Finding Nothing: The VanGardes, 1959-1975

by Gregory Betts

Overview

Experimental literature accelerated dramatically in Vancouver in the 1960s as the influence of New American poetics merged with the ideas of Marshall McLuhan. Vancouver poets and artists began thinking about their creative works with new clarity and set about testing and redefining the boundaries of literature. As new gardes in Vancouver explored the limits of text and language, some writers began incorporating collage and concrete poetics into their work while others delved deeper into unsettling, revolutionary, and Surrealist imagery. There was a presumption across the avant-garde communities that radical openness could provoke widespread socio-political change. In other words, the intermedia experimentation and the related destruction of the line between art and society pushed art to the frontlines of a broad socio-political battle of the collective imagination of Vancouver.

Finding Nothing traces the rise of the radical avant-garde in Vancouver, from the initial salvos of the Tish group, through Blewointment’s spatial experiments, to radical Surrealisms and new feminisms. Incorporating images, original texts, and interviews, Gregory Betts shows how the VanGardes signalled a remarkable consciousness of the globalized forces at play in the city, impacting communities, orientations, races, and nations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487531980
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	07/30/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	392
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Gregory Betts is a professor in the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 

Introduction: Finding Nothing
When American Literature Moved to Vancouver
Finding Nothing (or, the Avant-Garde Flowering that Was the 1960s)
The Problem of Nothing: A Short Interlude on the Theory of the Avant-Garde 
The VanGardes 

1. 1–19 Thoughts on TISH, 1961–1969 (A Document of Response) 

2. The Birth of Blew
Harmony: Aristotle, Olson, and Vancouver, 1959–1963 
Disharmony: Bissett, Collage, and another Vancouver, 1959–1983 
The End of Categories: The Vancouver Litter-rary Collage 

3. Blew Collage
At the Margins of the Garde
Blewointment
Collage into Canada
Literature into Collage (in Vancouver)

4. A Line, A New Line, All One: Variant Narratives of Concrete Canada
The Concrete Liturgy 
Canadian Concrete 
Other Narratives of Concrete Poetry 
Judith Copithorne on Vancouver Concrete 
Coda: The Visual Roots of the Alphabet

5. The Triumph of Surrealism: Magick Art in Vancouver
Vancouver Deformance 
The Surreal West Coast 
Precursors and Early Forays: Surrealism in Vancouver 
Canadian Literary Surrealism 
Super-natural British Columbia: From Lawren Harris to David W. Harris 
Post-revolutionary Surrealism 
The Colour of My Dreams 

6. Performing Proprioception: The Birthing Story as Public Discourse 

7. Avant Now and Then: Locating the Post-Avant
Hegemony and the Single Riot 
Haling Taxi! 
Locating the Post-Avant 
Neruda, Chile, and Further Disenchantments 

Conclusion: “we stopped at nothing”
Finding Nothing in the Avant-Garde Archive 

List of Figures

Appendix A: Warren Tallman Elegy 
Apendix B: Concrete Poetry 
Appendix C: Glossary of Intermedia and Transdisciplinary Groups 
Appendix D: Letter to the Editor of the Georgia Straight 

Works Cited

What People are Saying About This

Felicity Tayler

"Rich in aesthetic and personal anecdotes gleaned through interviews, Finding Nothing proposes that the mythologies of Vancouver modernist poetics both arose from colonial conditioning and worked against it. Readers will appreciate the intimate photographs and reprints of rare materials from private collections and institutional archives — the collation of these dispersals makes visible these absences from public spaces as an ongoing colonial erasure."

Jason Camlot

"Gregory Betts has produced a literary history of the avant-garde in Canada like no other. Finding Nothing offers deep reflection on the meaning of the new, including accounts of the positive transformational effects upon human structures of perception and the violent forms of erasure that the 'transnational cultural flow' of literary activity in and out of Vancouver has entailed since that space's appropriation by European settlers, through its examination of the histories of modernism, up to the present. With a combination of fastidious archival research, deep critical insight and empathy, and a most engaging style of historical storytelling,　Betts has opened up important space for the development of alternative, decolonizing accounts of the literary avant-garde in settler Canada."

Editorial Reviews

" Finding Nothing is an excavation site for a special moment in Canadian poetic history."

—Ron Verzuh, The Ormsby Review

"Many scholars will find Finding Nothing especially valuable for its informational and bibliographical content. Detailed lists of ephemeral little magazines and literary publishers, tabulations of contributors to the major periodicals, a fulsome index, and an appended glossary of ‘Intermedia and Transdisciplinary Groups’ further enhance this landmark study of a transformational phase in Canada’s cultural history."

—Carole Gerson, Simon Fraser University, The Canadian Historical Review
"It is difficult to characterize Finding Nothing as anything less than a singularly important critical monograph that likely sets the terms of discussion in the field of Canadian avant-garde studies to come."—Scott Inniss, Canadian Literature

"Gregory Betts has produced a literary history of the avant-garde in Canada like no other. Finding Nothing offers deep reflection on the meaning of the new, including accounts of the positive transformational effects upon human structures of perception and the violent forms of erasure that the ‘transnational cultural flow’ of literary activity in and out of Vancouver has entailed since that space’s appropriation by European settlers, through its examination of the histories of modernism, up to the present. With a combination of fastidious archival research, deep critical insight and empathy, and a most engaging style of historical storytelling,　Betts has opened up important space for the development of alternative, decolonizing accounts of the literary avant-garde in settler Canada."

—Jason Camlot, Professor of English and University Research Chair (Tier I) in Literature and Sound Studies, Concordia University

"Rich in aesthetic and personal anecdotes gleaned through interviews, Finding Nothing proposes that the mythologies of Vancouver modernist poetics both arose from colonial conditioning and worked against it. Readers will appreciate the intimate photographs and reprints of rare materials from private collections and institutional archives – the collation of these dispersals makes visible these absences from public spaces as an ongoing colonial erasure."

—Felicity Tayler, Research Data Management Librarian and Interim Head of Research Services, University of Ottawa

From the Publisher

"Many scholars will find Finding Nothing especially valuable for its informational and bibliographical content. Detailed lists of ephemeral little magazines and literary publishers, tabulations of contributors to the major periodicals, a fulsome index, and an appended glossary of 'Intermedia and Transdisciplinary Groups' further enhance this landmark study of a transformational phase in Canada's cultural history."

The Canadian Historical Review - Carole Gerson

"Finding Nothing is an excavation site for a special moment in Canadian poetic history."

The Ormsby Review - Ron Verzuh

“It is difficult to characterize Finding Nothing as anything less than a singularly important critical monograph that likely sets the terms of discussion in the field of Canadian avant-garde studies to come.”

Canadian Literature - Scott Inniss