CLASSIFICATION
Swallow ID:
1261
Partner Institution:
Concordia University
Source Collection Label:
SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds
Series:
The Poetry Series
Sub Series:
SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds
ITEM DESCRIPTION
Title:
Victor Coleman at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 3 March 1967
Title Source:
Cataloguer
Title Note:
"VICTOR COLEMAN I006/SR159" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. "I006-11-159" is written on a sticker on the tape reel
Language:
English
Production Context:
Documentary recording
Genre:
Reading: Poetry
Identifiers:
[]
Rights
CREATORS
Name:
Coleman, Victor
Dates:
1944-
Role:
"Author",
"Performer"
Notes:
A self-educated poet and publisher, Victor Coleman was born in Toronto on September 11, 1944, and he lived in both Montreal and Toronto. By the end of 1964, he had met poet Raymond Souster and founded Island Magazine and Island Press, drawing the avant-garde poetry centre from the West Coast to Toronto. Mr. Coleman was a publishing assistant for the Oxford University Press in Toronto from 1966 to 1967, after which he served for almost ten years as the editor for Coach House Press. Coleman was influential in the creations of Is, Image Nation, The Goose & Duck and Open Letter magazines and journals. He published his own poetry in From Erik Satie’s Notes to the Music (Island Press, 1965), One/eye/love (Coach House Press, 1967), Light Verse (Coach House Press, 1969), Old Friends’ Ghosts: Poems 1963-68 (Weed/Flower, 1970), along with a dozen other titles. Victor Coleman was the director of the “A Space” (1975-1978), “31 Mercer” (1975-1978), Nightingale Arts Council in Toronto, the editor and writer for the Association of Non-Profit Artist-Run Centres, and has served as the director of the National Film Theatre in Kingston, Ontario. The poet also taught Creative Writing at both Queen's and York Universities. In 1995, as Coach House Press struggled, Coleman and Stan Bevington created Coach House Books to save the Press. In 2001, Victor Coleman became the Editorial Director for the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, a website devoted to the promotion of Canadian artists and writers. Victor Coleman continues to promote the development of avant-garde or postmodernist Canadian writing.
Name:
Bowering, George
Dates:
1935-
Notes:
Mentioned, but missing from recording
CONTRIBUTORS
Name:
Francis, Wynne
Dates:
1918-2000
Role:
"Presenter",
"Series organizer"
MATERIAL DESCRIPTION
Recording Type:
Analogue
AV Type:
Audio
Material Designation:
Reel to Reel
Physical Composition:
Magnetic Tape
Storage Capacity:
Tape
Extent:
1/4 inch
Playback Mode:
Mono
Tape Brand:
Scotch
Sound Quality:
Excellent
DIGITAL FILE DESCRIPTION
File Path:
files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3
Duration:
00:37:17
Size:
89.5 MB
Content:
Wynne Francis
00:00:00
By the way I must remember a most important announcement, there is to be no smoking in the theatre. You may smoke at intermission, but please do not smoke during the readings. Our first reader tonight is Mr. Victor Coleman
who comes to us from Toronto
. Mr. Coleman is the publisher of Island Magazine
, and Is Magazine which is spelled 'i' 's' and looks like 'is' but is pronounced 'I’s', and he is also the publisher and editor of Island Press. He is a very active promoter of new Canadian poetry and he himself has published in several little magazines in Canada
and he has made translations from Erik Satie's
notes to the music, he has also been published in New Wave Canada, an anthology of new Canadian poets published by Contact Press, and edited by Raymond Souster
. He is also affiliated, his press, Island Press, is affiliated with the Coach House Press
in Toronto and through this press a book of his poems will be appearing this spring. He is our first reader and our second reader is Mr. George Bowering
, who has already published three books, the first one by Contact Press called Points On The Grid, the second one, The Silver Wire published by Quarry Press and the third one, A Man in Yellow Boots, by El Corno Emplumado which was done bilingually in Spanish and in English and which contains montages and illustrations by poet and artist Roy Kiyooka
. Mr. Bowering is also editor of Imago Magazine, which emanated from Alberta
and which is devoted to the long poem or the longer poem, he is expecting to publish very shortly, in the spring I believe, a novel called The Mirror on the Floor. Mr. Coleman will read first, and then there will be a short intermission, and then Mr. Bowering will read to you.
