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News Release96-05 National Library Exhibition Explores 1960s Small Press Movement in English Canada
Ottawa, June 17, 1996 -- The National Library of Canada’s latest exhibition, “New Wave Canada: The Coach House Press and the Small Press Movement in English Canada in the 1960s”, which runs from June 20 until February 20, 1997, pays tribute to a remarkable era in Canadian publishing. “‘New Wave Canada’ gives the National Library a gratifying opportunity to celebrate this exciting period in Canada’s literary history and to highlight the National Library’s published and unpublished literary collections,” said National Librarian Marianne Scott. The exhibition is devoted to the English-language small press movement in Canada during the 1960s, when Canadian literature, along with other forms of cultural creativity, experienced an unprecedented explosion thanks in part to the readiness of Canadians to learn about our national identity. Homegrown small presses and literary magazines owned and edited by Canadian writers nurtured Canadian writing and writers from coast to coast. Among these, the Coach House Press, founded in 1965, is perhaps the most innovative and significant of all literary presses established in Canada during the decade. With remarkable prescience, the collaborative nature of Coach House Press signaled how fruitful cooperation among writers, artists, and publishers could be. Its approach to publishing prefigures the experimental, multimedia electronic publications that abound in Canadian publishing today. Drawing on the National Library’s Literary Manuscript Collection, the exhibition shows selections from the papers of Coach House Press, the Nicky Drumbolis Coach House Press Collection and the papers of Victor Coleman, including correspondence, finely crafted books and printed objects, ephemera, magazines, catalogues, posters and postcards. While the Coach House Press is the centrepiece of the exhibit, examples of other small presses founded in the 1960s will also be on display. This group includes such names as talonbooks, Oberon Press, Quarry Press, blewointment, Weed/Flower, Ganglia and many others. The exhibition, which is free, is on view daily in the National Library’s Main Exhibition Hall, 395 Wellington Street, from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. In keeping with the spirit of our times, an augmented version of the exhibition will be mounted on the Library’s World Wide Web site. -30- Information: Andrea Paradis |
