NEW WAVE AT KING AND BAY

In those maverick days of the middle sixties
we used everything at hand
in our helter-skelter literary projects.
For example, the main banking floor at King and Bay
to make our New Wave Canada cover, which featured in grey and white
a clutter of manuscript pages
taken at random from the book,
then spread out in a small rectangle
on that solid granite floor. Victor Coleman and I
set it up one night after seven,
when only a cleaning-lady was around to watch us
go about our mysterious mission.

First we dragged out the largest step-ladder
in the place, a good twelve feet tall;
then, when we'd laid out our pages
for maximum effect, Victor climbed up that ladder
as high as he could go and took twelve shots,
then one for luck, with his Rolex. That was it,
the fastest cover ever made for a book,
and right away we went out for a beer
like the happy conspirators we were,
not thinking for a moment we were a part
of any obscure piece of history.

And two days later we were even happier
when his pictures, just developed,
showed Vic had got the angle exactly right
from his eagle-high perch on the step-ladder,
and today, if you look hard enough,
you can even read a line or two
of a poem by Daphne Buckle,
whom we know today as Daphne Marlatt.

From Souster's Collected Poems, vol 9.
(http://bit.ly/oDERvm)

Posted in anticipation of Victor Coleman's upcoming course at Toronto New School of Writing on New Wave Canada Redux (45 Years On) (http://bit.ly/pa6Axd)