Victor Coleman
00:02:49
I like to make it a habit always at a reading to start off with something that somebody else wrote, simply to show you that my concerns lie elsewhere, then in my own self. This is something from A History of America by an American writer by the name of Bill Hutton and it's— well, I won't explain it to you.
Victor Coleman
00:03:35
Reads unnamed poem by Bill Hutton.
Victor Coleman
00:06:00
I'll read a few short poems first, and then go into something from a sequence, a longer sequence. This is a poem dedicated to Bill Hutton, the author of that piece I just read, it's called "Buff Hello, 6".
Victor Coleman
00:06:33
Reads "Buff Hello, 6".
Victor Coleman
00:08:27
I'm going to focus on that clock every once in a while, simply because I want to keep track of myself. If I might say, um, it's interesting that I'm reading with George Bowering and my general tenure at this time, uh, which I'm not really that self-conscious about which is interesting to me to be growing a beard at this time and that the last time that I started to grow a beard was the first time that I met George Bowering and it was about two years ago and we were sitting up in my attic which was a room and I said to him, "How do you like my beard?" and he says that "It makes you look like an impotent D.H. Lawrence
”. [Audience laughter]. This is a poem called "The Lady Vanishes".
Victor Coleman
00:09:41
Reads "The Lady Vanishes".
Victor Coleman
00:11:14
Here's a kind of poem that I can bug everybody with because it probably won't mean anything to you at all, but simply because it really is my occasion but rather than hide it away, um, I think that the sound of it is enough to carry to you, some measure of the poetry that I got from the occasion that I speak of. It's called "For Basil Bunting".
Victor Coleman
00:11:48
Reads "For Basil Bunting".
Victor Coleman
00:12:34
I don't know whether any of you are familiar with a Japanese-English dictionary called Kenkyusha
, if not, all I can tell you is that it's a Japanese-English dictionary and that it has a strange quality to be able to predict the future, by chance operations in that it's very fat and you open it and you're like the guy with the funny hat at the track who really shouldn't be there because he can only guess and he just opens the racing form and sticks his finger on the horse and he bets on the horse and he usually loses. Kenkyusha is a little better than that because you're not trying to win anything, you're looking for some kind of instruction and the time I wrote these poems I was rather desperate for some kind of instruction, and uh, it's just a matter of opening the book, pointing and getting the epigraph for each poem from the Japanese-English dictionary. I'll just read a couple. "Day Seven", oh there are given days, that are sort of daily devotions.
Victor Coleman
00:14:09
Reads "Day Seven".
Victor Coleman
00:14:33
Reads "Day Eight".
Victor Coleman
00:15:19
Reads "Day Ten".
Victor Coleman
00:16:18
Many of these relate to certain experiences with LSD also.
Victor Coleman
00:16:29
Reads "Day Thirteen".
Victor Coleman
00:16:49
The reason that the definitions, the English definitions in this section are so interesting and not like the ones we are accustomed to is because the characters that they represent go through their own changes and it's almost an ideogrammatic dictionary rather than a dictionary of definitions.
Victor Coleman
00:17:13
Resumes reading “Day Thirteen”.
Victor Coleman
00:20:17
I need to get one of those spider clocks, can't read in this light.
Victor Coleman
00:20:39
Reads "Day Twenty-One" .
Victor Coleman
00:22:36
Reads "Day Twenty-Two".
Victor Coleman
00:24:56
Reads "Day Twenty-Four".
Victor Coleman
00:28:22
These next poems are the poems that are closest to me now. It's another long sequence called "Separations" and I don't think I need to give you any background on it. I'll not read the whole thing because it's quite long.
Victor Coleman
00:28:56
Reads "Separations” [parts 4-8, 10-12, and 14].
Victor Coleman
00:37:00
Thank you.
END
00:37:17
Notes:
Victor Coleman reads from One/eye/love (Coach House Press, 1967).
List of Poems Read and Time Stamps [File 1 of 2]
0:00 - Introductions of Coleman and George Bowering (also reading the same night, but not on this recording.) [INDEX: Island Magazine, Is Magazine, Island Press, new Canadian poetry, translations of Eric Satie’s notes to music, New Wave Canada edited by Ramond Souster published by Contact Press, Coach House Press in Toronto. George Bowering: Contact Press published Points on the Grid, The Silver Wire, A Man in Yellow Boots by El Corno Emplumado in Spanish and English with drawings by Roy Kiyooka. Editor of Imago Magazine, Alberta, Long Poem or Longer Poem, The Mirror on the Floor.]
