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

LOUIS DUDEK WAS COHEN'S EARLY MENTOR, AND MY FRIEND There was never a time when I did not know about Leonard Cohen .  I was born in 1966, and he had been famous (in Canada) as one of our best poets even before then; by 1967, he was world-famous, arguably Canada's most-beloved figure ever on the world stage, and he kept on being so, up until his death yesterday. My mother was a huge fan, and his music and poetry (less so his prose) was always in my childhood. Since I was born in Montreal (as was he), and shared his passion for debating and writing (less so, strumming guitars), he was never far from my thought - indeed, as a teenager trying to write poetry, and wondering if such a role was feasible for a Montrealer, Cohen showed the way (along with Irving Layton , and Louis Dudek , his mentors, later both mine as well). Mostly, like most Canadian poets, my affections were of the love-hate kind. He was the absentee father, who rarely did or said anything to promote younger ...

One of the best memories of my college years - I was educated at a private college run by nuns - was a summer house party hosted by Adam Frank - we were around 19, and we were drinking gin and tonics, and later Margaritas.  Adam has since become a brilliant professor.  We were into A.J. Ayer, Colin Wilson, Brecht, Kafka, Welles , Freud, Wilde  and, Iggy Pop .  Raw Power was playing - on a turn table I believe - and I had never heard it before.  Adam was wearing a bow tie and his goofy glasses - he was tall, with curly hair, and very funny, and smart.  Also in attendance were our friends the impossibly tall, erudite and charming Misha Glouberman (soon off to Harvard), Marcy Goldberg  (so slinky and clever, a secret crush of mine), Douglas Barrett , a slim, blond physical and intellectual comedian, action-packed, manic, sexually exploratory, possibly blood-stained from previous antics, and my boyfriend at the time, sort of - our Cassady .  The ...

" Véhicule Press began in 1973 on the premises of Véhicule Art Inc., one of Canada's first artist-run galleries. The large space occupied by both the gallery and the press at 61 Ste-Catherine St. West was once the Café Montmarte--the renowned jazz club of the 1930s."  Forty years later, it has developed into one of the essential "small" presses of Canada - dynamically publishing local, provincial and national history, memoirs, guides, novels, short stories, essays, and, perhaps most impressively, poetry.  Anyone wanting to review a few new VP poetry books drop me a line .  As a small press publisher, I can only marvel at the stamina, dedication, and dash of madness that has kept this firm going through all the downturns of our times.  Congratulations are in order.  If you want to know what Montreal, and Quebec culture is like, here's a mainstay, a key stop on your reading tour.

In Canada the next fortnight: I will be reading from, and launching, two new collections from the past two years, which complement each other, England Is Mine (Punchy Books, Montreal, 2011) and When All My Disappointments Came At Once (Tightrope Books, Toronto, 2012).  I haven't been to Canada since 2007, so I look forward to catching up with friends, and meeting new poets and poetry readers.  Dates below. SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28 MONTREAL, QUEBEC PILOT READING SERIES 8 pm, Sparrow, Blvd. St Laurent THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1 KINGSTON, ONTARIO 7 pm, Novel Idea Bookstore SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 4 HAMILTON, ONTARIO 7.30 pm, Lit Live Reading Series Homegrown Hamilton 27 King Williams Street MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5 TORONTO, ONTARIO 7.30 pm, Rower's Pub Reading Series Victory Cafe 581 Markham Street TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6 TORONTO, ONTARIO TIGHTROPE BOOKS LAUNCH 6 pm, Ben McNally Booksellers FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9 MONTREAL, QUEBEC BEST CANADIAN POETRY LAUNCH 7.30 pm, Argo ...

