E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

A young poet in Quebec   So many authors and poets seem baffled and antagonised by my ideas relating to small press publishing, that I thought it would be best to set them down clearly and very briefly. I cannot claim they are mine, or that they are the only way to see the world. They arise from the work of Louis Dudek, in Canada, who created small press publishing for poetry, from the 1940s onwards, and mentored Leonard Cohen. Dudek himself was mentored by Ezra Pound, who encouraged him to create a small press – the result was Delta Canada, which eventually became owned and operated by a group of young British and American academics and poets from Concordia University; writers who were themselves chiefly anti-war, left-wing and in some cases draft dodgers from the US. I was eventually published by this later version of DC Books, in 1999. It remains the most important publication of my personal life. And it reminds me always why publishing is so important - bringing a book...