47) and “S – Z” (Fall 2022; 3.48), producing a self-described triptych “featuring newly commissioned work alongside notable selections from our archive by over a hundred of the magazine’s past contributors.” The range and the ambition of this year-long project is stunning, providing an overview of contributions in a loosely-thematic alphabetical order that offers a vibrancy across each page. If you haven’t yet, or haven’t much, interacted with the journal, this might be the place to begin: the three volumes offer a combined four hundred and fifty-some pages’ worth of essays, poems, stories, visual art, statements, interviews and other works in a wild incredible wealth of material (and contributors too many to list across this particular space) that ripple from the journal’s core of Vancouver out across Canada and well into the international.

Introducing a special double issue (Nos. 8 & 9, Fall 1975/Spring 1976) to memorialize the loss of Bob Johnson, “the man responsible for the original graphic design of The Capilano Review,” then-editor and founder Pierre Coupey wrote: “When we first proposed a magazine at Capilano, I wanted one that would not only print good work, but also one whose design would treat that work with respect.” I would say that such a consideration has remained, thanks to the solid foundations that Coupey and Johnson (among others) originally set up, way back in 1973 over at Vancouver’s Capilano College (the journal and since-university have since parted ways).

The problem with defining yourself by the centre is that you are working backwards. That which is earlier is supposed to be better. Because it was before the erasure, its reinscription is sacrosanct. This is a handy cudgel for authoritarians. Look to the Duvaliers in Haiti for Afrocentrism as policy, where it served to quiet social criticism, where it was at first used to smash the Left, and later to smash democracy altogether. Let them eat Egyptology.
            Fanon excorcised all this in “On National Culture,” espousing an anti-colonialism that is a pragmatic synthesis of old and new in the form of a “fighting phase” of the culture. Returning to previous tradiations is no panacea. The modernity of Fanon’s position leaves room for social change and challenges to old thinking—in other words, Fanon’s position makes space for innovations that Fanon could not himself yet imagine. Ideas are not good just because they’re African. They are good if they lead to liberation.
            And liberation always needs the future. (Wayde Compton, “Afrocentripetalism & Afroperipheralism,” 3.46)

Even beyond considering the amount of other presses and journals that appear to be falling by the wayside lately (Catapult, Bear Creek Gazette, Ambit), it is important to acknowledge those journals (and presses) that are not only still around, but managing to consistently publish an array of stunning work, let alone for fifty years and counting [see my review of their 40th anniversary issue here]. And The Capilano Review isn’t the only one to celebrate, as Arc Poetry Magazine (b. 1978) will soon be releasing their special 100^th issue, Derek Beaulieu recently produced an anthology celebrating twenty-five years of publishing through his combined housepress/№ Press, and even my own above/ground press (b. 1993) is working on some exciting project for this year’s thirtieth anniversary, including a third ‘best of’ anthology out this fall with Invisible Publishing (and don’t forget the pieces posted five years ago for above/ground press’ twenty-fifth, or even the array of pieces published not long after, to celebrate forty years of Stuart Ross’ Proper Tales Press). I wonder what Brick Books, as well, might attempt in two years’ time for their fiftieth?

I haven’t seen a copy of the debut issue of The Capilano Review (despite my best efforts over the years), but as part of the “20^th Anniversary Issue” (Series 2:10, March 1993), then-editor Robert Sherrin offered both a sense of quiet humility and forward thinking in his preface that seems the lifeblood of the journal’s ongoing aesthetic: “It is traditional at such a time to present a retrospective issue, but on this occasion the editors of TCR decided that while it is appropriate the acknowledge those who have contributed significantly to our culture, it is equally important to present those who will extend, transform, and renew our culture. The present issue is our attempt to acknowledge the past and to welcome the future.” Too often, it seems, journals begin with such good and even radical intentions, and become tame as the years continue, some to the point of self-parody, something The Capilano Review has managed to avoid, remaining as vibrant, or perhaps even moreso, than it has ever been. Consistently working beyond the bounds of the straightforward literary journal, The Capilano Review has always seemed a space for a particular assemblage of shared aesthetic approach and rough geography, occasionally branching out into features on and by works by predominantly west coast writers and artists. Whether produced as combined or full-issues, some of these over the years have included features on George Bowering, Daphne Marlatt, Michael Ondaatje, Brian Fawcett, David Phillips, Barry McKinnon, Gathie Falk, Robin Blaser, Roy K. Kiyooka, Gerry Shikatani and Bill Schermbrucker, among numerous others, as well as a sound poetry issue, “With Record Included,” guest-edited by Steven [Ross] Smith and Richard Truhlar.

The Capilano Review has always been unique in Canadian literature through offering, from the offset, an ethics of exploration, resistance and experiment; offering an aesthetic influenced by west coast social politics, critiques of colonialism, issues of race and environmental concerns, all of which have been shared with others in their immediate vicinity, including The Kootenay School of Writing, Writing, Raddle Moon and Line (and later, West Coast Line), and more recent journals such as Rob Manery’s SOME. And yet, unlike most of those examples, The Capilano Review is still publishing, still evolving, exploring and pushing, and seeking the possible out of what otherwise might have seemed impossible. Welcoming the future, indeed.