Montreal, a 400-year-old-plus city of several million souls, the home of the great wave of Canadian modernist poets of the 1940s and 1950s, as well as legends like Leonard Cohen , has a strong tradition of poetry, and a number of vital small poetry presses.  It also is enriched by its bilingualism, a superb creative writing program at Concordia University, some lively reading events and festivals, and an international vibe at the cultural cross-roads of Europe and America. Yet it is rarely these days at the forefront of poetic matters in Canada - Toronto tends to hold the keys to the kingdom.  So it comes as a welcome surprise to learn that Andrew Motion will be judging the world's biggest cash prize for best single poem - called The Montreal Prize .  I have some problems with poetry competitions (perhaps the biggest question being, do such occasions ever actually locate the most strange, original or unsettling works, or the ones that rather confirm already-establ...

My friend the poet Sonja Skarstedt (now dead alas) and her husband, comic book artist Geof Isherwood , made a short film about the important modernist figure, Louis Dudek .  Here it is.

When I lived in Montreal, in the 80s and 90s, it was a semi-ruined place, with 20% unemployment - a paradise for slackers, grungy students, and layabout hipsters.  Littered with taverns, clubs, cafes, and other venues, everyone under the age of 40 who wasn't nailed down to a day job hung out and wrote movies, did spoken word, or was a dancer / musician.  My brother ran a record label.  I performed with rappers and hip-hop artists around midnight, and ran cabarets that showcased Martha and Rufus Wainwright before the acclaim. The best emcee in town was bizarro genius Jake , who wore underwear onstage and nothing else, showing off his gigantic toned skinhead body.  His lisping grandeur intro'd great young slam and other poets, including many who would go on to some sort of success. It was a great time.  Local bands like The Kingpins and Me, Mom and Morgentaler (an infamous abortionist) rubbed shoulders with more critically-acclaimed concerns, like Godspeed Yo...

Poetry Review Volume 100: 2 Summer 2010 is out, with poems from Alfred Corn, Ruth Fainlight, Alan Jenkins, John Kinsella, Sarah Maguire , Chris McCabe, Daljit Nagra , myself, and others.  Also, a few good articles on slam poetry.  Having been involved with bringing slam poetry to Canada fifteen years ago (in the summer of 1994 I believe) via the nationally-infamous cabaret nights of Vox Hunt, that led to YAWP! and the emergence of an entire slam domination in Montreal of the art form, for a few years, I then anthologised slam poets and poems alongside major page poets like Glyn Maxwell , Michael Donaghy , and others, calling the new wave of poets that read well on and off the page Fusion Poets, with co-editor Regie Cabico , when we put out the 1998 anthology Poetry Nation .  Good to see the British finally taking to their own indigenous slam artists, and welcoming them in, off the stage, onto the page.  Meanwhile, my own working practice has moved on, and I collabo...

It is fitting that the obituary of Chris Haney , a Canadian inventor of the world's greatest board game since Monopoly and Scrabble - Trivial Pursuit - has been published on Canada Day, in the Guardian.  Haney helped to invent the game in my home town of Montreal, when a journalist at T he Gazette .  As a paperboy I used to deliver The Gazette, and still recall that most memorable of headlines, first glimpsed groggily at the crack of dawn some summer day thirty years ago: BOY MEETS HERO AT BOTTOM OF POOL.  No Canadian cottage or dinner party was complete without TP - which for awhile, with its pie pieces - seemed to be more popular than TV.  I had an  Uncle, Ed , who memorised all the cards, and therefore could win the game on his first round, which was annoying.  He has since died, tragically.

Montreal - with its lively Irish-Quebec traditions - always had huge St Patrick's Day parades. My parents would take me as a kid, and I recall the many red-faced men waving from their rather ordinary flat-bed trucks, touched with a strand of green something. The highlight for me was always the horses, and the horse-s--t, and the musical marchers stepping with the luck of the Irish down the littered streets. It was usually bitterly cold - sometimes zero or below. After the parade my mother would want an Irish coffee, and we'd go and have something green to drink - as I got older, coloured beer. My father, Irish-Canadian (his Mom from Belfast) would sing us Bing Crosby songs from the album Shamrocks and Shillelaghs . Who threw the overalls in Mrs Murphy's chowder... Winter was breaking, the town was festive, - it always seemed like a good omen for the rest of the year. As I got older, Winter Carnival debates would sometimes fall around that time. Debaters from across ...

