Being allowed to participate in the Toronto Small Press Book Fair was a big deal for youthful-me, barely two years into my own chapbook enterprise. I moved from table to table, whirling through my own enthusiasms in reading, reviewing and simply wishing to know as much as possible about what the hell was out there. In June, 1994, I’d joined The TREE Reading Series as co-director, and conversations with friend, collaborator and co-director James Spyker led us to found an Ottawa version of that Toronto event, hosting the first ottawa small press book fair that November. How did I even know about the original fair in the first place, having not yet been to Toronto? God knows. Maybe it was through my emerging correspondences with other poets, including Gil McElroy and Stan Rogal. I suspect it was most likely Joe Blades, who seemed to be connected to just about everything back in those days, even from his home base of Fredericton.
Something that often gets overlooked in the ins and outs of who emerges and who moves away from the public activity of literature are those who are always, actively, present. From the moment my awareness of Canadian small press began, Stuart Ross has always been around, and usually with new publication in hand, whether chapbook, small magazine or pamphlet, produced just for whatever it was that brought us together. Unassuming, but always present, Stuart would be standing in the background chatting away or behind his small table, manning his photocopied wares.
There are individuals in any industry or group that appear to exist solely for their own ego or career, but Stuart Ross is someone who provides a great example of a writer, editor and publisher deliberately working as part of an ecosystem of small press, open to seeing, hearing and supporting what someone else may be doing, and providing important mentorship to numerous writers, editors and publishers, whether emerging or established. I’ve noticed that most of the chapbooks he’s produced over the past few years, for example, have been by emerging poets, including multiple debut titles. I’m aware of Ross’ early and ongoing encouragements of poets he’s edited through Proper Tales Press across forty years of activity, as well as his more recent numerous book publishing imprints. I’m aware of his essential hand in rejuvenating the career of the late Toronto writer David W. McFadden. Thanks to Stuart Ross taking on McFadden’s work through his Mansfield Press imprint, McFadden flourished through multiple poetry titles, culminating in his collection What’s the Score? winning the 2013 Griffin Poetry Prize. By the time Ross has shown you that someone’s work is worth paying attention to, you not only agree, but kick yourself for not having paid better attention earlier. He’s in the thick of it, constantly, but doesn’t feel the need to push himself into the forefront, or at the expense of anyone else or their work.
I’m often quite baffled at how he and Nick Power don’t receive more credit for founding the Toronto fair in the first place, an extension of their 1980s monthly Meet the Presses (an organization that began holding annual small press fairs again after the demise of the original Toronto Small Press Fair). Such is the nature of the arts, I suppose, when those in the long game are often taken for granted until an anniversary or some other declaration, when so many others emerge making far more noise and demanding greater attention. Stuart is here and he has always been, it would seem. Why aren’t more paying attention?
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