The Anstruther Reader, ed. Jim Johnstone

 

The pragmatism of a girl entering a room, drying her hands
the eroticism of a girl drying her hair, head bent

Contrary to common belief, hair cannot get wet.
I wash with my head bent forward beneath the faucet
sweeping forward into the stream, abstracting  the nape to a line.
The lines of my hair all singular.
Collectively immersed in water, there is a wetness,
but still each hair, taken separate, is solid.
Solids dissolve, do not let water pass through them.
It is the division between strands then, which is wet,
and creates the illusion of drench.
Same with a shirt. It is the spaces between the threads I clean. (Klara du Plessis)

I am deeply pleased to see the two hundred and seventy-two pages of the anthology The Anstruther Reader (Windsor ON: Palimpsest Press, 2024), edited by Toronto poet and editor Jim Johnstone, who co-founded the chapbook publisher Anstruther Press back in 2014 with his wife, designer Erica Smith. Subtitled “Ten years of Poems, Broadsides, and Manifestoes,” The Anstruther Reader dips in and through a selection of work across the first decade of chapbook-making across a press that has produced work by a wealth of poets across Canada, from Klara du Plessis to Jenna Lyn Albert to Manahil Bandukwala to Shazia Hafiz Ramji to Fawn Parker to Tolu Oloruntoba to Cassidy McFadzean to Shane Neilson to Michael Prior. One could see Johnstone’s thick and thorough introduction to this volume as an extension of the work he did through his critical volume Write Print Fold and Staple: On Poetry and Micropress in Canada (Kentville NS: Gaspereau Press, 2023) [see my review of such here], as he speaks of working to expand the boundaries of the press, deliberately attempting to mentor young poets and produce numerous debuts, and assembling an editorial board of young writers from various corners of the country to assist with editorial selection, to allow for a broader range of writing to appear through the press. As he writes:

When I published The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21^st Century Canadian Poetry in 2018, I characterized the group of Canadian poets selected to appear in the book as the selfie generation. This cohort had published three books or less at the time, and were adept at bridging the digital divide by synthesizing multiple poetic styles simultaneously. Self-referential and self-assured, their poems moved quickly, as if they employed hyperlinks, “harnessing the echo chamber of the internet into a malleable, impressionistic music.” These characteristics still stand in The Anstruther Reader, though the poets are different. Read on and you’ll find representative samples from sixty Anstruther authors, selected to present the story of the press through the voices that have come to define it.

Sixty authors representing the press is an enormous heft of activity, and Johnstone even includes a complete checklist/bibliography of publications at the back of the collection, which is marvellous. Publications are listed by year and, one would presume, in order of publication, although the checklist leaves out print runs or any more specific dating (I’m aware that certain titles were produced in initial runs of thirty or forty, while other publications went through multiple print-runs). In my review of The Next Wave, I wrote of how I compared Johnstone’s editorial work—from his chapbooks through Anstruther Press to trade titles through Palimpsest Press—to that of fiction editor John Metcalf: you might not be interested in everything they might be offering, and the work will have a distinct flavour to it, but much of it will be of a high enough quality to impress. As editors, I trust their judgement, even if I might not care for the work of every writer or title in their roster. I still hold to this rather general overview, although I have to acknowledge that the core of Johnstone’s interest, the highly crafted first-person metaphor-drive narrative lyric poem, does occasionally expand to include more experimental approaches (work by Derek Beaulieu, Dani Spinosa and Gary Barwin appear in this collection, for example). Either way, the quality of the work in each of the Anstruther titles I’ve seen are rigorously high, and publication through Anstruther has provided numerous authors the push into subsequent full-length publication. The work and careers of numerous of the authors listed here have flourished since the publications of their Anstruther titles, in no small part thanks to Johnstone and Smith’s ongoing work.

Near the Garden (of Eden)

The sky looks mean. I get inside
to perk coffee to drink on-deck,
waiting for the storm’s admonishment,
its precaution. The toads
and crickets puncture the grassy
lot with their calls—I’m not jaded,
but I think of Him, how He
could’ve intervened more by now.
The air seems swollen. Everything
is suspended. Last time the weather
failed, a gale pushed through,
leaning our braced saplings over
as the rain curtain crossed
the intersection. Here, lightning strikes
the sky with a quick, forked tongue. (Shawn Adrian)

There’s something wonderfully archival about a collection such as this, assembling a portrait of a range of activity, specifically small press chapbook production, that might otherwise appear quite ephemeral, even geographically localized (as most chapbook presses usually are, although Anstruther does seem to have a rather broad geographic reach). A collection such as this, produced through Palimpsest Press, offers the benefit of bookstore distribution, something nearly and completely impossible across chapbook production. One can point to other collections over the years attempting to assemble a larger, single portrait of publishing activity, from bill bissett’s infamous the last blewointment anthology, vols. 1 and 2 (Toronto ON: Nightwood Editions, 1985/86) to Stan Dragland’s New Life in Dark Seas: Brick Books at 25 (London ON: Brick Books, 2000) or the two-volumes produced to celebrate the first decade of Gaspereau Press: Gaspereau Gloriatur: Book of the Blessed Tenth Year, Vol.1: Poetry (Kentville NS: Gaspereau Press, 2007) and Gaspereau Gloriatur: Book of the Blessed Tenth Year, Vol. 2: Prose (Gaspereau Press, 2007), both of which were edited Michael deBeyer and Kate Kennedy. None, one might note, were produced to collect or document chapbook presses (although one might argue blewointment leaned that way with much of their publishing history, and Gaspereau has had a lengthy history of chapbook production alongside trade volumes), and all I can recall across Canada for such activity, beyond the three anthologies I edited to celebrate decade-markers through above/ground press—GROUNDSWELL, best of above/ground press, 1993-2003 (Fredericton NB: Broken Jaw Press/cauldron books, 2003), Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013 (Ottawa ON: Chaudiere Books, 2013) and groundwork: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Toronto ON: Invisible Publishing, 2023)—would be Hammer and Tongs: A Smoking Lung Anthology (Vancouver BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1999), edited by Brad Cran, acknowledging the chapbook publishing he did in Victoria, and later, Vancouver, across the 1990s with Smoking Lung Press. Why aren’t there further collections around chapbook presses? I would love to see something of the four-plus decades of Stuart Ross’ Proper Tales Press, or even had a press such as Very Stone House collaborated on a volume of their 1960s and 70s work. Why not housepress, or pink dog or Rahila’s Ghost Press? Too much of this activity gets lost, overlooked. It happened, is happening; this is important, even if you aren’t paying attention. You should be paying attention.