So, a few days ago I fulfilled a dream of five decades. My first book with Coach House Books was officially released. The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky is my 12th full-length poetry collection. It is full of crazy poems, personal poems, long poems, short poems, experiments, embarrassments, poems of homage, memorial poems, collaborations, and poems of collegiality. This is another one of my books that celebrates the glory of miscellany, but I think — at least, I hope — this is the one that does it best.
I first visited Coach House Press when I was about 15 years old. I was attending an alternative high school in North York (in the north of Toronto), and our creative writing class welcomed a variety of amazing writers who instructed us as various times: Joe Rosenblatt, Victor Coleman, Robert Fones, David Young. One of them — I think it was Joe — brought us downtown to visit Coach House and workshop our stuff up on the old wooden table on the second floor. We were surrounded by books the press had published, as well as photos from the 1960s and early 1970s (this was about 1976). It was a literary hippie dream. And I had this dream of someday being published by Coach House. I had a lot of dreams in those days. One had already been fulfilled: that same year, a dozen of my poems were published, alongside poems by Mark Laba and Steve Feldman, in a small book called The Thing in Exile, published by Books by Kids (which later became Annick Press).
Years went by, and I published a ton of chapbooks, and then "real" books began appearing from fantastic publishers. Over the years, I've been fortunate enough to have books from The Mercury Press, ECW Press, Anvil Press, Wolsak & Wynn, Freehand Books, DC Books, Mansfield Press, Contra Mundo Books, Socios Fundadores, and a whole writhing bunch of chapbook presses. And most of the those publishers even let me bring aboard my own artists or designers along for the covers, which I think is pretty rare. The cover of The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky is by Montreal painter Nadine Faraj, with beautiful type treatment by Coach House's Crystal Sikma. (I've been collaborating with Nadine for a year and a half on paintings w/ text: the first ones to see the light of day will appear soon in a Mexican arts journal: stay tuned for more info!)
Oh yeah, back to the main thread. Around 2008, I send a fiction manuscript, for my novel Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew, to Coach House. My first-ever submission to the press. Coach House editorial director Alana Wilcox, a hero in the realm of Canadian literature and an amazing human, is a dear friend of mine, and so it was a bit excruciating for her, I think, to reject the book. I swore I'd never put her in that position again.
But a few years ago, I was visiting with one of my students from my days of being writer-in-residence at U of Ottawa. She asked me what aspiration I might still have as a writer. I told her I'd always dreamed of a book from Coach House, but I just couldn't send another MS their way. She told me I was a goof—what the hell was my problem? And I thought about it. And I realized that Coach House has a poetry team now, so it wouldn't all be on Alana. I send the MS for Neither Foot Forward (the book's original title, which my editor talked me out of: too self-deprecating!) to the press. A couple of the poetry editors were interested in it, and Alana wrote to tell me the book was a go.
Damn, it was exciting! And it was exciting to come to Toronto see my book on the press.
I even got to trim a few copies the following week. Holy mackerel!
So…I'm so grateful to Alana, and to my editor, Nasser Hussain, who worked hard and imaginatively with me, and Crystal, and publicist James Lindsay, and John De Jesus and the gang in printing/binding, and the rest of the amazing Coach House team. I mean, I was grateful to them before, for all the great books they have published over the past six or so decades. But now I'm grateful that my book is a cousin to all those other books I've loved.
The book has three dedications. 1) Charlie Huisken — onetime proprietor and co-owner of the legendary Toronto indie bookstore This Ain't the Rosedale Library; he's an unsung hero in the Toronto and the larger literary and cultural world, and a great friend. 2) Steven Feldman and Mark Laba, two childhood friends with whom I embarked on this poetry life: together, we had a book out from Books by Kids back in 1975, when we were 16 years old; it was called The Thing in Exile (I've got a few copies for $75 if you're interested…). And 3) Laurie Siblock, my partner; her support (and tolerance!) go above and beyond.
So far I've had wonderful launches in Montreal, Kingston, and Peterborough! On October 3, I launch in the town from whence I came, Toronto. It's going to be a launch unlike any I've had before!
And how will my book be received? One never knows. And I never get my hopes up. I'm the guy who originally called this book Neither Foot Forward, after all.
Over and out.