The sale the other day of Action Comics #1 for a million dollars is both bound to raise a smile and a question. First, the nostalgia - my Dad once reputedly owned this comic, and sold it used for a nickel on St. Catherine Street, Montreal, when he was a little boy. Subsequently his mother threw out many other classic comics of the era, as he grew up. That's why these comics are so rare nowadays - spring cleaning and dog-eared over reading. That's the fun part. While I loved comics, and still do - and therefore am glad they are valued and collected - I wonder how many poetry books from 1938 are being bought and sold for a million in cold hard cash. Not many. I wonder, Eyewear fans - what book would you buy, if you could afford it, for such a mighty sum?

Sad news. A great musician has died. The Guardian ran the obituary today of Ska and rock-steady legend, Lynn Taitt , who moved to Canada in the late 60s and found himself, among other things, playing in my brother's Ska revival band, The Kingpins , in the last few decades of his life. Coming as this does almost to the week of the 30th anniversary of The Specials' first Number One in the UK, it's a reminder of the enduring appeal and quality of this great music and its various styles.

Sad news. One of the leading lights of the Montreal literary scene since the 80s, Sonja Skarstedt , poet, editor, essayist, and publisher, has died of cancer. I have incredibly fond memories of Sonja and Geof (her partner) during the Zymergy days (87-91) when she was editor. She took great photos of the events I was running, then, with Bill Furey , the New McGill Reading Series, which we ran out of the Bistro Duluth. It seems strange to think that was more than 20 years ago now. Sonja was funny, kind, very warm, and very brilliant. She lit up the room when she walked in. She was interested in so many people and ideas, and was a fine writer. She did marvellous things for the community in Montreal, not least by being so supportive of the Louis Dudek legacy. She will be much missed. Her obituary is here .

One of the most intriguing and cosmopolitan of all Canadian poets is John Glassco - Montreal-born, Paris-forged, and Eastern Townships-retired - whose 99th birthday this would be today (15th December) if he had not died in January, 1981. Lately, some of his prose has come back into the limelight. His centenary will be quickly followed by a biography from Brian Busby that I, for one, cannot wait to read. This excerpt from "Brummel at Calais" is interesting for a number of reasons, not least because English-French aestheticism and stylishness have always been a part of modern Montreal poetics, much more so than in the rest of Canada. I am surprised that John Ashbery has not written about John Glassco, since in some ways Glassco is a precursor of his, in francophile interest. An art of being, nothing but being, the grace Of perfect self-assertion based on nothing, As in our vanity's cause against the void He strikes his elegant blow, the solemn report of those Who have d...

The actor who played Sulu in the Star Trek films and TV series is currently having a spat with the actor who played Kirk, in same. Takei and Shatner , according to the great eccentric Canadian thespian on his blog, have been at odds for maybe 40 years or more. Shatner has been lashing out at his friends and foes lately, using the Internet, set to stun, as his weapon of choice. According to Entertainment Weekly , he even complained about not being given a part in 2009's much-anticipated new Star Trek film, starring the guy who plays Sylar on Heroes as the guy with the pointy ears (from Sylar to Spock being a small stretch for man). Meanwhile, the real Spock was given a walk-on. Shatner has been weird science for a while - his poetry and song recordings are notoriously bad, and so is much else in his life. But he's also lived through personal tragedy, and being lampooned for years. His bread and butter has also been his body-hugging hairshirt. My father went to school with Sha...

Congratulations to Montreal writer Heather O'Neill for being shortlisted for the Orange Prize, for her brilliant novel. O'Neill is also a poet (a collection was published with small, vibrant Montreal press DC Books) and used to perform her work at the poetry cabarets I ran in the mid-90s. Is this one of the books that Lily Allen championed?

Sad news. One of the greatest Montrealers, and a towering genius of contemporary Jazz, is dead.