They will ask you what you ate. They will ask you where you walked, what you saw. The trees, for instance, so copious we assume they are free.

Take account, they will say. They will not ask who you are. Who you were. Were you queer. Did you matter.

Dear question mark you mark me.

It is a mix and match of images leading to a vanishing act. Expect the best is it evasion. It is a way of reversing fortunes.

I want to tell you the story of Lori because it is the opposite of nation-building. It is the opposite of canon.

She was in her room; it was just before midday in her life when the word opened.

How did she look. It was a hooked glance. it would not rhyme. It was another time.

Under the sun a hook of green eyes. No one wanted to be recognized. We all wanted to be seen.

Every day I do a now, and then it passes.

What is asking. An animation of statement. A transformation of intent.

I reach for my phone and vanish. (Sina Queyras, “DEAR QUESTION MARK,” 3.48)

The Capilano Review 3.41 (Summer 2020)

Spiritual

We asked the world if it was alive. “Oh,” the walls said, “we aren’t religious, but we are spiritual.” We thought we must be hallucinating, but then the wine rumbled in our stomachs, our lamp reached back to Persia, and the bath tried to drown us. “Once the world turns on, good luck turning it off,” said the drugs in our palm. “Plug your ears,” the future said, “hold your hands in front of the screen, close the ancient texts, none of it will help. Good luck.” (Liam Siemens)

I spent a week away from my desk, which allowed me to catch up on a bit of my journal reading, including going through The Capilano Review 3.41 (Summer 2020). I’m always interested to see what The Capilano Review has going on, and this issue is their “open issue,” featuring multiple works of poetry, prose, artwork and interviews. As Matea Kulić offers in her “Editor’s Note” on this issue’s themeless theme: “We soon noted, however, even admits pieces we had initially considered light or humorous in tone, a shadow side—an uncanny edge, a surrealist blow. Mourning, both individual and collective, emerged as a major theme. While inevitably ‘there is this holding on’ (Andrea Actis), the contributors to this issue consider how one form of life must be grieved for another to grow. As Andrea Javor aka Mystic Sandwich writes, it ‘isn’t the end of the world; it’s the end of a world.’”

Ottawa poet Conyer Clayton and Toronto poet (formerly Ottawa, where he was part of In/Words Magazine and Press) Bardia Sinaee co-won the 2019 Robin Blaser Poetry Prize and both have poems included in this issue. When Conyer is good, she is very good: “A crowd is a sharp cut in the rocks. / What came in on the air this morning? / Dung and past lives. Rejected // pollen, poor seeds, such statistics / for life, and we don’t even know how / water is drawn up.” (“Habitual”). I am very curious to see Sinaee’s full-length debut, Intruder, which is scheduled for spring 2021 with House of Anansi Press. “It was the summer of whippits and ketamine,” he writes, to close the third of his four poems in the issue, “Cadillac,” “Every other guy had a Goku tattoo // but only I could ride around on a cloud / because I was pure of heart [.]”

Otherwise, much of the work that jumped out of me from this issue were prose poems. For example, I’m gratified to see new work by former editor Andrea Actis, along with the discovery in her bio that she has a debut poetry collection out next spring from Brick Books. Having only seen bits and pieces of her work over the years, I am eager to see what this debut might hold. Her extended prose sequence, “Soul Ash,” is quite magnificent, and begins:

And you know you get everybody you want in there. And you can keep it and spread it. Yet I feel that somehow this might be just having no material parts of them. Like a really smart person making the argument for her. So then that’s blinded by his belief that it is soul to these people? So very. Dispersed. But what sense slews why soul might simply be what I remember of someone and love of them? I remind her why my love no I don’t have investments I’m looking to protect them.

Another highlight had to be the shorter prose sequence “DEEPING YELLOWS,” a piece by Sheung-King (an author with a novel out in October with Book*hug) that remained with me for longer than I had expected. The turns in the piece are quite compelling. As the piece begins:

I light a joint, which is illegal. Getting high in the shower with me is a bucket. The bucket is upside down. My phone is playing the song Yellow Magic (1978). Warm water from the shower lands on the back of my neck, runs down my chest, and drips from the tip of my penis onto the bucket, making an empty sound. Years later, I hear the same sound in the documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda (2017). In one scene, Sakamoto is seen standing in the rain holding a bucket over his head and listening to the sound of the rain landing on the bucket. His bucket is blue. Mine is yellow.

Montreal writer Gail Scott is interviewed at length by Vancouver writer Meredith Quartermain, an interview conducted at the Quartermains during a reading tour Scott was doing last fall. The interview, centred around a newly-published revised edition of Heroine moves into some interesting territory, including tying Scott’s work and attention to more contemporary engagements, from Robert Glück and San Francisco’s New Narrative, Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Richard Wagamese, Jordan Abel and Liz Howard, and Sheila Heti’s How Should A Person Be?. The interview closes:

MQ: You’ve mentioned that avant-garde practice has risen up and fallen back at various points in the twentieth century. Can you talk a little more about that?