2:49 - Victor Coleman introduces poem by Bill Hutton from History of America, first line “John Fitzgerald Kennedy shot John Wilkes Booth...” [INDEX: History of America by Bill Hutton]
3:35 - Reads unknown poem by Bill Hutton from History of America.
5:45 - Introduces “Buff Hello 6”
6:33 - Reads “Buff Hello 6”
8.27 - Introduces “The Lady Vanishes” [INDEX: George Bowering, D.H. Lawrence]
9:41 - Reads “The Lady Vanishes”
11:14 - Introduces “For Basil Bunting” [INDEX: Basil Bunting, occasional poetry]
11:48 - Reads “For Basil Bunting”
12:34 - Introduces “Day Seven” [INDEX: Japanese-English Dictionary Kenkyusha, chance operations, days of devotions]
14:09 - Reads “Day Seven”
14:33 - Reads “Day Eight”
15:19 - Reads “Day Ten”
16:18 - Introduces “Day Thirteen” [INDEX: experiences with LSD]
16:29 - Reads “Day Thirteen”
20:17 - Introduces “Day 21”
20:39 - Reads “Day 21”
22:36 - Reads “Day 22”
24:56 - Reads “Day 24”
28:22 - Introduces “Separations” [INDEX: long sequence poem]
28:56 - Reads “Separations”, #4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14.
37:17 - END OF RECORDING.
Content Type:
Sound Recording
Featured:
Yes
Title:
Victor Coleman Tape Box - Back
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Victor Coleman Tape Box - Front
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Victor Coleman Tape Box - Spine
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Victor Coleman Tape Box - Reel
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Dates
Date:
1967 3 3
Type:
Performance Date
Source:
Supplemental Material
Notes:
Date specified in "Georgantics" by Bob Simco
LOCATION
Address:
1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Venue:
Hall Building Basement Theatre
Latitude:
45.4972758
Longitude:
-73.57893043
Notes:
Location specified in printed announcement "Georgantics" by Bob Simco (Supplemental material)
CONTENT
Contents:
victor_coleman_i086.11-159.mp3
Wynne Francis
00:00:00
By the way I must remember a most important announcement, there is to be no smoking in the theatre. You may smoke at intermission, but please do not smoke during the readings. Our first reader tonight is Mr. Victor Coleman
who comes to us from Toronto
. Mr. Coleman is the publisher of Island Magazine
, and Is Magazine which is spelled 'i' 's' and looks like 'is' but is pronounced 'I’s', and he is also the publisher and editor of Island Press. He is a very active promoter of new Canadian poetry and he himself has published in several little magazines in Canada
and he has made translations from Erik Satie's
notes to the music, he has also been published in New Wave Canada, an anthology of new Canadian poets published by Contact Press, and edited by Raymond Souster
. He is also affiliated, his press, Island Press, is affiliated with the Coach House Press
in Toronto and through this press a book of his poems will be appearing this spring. He is our first reader and our second reader is Mr. George Bowering
, who has already published three books, the first one by Contact Press called Points On The Grid, the second one, The Silver Wire published by Quarry Press and the third one, A Man in Yellow Boots, by El Corno Emplumado which was done bilingually in Spanish and in English and which contains montages and illustrations by poet and artist Roy Kiyooka
. Mr. Bowering is also editor of Imago Magazine, which emanated from Alberta
and which is devoted to the long poem or the longer poem, he is expecting to publish very shortly, in the spring I believe, a novel called The Mirror on the Floor. Mr. Coleman will read first, and then there will be a short intermission, and then Mr. Bowering will read to you.
Victor Coleman
00:02:49
I like to make it a habit always at a reading to start off with something that somebody else wrote, simply to show you that my concerns lie elsewhere, then in my own self. This is something from A History of America by an American writer by the name of Bill Hutton and it's— well, I won't explain it to you.
Victor Coleman
00:03:35
Reads unnamed poem by Bill Hutton.
Victor Coleman
00:06:00
I'll read a few short poems first, and then go into something from a sequence, a longer sequence. This is a poem dedicated to Bill Hutton, the author of that piece I just read, it's called "Buff Hello, 6".
Victor Coleman
00:06:33
Reads "Buff Hello, 6".
