Various (Coleman, Victor (Editor); McCartney, Linda (Editor); Atwood, Margaret; Ondaatje, Michael et al.)

A Document of the 1975 Writers' Tour of the Northwest Territories

Ontario, Canada: The Eternal Network, 1976. First Printing. Stapled Wrappers. “The 1975 Canadian Writers Tour has consisted of ten Canadian poets who, sponsored by a Canada Council grant, have given readings in Yellowknife, Inuvik, Hay River and Fort Smith. The tour began late in May and has included to date Al Purdy, Matt Cohen, Victor Coleman, David McFadden, Frank Davey, Daphne Marlatt, George Bowering and Michal Ondaatje. Margaret Atwood and BP Nichol [sic] are the two last poets included in the tour which will end in mid-October. The idea for the tour originated with Mr. Angrave last fall, after he had finished reading “Survival,” Margaret Atwood’s critique of Canadian writing. He wrote to Ms. Atwood with the suggestion of a tour of poets in the Northwest Territories. She replied that it was a good idea and made some suggestions for funding sources” (“Canadian writers’ tour of North successful,” pg. 36). This publication, titled “A Document of the 1975 Writers’ Tour of the Northwest Territories,” has a way of obscuring the presence of a few (particularly two) pronouncedly notable writers. The first of these is Margaret Atwood, author of “A Handmaid’s Tale” and the sci-fi cult favorite, “Oryx and Crake” among numerous other widely-read works. The second is Michael Ondaatje, who would go on to write "The English Patient” and accrue a plump and nutritive readership of his own. Arguably the most popular of the “Four Horseman” of Concrete Poetry, b.p.nichol also uniquely appears alongside Atwood and Ondaatje — almost single-handedly representing the avant-gardist art form in polite company here as elsewhere; nichol being the most expressly integrationist of all the Concrete auteurs. It’s North American, literary-scholastic caviar of precisely this sort that makes up the entire issue; that gilds it conceptually and gifts it its girth. Much else on these fronts and much else, besides is what’s found in the issue’s cobwebbed corners; and we can guarantee that the properly interested party could make association with this book and the literary-sociological points it registers capture an experiment (in Poetry, and Society) elsewhere seldom equaled. Your Devoted Managing Curator would be remiss not to tip off the prospective buyer of this remarkable, though typically unprocurable oddity to the following truth: papers hide within these oblong, large-format wrappers; there is much to be mined here, in a literary-sociological sense. So, if that’s at all your interest area, this is a publication you might want to inquiringly “hover over” with a magnifying glass. The result of such an inquiry, done well, will almost invariably be some productive revision in perspective or purview, and Your Devoted Curators at Third Mind Books encourage such leaps. Large-format softcover in stapled wrappers: the first and only printing of this rare poetic errand in documentary; this fulsome retelling of a “Writers’ Tour.” From the collection of Robin Eichele (b. 1941), noted Mimeograph Revolutionary & co-founder (with John Sinclair) of the Detroit Artists’ Workshop. In commendable near fine condition with minor-to-moderate shelf-wear, bumping, chipping rubbing, low-impact horizontal (as well as vertical) creases, and age-toning of varying intensities (all generally of the “mild-to-moderate” sort), yet with patches of greater enunciation present at front & back covers, & at (or surrounding) fine-edges and corners of same. Fine. [Item #6008]

Price: $100.00