GS: The avant-garde reappears cyclically, in conjunction with other factors. Often you hear people referring to the notion of avant-garde as dead or passé. I agree that the term is problematic, but it is useful for demonstrating that the emergence of radical poets, those whose sense of urgency is forcément in relation to the socio-political situation of a given era, is inevitable. The avant-garde emerges in company with radical social movements that, themselves, advance and recede. Its lessons are eventually partially absorbed, as are those of social contestation. I started writing in a period of significant social change that spawned artists and writers looking for new modes of expression. In art and politics, there is reform and revolution. The former is well-meaning, liberal, and not prepared to give up profiting from power structures such as capitalism and racism. Then there are movements, and they often come from justice-seeking minority groups, that understand huge upheaval is required for there to be real, systematic change. I believe we have come back to that time again, and with it a new generation of artists, a new sense of urgency.

And did you know that there’s a new biography of Robin Blaser? I’m still trying to get my hands on a copy, but Jami Macarty reviews it, at the end of this issue: A Literary Biography of Robin Blaser: Mechanic of Splendor, by Miriam Nichols (Palgrave, 2019). As she offers: “Nichol’s biography vitalizes Blaser, the poet, and his poetry, while also offering particulars of his life in his words, such as the first time he opened ‘the door to a mysterious man with a mustache, dark glasses, a trench coat, sandals, his feet painted purple for some incredible reason.’ That ‘mysterious man’: Jack Spicer. When Blaser and Stan Persky broke up, Blaser complained that Persky ‘took the curtains.’ Nichols also shares particulars from her personal history as Blaser’s student, colleague, and friend, such as ‘Blaser’s preferred white’—Chablis, and his penchant for shopping—‘he found a pink jacket that became a favorite.’ All the while, Nichols stays wholly true to her intention to offer a literary biography, pairing Blaser’s ‘distinctive discourse of poetry’ with her distinctive discourse of biography.”

Toronto International Festival of Authors’ Small Press Market (part four,

[Gap Riot Press (my table faced the back of theirs)] 

See my first post on what I collected at the fair, here; and my second post here; and my third post here. Just how much did I even collect at this fair that you missed out on? There were so many things! And I am totally going to keep pushing these two other fairs: TODAY’S MEET THE PRESSES IN TORONTO and the 25th anniversary event for our own ottawa small press book fair nextweekend, on November 23rd (and pre-fair reading the night prior). I will see you at one of these events, at least, right? I mean: how can you resist such small press marvelousness?

Ottawa/Burlington ON: Part of what I’ve found intriguing about Ottawa poet nina jane drystek’s work over the past couple of years has been realizing the wide range of experimentation and formal/stylistic shifts she’s been exploring. I think it was Chris Johnson who had pointed it out to me, how one can’t necessarily get a handle on drystek’s ongoing work due to the wild, experimental shifts from prose to lyric to visual to sound: she refuses, it would appear, to hold to the same structures for too long, more interested in exploration than positioning. One of her latest publications is knewro suite (Simulacrum Press, 2019), a triptych of works for multiple voices: “wokern 3vs, kewro suite part one [ three voices ],” “krownervs, knewro suite part two [ two voices ]” and “3 noks werv, knewro suite part three [ three voices ].” From the first to the third piece, the three threads exist separately but concurrently, weave into each other, and then exist, again, side by side but with short breaks of breath and space.

drystek has been working with Ottawa poet jwcurry for a while now through the most recent incarnation of his ongoing Messagio Galore sound poetry ensemble [see my report on an earlier incarnation of such here], and curry is great for bringing people out of themselves, as well as encouraging participants to bring new, original works to the group for potential inclusion. One thing I know, also, is how curry has discussed the difficulty, as well as the openness, of attempting notation for sound works, given the lack (perhaps deliberately so, in some cases) of any kind of standardization in sound poetry notational symbols (I suspect even to attempt such a structure might be near-impossible, although not completely impossible). The lack of such a standardization means that different performers might perform even a singular piece entirely differently. I would be interested in hearing this work performed, not only once, but multiple times, and listening to hear both the differences, and the potential repetitions between performances.

Vancouver BC/Toronto ON: Vancouver writer, artist and editor (including for The Capilano Review) Matea Kulić’s second chapbook, following Frau. L (Perro Verlag Books by Artists, 2016), is PAPER WORK (Anstruther Press, 2019). PAPER WORK is an assemblage of short clever pieces that play with formality, paperwork and perspective, turning the daily grind of office labour into something that concurrently twists into the directly surreal and absurd, even if just by speaking plainly of what has long been taken for granted.

Weather [Drafts]

By the time you arrive back at the office your feet are soaked.

The sky—verging

opened up on top of you.

At your desk, the big left toe peeled off the right sock, the big right toe peeled off the left.

A man was washing himself in the window of a rundown shop—you recall now—

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes as you passed by & continued

            on the way

to your livelihood.

Kulić’s poems include a form letter for acknowledging, rejecting or accepting cultural works for production, responding to generic emails, an attempt to change marital status for GST payments, lunch breaks, forms, forms and more forms. These poems are absolutely delightful, and I want to see more of them.