Born in Regina on May 24, 1962, and raised in Vancouver, Shaw was
fully immersed in the vibrant Vancouver art and writing communities of the mid-
to late 1980s and early 1990s, and spent several formative years as a member of
the Kootenay School of Writing collective (which is where I met her), arranging
readings, talks, workshops, and classes. During this time she began writing
poetry, and was also a visual artist, editor, and curator, serving as
artist-in-residence at Vancouver’s Western Front, co-editor (with Jeff Derksen)
of Writing magazine, and curator of
the Or Gallery; throughout her career, she produced for art catalogues and
magazines insightful essays that display her characteristic blend of
intellectual clarity and playful curiosity. In the early 1990s she moved to
Montreal to attend McGill University, where she earned both her master’s (1995)
and doctorate (20000) in communications (she wrote her master’s thesis on West
Coast style, while her doctoral thesis examines the Museum of Modern Art’s
Television Project, 1939-55). She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at New
York University, and taught communications at McGill, Rutgers, Wilfred Laurier,
Simon Fraser, and Capilano Universities. All of which is to say that when Shaw
describes the Canadian art collection N.E. Thing Co.’s “constellations of
collapsing and interacting territories, calling attention to the hidden
interdependence of corporate, artistic, and domestic spheres” (“Siting the
Banal,” 33), she could be describing her own method. Her intricate, dense texts
are at once cinematic and spatial; read as a whole, they construct
“constellations of collapsing and interacting territories” (68), a shaky,
impermanent site of resistance, rigorous inquiry, and potentially spanning
three decades and multiple genres, which crucially comes to no definitive
conclusion, but is only cut short by her untimely death from cancer, in 2007,
at age forty-four. (Catriona Strang, Introduction, “‘Constellations and
Contingent Networks’: Nancy Shaw’s Structures of Possibility”)
One
of the first elements that strikes around Nancy Shaw’s posthumous collection The Gorge: Selected Writing of Nancy Shaw,
edited by Catriona Strang (Vancouver BC:
Talonbooks, 2017) is the short sentence etched at the bottom of the back cover:
“The Gorge: Selected Writing of Nancy Shaw resumes the affordable and carefully curated Selected Writing series
Talonbooks began in the 1980s.” If you aren’t familiar with the series, the
first seven titles (a Gerry Gilbert selected was suggested, but declined by the
author) were released during 1980-82 as small paperbacks, aimed to capture
university and college course-lists, and included: bpNichol, As Elected; Frank Davey, The Arches; bill bissett, Beyond Even Faithful Legends; Fred Wah, Loki Is Buried at Smoky Creek; Phyllis Webb, The Vision Tree; George Bowering, Particular Accidents; and Daphne Marlatt, Net Work. Each volume opened
with a critical essay on the individual author’s work, and the series can
easily be seen as a precursor to the ‘critical selected poems’ series by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, through their Laurier Poetry series, or The Porcupine’s Quill, Inc.’s The Essential Poets Series. While Talon might have
produced multiple volumes of ‘selected poems,’ and even collected poems, over
the years (by poets including Barry McKinnon, Artie Gold, Sharon Thesen and Roy K. Kiyooka, with more recent Fred Wah, Phyllis Webb and Daphne Marlatt volumes), their return
to, as they say, “affordable volumes,” is an intriguing shift to that original
goal of getting as many copies into readers’ hands as possible, including as
potential classroom texts.
GENERIC
DEFICIT
(1999)
hidden bust somatic lay torn
grvitous honey pun so
posi vandal for the eviction
hypotactic come bleek out convivial herd
overloard gag tad des deux gaggle
as if to offer truth when
over-exquisite with a shameful bargain
canonical hunter circa post price
serial generic pit minority
gloat and glory truesome funeral fantasy
perp the meritorious decorum (“TWO VERSIONS OF
SIX POEMS”)
As
her friend, editor and frequent collaborator Catriona Strang writes in her
incredible introduction, Vancouver poet, scholar, curator and art critic NancyShaw (1962-2007) was an important part of the informal group of poets around
The Kootenay School of Writing for a number of years, and collaborated with a
wide group of writers, artists and curators over the length of her creative
life, including, as Strang writes: “[Stan] Denniston, but also Gerald Creede,
Jeff Derksen, Eponymous Productions and Management, Monika Kin Gagnon, François
Houle, Jacqueline Leggatt, Eric Metcalfe, Lisa Robertson, me, and Mina Totino
(the results of several of these collaborations are included in this collection).”
