I
first met, properly met, Stuart Ross in my first meeting as a member of the
Meet the Presses Collective. I entered that meeting feeling like a bit of a
phony, like I was brought in as a volunteer to help the real poets do the real
work of the Collective: to organize the Indie Literary Market and to facilitate
the bpNichol chapbook award. I worked on that Collective for three years and
three markets until I had to take a hiatus to focus on the other piles of work
in front of me, and during that time, Stuart did a lot of work to make sure
that I didn’t feel like a secondary, supplemental addition to the Collective,
that I instead felt central. Much of this was Stuart’s trademark altruism: he
liked me, he valued my contributions, he didn’t want me to feel small. But,
some of Stuart’s welcoming kindness came from a fear and a terrible sadness
that I felt in him then, and still feel now; he’s worried that one day the
members of the Collective, already getting on in their years a little, would
need to retire, and with that we’d lose the Indie Literary Market. It’s a fear
and a sadness that I share, too. I’ll try my best to make sure it doesn’t
happen.
I’ve
never worked with Stuart to publish anything, which I think is cool (I also
think that will likely change soon). But, I’ve worked with him on the
Collective long enough to know that one of his primary concerns in this small
press community is making sure that individuals of any age or experience level
feel as though they are not just helpers, but the main stuff of it, the people
who are actively contributing to and building this community. We talk about
that often, and one of our biggest concerns is how to get new members to join
to Collective and to do the (often thankless, always unpaid) labour of putting together
the Indie Literary Market and facilitating the prize. It’s not easy to convince
people to do this work. People in Toronto especially are struggling to pay
rent; add to that the fact that small press publishing is often a money-losing
venture and the fact that people are busy with many jobs and other
responsibilities. How does someone convince others to join in on this work? I
did it for three years and I had no choice but to step back, to give myself
time to rest and write. But somehow Stuart Ross convinced me not to stop my
work with the Collective, just to take a break, take some time to recover and
rebuild, and to come back when I felt like I could. It’s a lot of work, this
small press business, and you can’t do all the things.
In
terms of small press and chapbook publishing, for over forty years Stuart Ross
has been busier than most. He tells me that for him this means that he lives in
a lot of chaos, and he and I both agreed that sometimes the busy-ness of this
business means that we sacrifice a bit of our mental health to get it done. I
met him for a coffee not long ago and I kept pressing him: how do we motivate
people? How do we make the administrative and organizing work of the market
easier? How do we find funding to try to pay some of the people who do this
work? How do we keep going? I was panicking, but he wasn’t. He said, instead,
“we’re not talking about the work itself.” And it was true, I was dancing
around it, obsessing over the how and forgetting about the why.
Without that work—the social media, the applying for funding, the visits to 3
Cent Copy, the manual folding and stapling, the record keeping—those books, the
whole point of this thing supposedly, just wouldn’t exist. Part of me wanted to
say, “So what? I’m tired.” I thought that’s what he might say, too.
Instead,
he launched into an almost giddy discussion about how we need small press to
create, to discover, and to share the kind of interesting, innovative work that
small press publishing encourages. He talked for a long time about the work
that MLA Chernoff is doing, which Stuart says he’s really excited about. And
it’s true. What other venue would let Chernoff’s beautiful mixture of hilarious
absurdity and poignant political critique run wild than a small press community
that is always just barely holding itself together. That work, Stuart assured
me, assures me, is vital and it’s exciting and it’s only possible if we’re
doing the labour of support and community building. That’s part of the thanks
we get, this thing, these things. And then one day, when you’ve been doing this
work for four decades, if you’re lucky and devoted, you’ll start getting those
big fancy TIFOA prizes. Maybe.
And
the Market, too, is necessary work. Stuart admits that he never sells much at
the Market, and he often ends up spending most of what he’s made at the other
presses’ tables. But that’s the point, too, isn’t it? The Market is enjoyable
because it’s a place to meet new people, get introduced to new work, and get a
sense of discovery. And I think it’s beautiful that discovery is still
what Stuart is grabbing onto after running the same small press for forty
years. He’s still discovering, and there’s still joy in that.
So
I’ve resolved to be a little more like Stuart as I trudge through judging prizes
and reading through slush piles and renaming files FINAL DRAFT REV. 3, REV. 5,
FINAL FINAL. To do so, I’m promising—in true January fashion—to devote myself
to the three big takeaways from my time working with Stuart Ross. 1) Publish
yourself, in some form, in some way, at least once. Do it somewhere weird and
wonderful. Lose a bit of money on it, if you can. Do it to get your words out
there and try to make a connection. 2) Publish someone else, someone you love,
so you know what it’s like to be responsible for someone else’s work. Publish
someone else’s work that you think is great, and support that publication with
your whole heart. Publishing, Stuart reminds me, is an elevated fandom. And 3)
for goodness’s sake have some fun with this. We’re not getting rich or famous
here—are we?—and eventual the eternal recycling bins of time will take all our
poems with them. The only thing really at stake here is the joy of sharing
words. It should be fun!
And
so far, Stuart, it has been fun. And like the best kind of fun, it’s been busy
and chaotic and messy and weird. Congratulations on forty fun years, and thank
you.
Dani
Spinosa is a Canadian scholar and poet.
Her work investigates the role of authorship and anarchist politics in digital
and print-based experimental poetry. She is the author of one scholarly
manuscript, nine peer-reviewed academic articles, four poetry chapbooks, and
over a dozen literary publications. She is the managing editor of the
Electronic Literature Directory, an adjunct professor of English at York
University and Sheridan College, and a founding co-editor of the feminist
experimental micropress Gap Riot. She lives in Toronto with one nice man and
one mean cat. You can find her online at www.genericpronoun.com
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