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NEW WAVE CANADA / ISLAND PRESSIn 1964 Ryerson Press and the Éditions Du Jour co-published Poésie/Poetry 64, a bilingual anthology of poetry edited by Jacques Godbout and John Robert Colombo. The accent was on “new” and “young” in the copy which appeared on the anthology's cover. That two commercial presses were willing to publish largely unknown poets in a bilingual anthology was remarkable. As a corrective to Poésie/Poetry 64, Raymond Souster planned an anthology of younger poets in 1965. Rejected by Ryerson Press and Macmillan of Canada, Souster published his anthology as a Contact Press book in 1966 with the title: New Wave Canada: The New Explosion in Canadian Poetry. The history of the publication of New Wave Canada indicates that Victor Coleman played an important role in the publication of the anthology: he selected the poets who were included in the anthology, typed the manuscript, saw it through the press, shot the cover photograph and assisted in the collating and binding of the printed pages. Souster's short preface to New Wave Canada demonstrates his confidence in the poets whom Coleman had selected as the Canadian avant-garde. In it he openly acknowledges the Tish group as the source of the new energy in Canadian poetry, which was now filtering back east through a network of little magazines and small presses. Of the 16 poets who appeared in New Wave Canada, six were either associated with or had been published in Tish: Daphne Buckle (now Marlatt), David Dawson, Gerry Gilbert, Robert Hogg, James Reid and Fred Wah; Ontario poets included Victor Coleman, Scott Davis, William Hawkins, Barry Lord, Roy MacSkimming, David McFadden, and the transplanted British Columbian, bpNichol. The anthology was rounded out with the work of three emigré poets, George Jonas, E. Lakshmi Gil and Michael Ondaatje. Significantly, 11 of the 17 New Wave Canada poets were and continue to be published by The Coach House Press. |
