When Tish Happens

In the early 1960s, a group of students at UBC started a magazine called Tish.
The name was purposefully an anagram of shit, in order to demonstrate their
youthful and iconoclastic attitude. In many ways, Tish, and its editors,
became the clear break from older Canadian poets and styles. At the heart of
the magazine, and the "movement," was Frank Davey. And it is Davey who has
written this definitive history._x000D_ _x000D_ Davey has organized the
material as a memoir, starting from his own early days in Abbotsford, B.C.,
and gradually introducing the other poets, including George Bowering, Daphne
Marlatt, and Fred Wah, despite the fact that Davey doesn't meet them until
they all arrive at UBC. Much of the theory of the Tish poets derives from the
Black Mountain poets, an American movement that incorporated the writings of
Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan - who suggested the name
itself. The Black Mountain poets believed that writing should be locally based
and should grow out of the author's own breathing patterns. The more specific
to a locale, the better._x000D_ _x000D_ The poets are introduced as characters
in a play, and when Fred Wah says, "Let's start a magazine," things happen.
The first 19 issues became the calling card for a new type of poetry, but
inevitably the writers began to go their own way. It is Davey's commitment
that holds the group together, despite their geographical separation._x000D_
_x000D_ The Tish movement provided the impetus to create a new, more
contemporary Canadian poetry. And here, Frank Davey reveals how it started,
grew, and became a lasting force.