“test-tubing
in the very fertile underground”
When I started small press publishing in 1997,
Stuart Ross’ work was a model – his work making space for writers, for
carefully editing work, for being a careful critic and word-spreader – for
being both highly particular and deeply responsive. A soundpoet, a novelist, a
poet, a publisher, a critic – he sets the bar. With his “Hunkamooga” column in Word: Toronto’s Literary Calendar,
Stuart provided for me, way over here in Alberta, a chance to access the
conversation, to learn more about small press publishing, and to take it all
with a grain of salt. Geography has, for the most part, prevented me from
sharing in-person conversations with Stuart; the few I’ve had have made a huge
difference. I admire him and his work. Proper Tales has provided an access point
to so many other presses, authors, poets and exchanges; it’s not a voice in the
dark, it’s a chat in the conversation. My favourite Proper Tales press edition
is Ron Padgett’s IF I WERE YOU (376
copies, March 2007 with an additional 26 copies bound in boards, lettered and
signed by the author. I have “E”.) which features collaborative writing between
Padgett and Bill Berkson, Ted Berrigan, Tom Clark, Larry Fagin, Dick Gallup,
Allen Ginsberg, Lita Hornick, Alice Notley, Douglas Oliver, James Schuyler, Tom
Veitch, and Yu Jian (with a cover drawing by Joe Brainard). Not only is the
edition beautifully designed, it also sums up the press to me: a book that is
doing exactly what it needs to do folding down the sheets on the “breeding gound of invention.” 40
years ain’t nothing, nope it’s everything.
Derek Beaulieu is the
author/editor of over twenty collections of poetry, prose, and criticism,
including two volumes of his selected work, Please, No More Poetry (2013) and Konzeptuelle
Arbeiten (2017). His most recent volume of fiction, a, A Novel was published by Paris’s Jean
Boîte Editions and in 2018 he edited Nights
on Prose Mountain: The Fiction of bpNichol. Derek Beaulieu holds a PhD in
Creative Writing from Roehampton University and is the Director of Literary
Arts and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
He is the author of the forthcoming Proper
Tales Press title extispicium (2019).
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