Some Overlooked Shit

I view TISH and Floating Bear as mirror images of each other, particularly in terms of format. Like Floating Bear, the early issues of TISH have a simple newsletter look. Five or six mimeo pages with few frills stapled on the upper left corner, folded, stamped, addressed right on the front page and dropped in the mail. Again like Floating Bear, TISH became more elaborate as the run got longer. First some typographical art, which reminds me of ASCII art in the early days of the Internet, and then some incredible covers as the magazine slowly stepped into the grave.

Talonbooks reprinted the first 19 issues of TISH and those early issues under the editorship of Frank Davey, George Bowering and others get all the attention, but the later issues demonstrate that the Vancouver poetry scene did not begin and end with the poetry conferences sponsored by Warren Tallman. Poetry thrived there after all the poets left the 1963 Conference.

I doubt many people have even seen the covers of the later issues let along read them, but if you dig around there are some flowers blooming and worth plucking out of these late piles of shit.

JB