I always enjoy visiting the Regional Assembly of Text on Main Street. I love their delightful display of little books and their special “lowercase” reading room for chapbooks and arty booklets.
Chapbooks are a longstanding and wonderful way to showcase a sequence of poetry or even a single long poem. Little books can also of course contain prose or images or a combination. Almost anything goes—the only limit is the creator’s inventiveness and imagination. They can be whimsical, humorous, elegiac, quirky. They are often handmade and hand-sewn, using beautiful or interesting materials. There are a number of terrific chapbook publishers across Canada, but of course writers can make and distribute their own too. (I started out with two chapbooks before my first book was published, and tried making a handmade one with some of my concrete, shaped “plasticpoems” series about plastic pollution with recycled posters from a local gallery and recycled paper, inserting them in reused donated plastic greeting card sleeves.)
Speaking of poetry chapbooks, I was saddened to learn that beloved street poet and busker, Tim Lander had passed away August 20 of this year at the age of 85. Born in England, he came here in 1964. He lived in Vancouver, Victoria and finally in Nanaimo. He was well-known as an accessible and knowledgeable poet and affable busker. Some say he resembled Gandalf with his long white hair and beard. I would spot him sometimes at UBC campus or downtown playing his penny whistle or piccolo and stop to applaud, and give him bus ticket or spare change.
Besides authoring two full collections of poetry (The Glass Book with Ekstasis Editions and Inappropriate Behaviour with Broken Jaw Press), he made around50 chapbooks and held various workshops to teach others how to make them. Local poet and poetry instructor, Kim Trainor has written about the influence of taking one of his workshops. She quotes him as saying, “Sew your books on BC Ferries. Cut your pages with a penknife whose blade is dulled from pruning tomato vines. If you prick your finger while sewing a signature, erase the drops of blood.”
I recommend reading what Allan Twigg wrote in 2007 about Lander and his chapbooks in BC Bookworld to get a better sense of how unique a character Lander was. Catherine Owen has recorded a wonderful homage to him in episode 44 of her podcast series, Ms. Lyric’s Poetry Outlaws. You can find many of his numerous chapbooks at the Vancouver Public Library. The Dead Poets Reading Series will include a short homage to him at the start of their Sunday, November 19th reading at Massy Arts, 3-5 pm (free, with pre-registration online required). According to the Nanaimo Bulletin, there will also be a reading of his work in Nanaimo on his birthday in February, 2024.