Reinforcing just how important Shaw’s connections to others were, in both her
life and her art, Strang continues:
Collaboration is at once a shared labour, an
acknowledgment of community, of the fruitful conversations, side-tracks, and
pleasures we share with friends and colleagues, and a lapsing or slipping away
from the seemingly omnipresent notion of a single, distinct creator. Thriving as
it does on co-operation and discussion, collaboration can be messy,
challenging, and difficult. It can also be a sustained and sustaining act of
love, friendship, and support, a sharing of the weight of creative labour, and
indeed of living. It acknowledges the relationships often overlooked when works
are attributed to single creators, giving credit to the contributions of our
children, our friends, our neighbours, our lovers, not to mention the media we
consume, the conversations we overhear, and the detritus of daily life, so that
the distinction between a creator/producer and her surrounding community
becomes blurred or even unimportant. The collaborative text becomes a terrain
of relations and possibilities, “constellations and contingent networks” (“Idea
File,” 34); at the same time it is a method of inquiry – “we want to unravel
the conditions of our engagement” (Light
Sweet Crude, 111) – producing works that, as Christine Stewart puts it, “investigate
how we come to know and be and mean” (Stewart 2000).
This
current collection selects from a range of Shaw’s published works, including Affordable Tedium (Vancouver BC: Tsunami
Editions, 1987), Busted (with Catriona Strang) (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2001), Light Sweet Crude (with Catriona Strang) (Vancouver BC: Line Boks,
2007) and Scoptocatic (Toronto ON:
ECW Press, 1992), as well as a variety of pieces pulled from catalogues,
journals and anthologies, and even an array of previously unpublished works, including
“ARCADES LETTER” (below). Part of what becomes immediately clear about going
through the work in this volume is how fresh the pieces remain, presenting both
a critical eye and a lively sense of language, meaning and sound, still able to
remind one just what might be possible in writing. Even for those of us who
might already have copies of all her trade collections, such a selected, especially
with previously unpublished and uncollected works included, allows for such a wonderful
opportunity to revisit the work of an author one might not have looked through
in some time; and, too, to mourn such a significant loss.
ARCADES
LETTER
(2004)
January 22, 2004
Dear Catriona,
“The state of grief is (not) a democracy.”
Committee of memory. This resolution. That resuscitation. Some officials
wondered at the refusal to let go. I freely admitted that we didn’t get away
with what we wanted. Quite simply a custodian of resources. In denying the
rumour, he refused to say what it was about. They cruise through the geography
of war. Most said they wished for a burial site that was local. “We understand
that you have different needs and obligations but we have no knowledge of how
to mourn your loved ones. We hope for an agreement, but we don’t have a
position.” Punctually cringed. Constantly tugged. Takes epic command by
capitulating, adding confessions, metaphors, and distortions. Aimed to
demonstrate the emotional pull.
To transform aggressive energies into states of
industrial alchemy involves weather, musical structure, and improvisation. This
goal was reflected in her posthumous memoir. It isn’t just that they cultivated
accents and customs of speaking in full, grammatically correct sentences
patched with droll tributes. From the very first bar, it was a parenthetically
broken fantasy. In an opal fog, he travelled with one of his few salvaged
possessions. It was a copy of a rare letter. He sold it and opened a tiny shop.
They wear pumpkin-orange and pale-green profiles with watches that follow the
seasons. In an off-axis aural crease, we pulled at her collar. The gesture
suggested prim – alluring and disposable. She avoided discrepancy. Her
gamboling angel took heed with every step and pose this was suited to the
astounding repertory. Often this angle would lie on the floor, long and uneven.
A piper of unspecified dignity eschewed access
to security. Yet to detect. Yanked. Is deceptively less classical, in a smaller
square of light. The data shrunk in comparison, nuzzling, rotating in exquisite
patterns. Retribution and lust collide. The tenor of a once-stable custom.