Victor Coleman
00:08:27
I'm going to focus on that clock every once in a while, simply because I want to keep track of myself. If I might say, um, it's interesting that I'm reading with George Bowering and my general tenure at this time, uh, which I'm not really that self-conscious about which is interesting to me to be growing a beard at this time and that the last time that I started to grow a beard was the first time that I met George Bowering and it was about two years ago and we were sitting up in my attic which was a room and I said to him, "How do you like my beard?" and he says that "It makes you look like an impotent D.H. Lawrence
”. [Audience laughter]. This is a poem called "The Lady Vanishes".
Victor Coleman
00:09:41
Reads "The Lady Vanishes".
Victor Coleman
00:11:14
Here's a kind of poem that I can bug everybody with because it probably won't mean anything to you at all, but simply because it really is my occasion but rather than hide it away, um, I think that the sound of it is enough to carry to you, some measure of the poetry that I got from the occasion that I speak of. It's called "For Basil Bunting".
Victor Coleman
00:11:48
Reads "For Basil Bunting".
Victor Coleman
00:12:34
I don't know whether any of you are familiar with a Japanese-English dictionary called Kenkyusha
, if not, all I can tell you is that it's a Japanese-English dictionary and that it has a strange quality to be able to predict the future, by chance operations in that it's very fat and you open it and you're like the guy with the funny hat at the track who really shouldn't be there because he can only guess and he just opens the racing form and sticks his finger on the horse and he bets on the horse and he usually loses. Kenkyusha is a little better than that because you're not trying to win anything, you're looking for some kind of instruction and the time I wrote these poems I was rather desperate for some kind of instruction, and uh, it's just a matter of opening the book, pointing and getting the epigraph for each poem from the Japanese-English dictionary. I'll just read a couple. "Day Seven", oh there are given days, that are sort of daily devotions.
Victor Coleman
00:14:09
Reads "Day Seven".
Victor Coleman
00:14:33
Reads "Day Eight".
Victor Coleman
00:15:19
Reads "Day Ten".
Victor Coleman
00:16:18
Many of these relate to certain experiences with LSD also.
Victor Coleman
00:16:29
Reads "Day Thirteen".
Victor Coleman
00:16:49
The reason that the definitions, the English definitions in this section are so interesting and not like the ones we are accustomed to is because the characters that they represent go through their own changes and it's almost an ideogrammatic dictionary rather than a dictionary of definitions.
Victor Coleman
00:17:13
Resumes reading “Day Thirteen”.
Victor Coleman
00:20:17
I need to get one of those spider clocks, can't read in this light.
Victor Coleman
00:20:39
Reads "Day Twenty-One" .
Victor Coleman
00:22:36
Reads "Day Twenty-Two".
Victor Coleman
00:24:56
Reads "Day Twenty-Four".
Victor Coleman
00:28:22
These next poems are the poems that are closest to me now. It's another long sequence called "Separations" and I don't think I need to give you any background on it. I'll not read the whole thing because it's quite long.
Victor Coleman
00:28:56
Reads "Separations” [parts 4-8, 10-12, and 14].
Victor Coleman
00:37:00
Thank you.
END
00:37:17
Notes:
Victor Coleman reads from One/eye/love (Coach House Press, 1967).
NOTES
Type:
General
Note:
George Bowering is repeatedly mentioned on the tape and in printed announcements, but no supporting audio has been found.
Type:
General
Note:
Year-specific Information:
One/eye/love was published in 1967, and Coleman was working at Coach House Press.
Type:
General
Note:
Local connections:
Victor Coleman was very involved in the promotion of small presses and Canadian writers, specifically through his own presses and Coach House Press. Victor Coleman and George Bowering regularly corresponded (Archives Canada has these correspondences under George Bowering).
Type:
Cataloguer
Note:
Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones
Additional research and edits by Faith Paré (2020) & Ali Barillaro (2021)
Type:
Preservation
Note:
Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file
RELATED WORKS
Citation:
Bowering, George, ed. The Contemporary Canadian Poem Anthology. Toronto: Coach House
Press, 1984.
Citation:
Coleman, Victor. One/eye/love. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1967.
Citation:
“Coleman, Victor (1944- )”. One Zero One: A Virtual Library of English Canadian Small Press 1945-2044. Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, 2009.
Citation:
Simco, Bob. “Georgiantics”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 28 February 1967.
Citation:
Staines, David. "Coleman, Victor". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye, eds. Oxford University Press 2001.