my file on bill bissett (donation to Haiku Canada Archives)

 
I've decided to make some use of this long needed drizzly day. My haiku/poetry file boxes are emptying too slowly, and it's a bittersweet pastime revisiting old literary friends through our long ago shared correspondence. It's hard to let them go, but I feel my clock is ticking.  

Today I selected my bill bissett file. I featured bill at a couple of the Main Street Library Poetry Series readings I organized in the late 1970s - early 1980s in Toronto. bill was one of the first poets I was able to feature through funding from  the Canada Council. It was an honour to feature such a giant of the Canadian poetry scene, and bill needed the sponsorship of several readings to qualify for his air fare from B.C. to Toronto.    

bill is a genuinely sweet person, often a rarity on the CanLit scene. We stayed in touch by snail mail, and we still share occasional emails. Several times in recent years bill has sent me new poems which I've featured on my blog, "riffs and ripples from zenriver gardens". A friend who keeps me current of some of bill's readings and projects is Toronto based videographer Henry Martinuk. bill is still very active on the international poetry scene into his eighties, while I've considered myself a country mouse and been long retired from the poetry reading circuits.  

Through meeting bill on his visits to Toronto I decided to query him about  publishing some of my poetry. Luck was on my side, as another poet had backed out of his current blewointmentpress project and I believe bill needed another publication to continue qualifying for funding.

Unacknowledged Legislator was my first non self-published collection in 1981. It's a judgment call whether it's a large well produced chapbook or a small book. Of interest to the haiku world is it contained 14 haiku/senryu. In 1981 most Canuck poets either weren't aware of haiku, or shied away from it because it was generally considered a minor poetic form. I'll always be grateful to bill for giving me a foothold on the CanLit scene with its publication.

bill's correspondence will be of special interest to The University of Victoria collections, as for decades bill was primarily a B.C. resident and known as a B.C. poet.

The file I'm sending contains 12 letters from bill to me, and 4 post cards. Many of bill's letters are hand written and feature his artistic doodlings. There are 10 typed letters from me to bill, and I guess his archives have any cards which I've sent to him over the years.   


peace & poetry power!
Chris/cricket



one of my poems from unacknowledged legislator

Picaresque at 31


Imagine Mark Twain
a mustachioed old bushrat
bending over an icy stream
eyes reflecting crazy dreams
of golden rafts and castles
in an empty placer pan

or George Orwell grown ragged
smelling of sweat and spilled soup
still the grimy plongeur
in a foreign kitchen
the slab of pork on his shoulder
the hero in a mute fable

Yesterday Dave left for Mexico
with $200 & a rail pass
Today Don arrived from Vancouver
with dreams of Greenwood winners
Their young lives so immediate at 21

while 10 years older my eyes spin
narrowing and dilating with memories
of my own picaresque life
& how I have to transmute it
or shoulder this slab of pork
the rest of my golden days