The SoundBox Collection
Karis Shearer talks with George Bowering with contributions from Jean Baird about the Sharon Thesen’s reading and launch of Artemis Hates Romance at George and Angela Bowerings’ house in the early 1980s. Their conversation touches on other readings and literary events at the Bowerings’, a social hub for writers living in and visiting Vancouver.
Collector and bibliographer Jean Baird tells Karis Shearer the story of the baseball that she donated to the Baird-Bowering fonds at UBC Okanagan Special Collections and Archives.
bill bissett (1939-) was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. bissett is a sound, visual, and performance poet, well known for his unique orthography and performance of his sound poetry. bissett’s performances often incorporate sound effects, chanting, dancing, and sometimes playing a maraca. The themes of bissett’s poetry encompasses a wide range that is explored through the use of humour, sentimentality, and political commentary. bissett’s most recent poetry book, breth, combines both new and selected poems.
Frank Davey (1940– ) is an Abbotsford-raised poet and essayist who has been an editor, small magazine publisher, literary critic, and cultural critic in Canada since 1961. He co-founded the poetry newsletter Tish and from 1965-2013 was editor of Open Letter, the Canadian journal of writing and theory. In 1984 he and Fred Wah co-founded SwiftCurrent, the world’s first on-line literary magazine, which ran until 1990. Davey is the author of numerous poetry books, including Weeds (1970), King of Swords (1972), and The Abbotsford Guide to India (1986) and such critical works as Five Readings of Olson’s Maximus (1970), Earle Birney (1971) and Canadian Literary Power (1994).
Robert Hogg (1942-2022) was born in Edmonton, AB, and grew up in Cariboo and Fraser Valley, BC. Hogg graduated from UBC with a BA in English and Creative Writing. During his time at UBC, Hogg became affiliated as a poet and co-editor a part of TISH. In 1964, Hogg hitchhiked to Toronto and visited Buffalo NY, where Charles Olson had been teaching at the time. At SUNY at Buffalo, he completed a Ph.D. on the works of Charles Olson. Shortly after, Hogg taught American and Canadian poetry at Carleton University for the following thirty-eight years and kept a farm near Ottawa.