Compiled Canadian Concrete Compendia
one of the first necessary steps toward compiling LMNTS was to identify, find & study all previous anthologies that shared our particular fixation of Canadacentric extralinearity; what is the lineage of the anthologization of Canadian writing that defies strict lineation? is there such a lineage in the first place? what would the qualifiers be for inclusion in such a supposed list?
it turns out that, beyond the locally (relatively) wellknown titles that cluster the head of the list, the "explosion" that occurred as the '6os became the '7os just kept popping until it lapsed through the '9os then became more & more localized/privatized as things surged again throughout the 2ooos.
this is the only list i've seen that attempts to account for every publication that can be considered "an anthology of Canadian visual writing". i'm sure it's missing at least one title & i have to confess to not yet having seen entry 4o to know whether it even qualifies (from descriptions i've seen, it seems to occupy the same place as 4 & 19: critical work with lots of samples). it doesn't count special issues of magazines, nor does it count other anthologies that just included a small section or scattering of "concrete poetry": it includes only one-shots that either originated in Canada (including international content) or were issued elsewhere with Canadian work as their focus (such as example 27).
one obvious but important result of the study of this accumulative canon was to note the prevalence of repetition in the contents, especially in those which supposed a "historical" perspective. for us, this led to a major determining factor in our editorial vantage: we would categorically pass on works that had appeared in any previous anthologies (cutting only a little slack for variants of significant works found in other sources or in publications issued in severely limited pressruns).
this has resulted in a collection that considerably extends the range of what has preceded us, given that our sources encompass a quite fulsome archive of Canadian "avantgarde" activity. so far as this list suggests, there has never been such a deepdive into what all is available to provide the puzzlepieces that could produce such a survey &, while i can't pretend we had access to "everything", we had access to far more than any previous such quantificational attempt.
Compiled Canadian Concrete Compendia
one of the first necessary steps toward compiling LMNTS was to identify, find & study all previous anthologies that shared our particular fixation of Canadacentric extralinearity; what is the lineage of the anthologization of Canadian writing that defies strict lineation? is there such a lineage in the first place? what would the qualifiers be for inclusion in such a supposed list?
it turns out that, beyond the locally (relatively) wellknown titles that cluster the head of the list, the "explosion" that occurred as the '6os became the '7os just kept popping until it lapsed through the '9os then became more & more localized/privatized as things surged again throughout the 2ooos.
this is the only list i've seen that attempts to account for every publication that can be considered "an anthology of Canadian visual writing". i'm sure it's missing at least one title & i have to confess to not yet having seen entry 4o to know whether it even qualifies (from descriptions i've seen, it seems to occupy the same place as 4 & 19: critical work with lots of samples). it doesn't count special issues of magazines, nor does it count other anthologies that just included a small section or scattering of "concrete poetry": it includes only one-shots that either originated in Canada (including international content) or were issued elsewhere with Canadian work as their focus (such as example 27).
one obvious but important result of the study of this accumulative canon was to note the prevalence of repetition in the contents, especially in those which supposed a "historical" perspective. for us, this led to a major determining factor in our editorial vantage: we would categorically pass on works that had appeared in any previous anthologies (cutting only a little slack for variants of significant works found in other sources or in publications issued in severely limited pressruns).
this has resulted in a collection that considerably extends the range of what has preceded us, given that our sources encompass a quite fulsome archive of Canadian "avantgarde" activity. so far as this list suggests, there has never been such a deepdive into what all is available to provide the puzzlepieces that could produce such a survey &, while i can't pretend we had access to "everything", we had access to far more than any previous such quantificational attempt.