The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Andrew Hoyem is the creative spirit of the Arion Press. He's a published poet and exhibited artist who occasionally includes his own writings and drawings in Arion books. The concepts for all Arion publications originate with Hoyem, who chooses literary texts, commissions new work from writers and artists he admires, and designs the books, including their bindings and typography. In the Press's livre d'artiste series, he has worked closely with distinguished artists, many of whom come to the Press in San Francisco to work with him on projects. We met at his offices in The Pracidio in San Francisco to talk about, among other things, Dave Hazelwood's Auerhahn Press, the Grabhorn Press, the importance of text pages, Bruce Rogers, Random House's Leaves of Grass (1931), Charles Olson, skunks, The Legion of Honor Museum, Livres d'artistes, artist Fred Martin, solving problems, Moby Dick (1979), ghost stories, perseverance, weekly tours, M&H Type, connecting with interesting people, Hart Crane's The Bridge (2017) and getting the basics right. 

Kris Arnett is the proprietor of Kona Bay Books which is located in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. She also owns Hilo Bay Books in, you guessed it, Hilo, which is located on the other side of the Big Island of Hawaii.  I met with Kris recently at the Kona location to discuss bookstores. Among other things we talk about books touching everything and everyone, barbers, the Upstart Crow* bookshop in San Diego, Borders, driving across the Big Island, big box stores, suspense and romance, excitement about reading, the stereotype of book people being snobbish, treasure hunting, Hawaiian publishers, Pidgin to da Max, new age and military books, hiring criteria, Mark Twain: Literary Tourist, Gavan Daws' Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands, the 'Powell's of the Pacific,' and going to the volcano.  * Reportedly closing in 2018. Lease ends and the area will be redeveloped. 

David Bull is an ukiyo-e woodblock printer and carver who heads the Mokuhankan ukiyo-e studio in Asakusa, Tokyo. Born in Britain, Bull moved to Canada at age 5 and lived there until 1986 when he  relocated with his family to Tokyo to pursue ukiyo-e. He first discovered Japanese woodblocks while browsing an art gallery in Toronto at age 29. Intrigued, he started making his own prints without formal training.  He is known for his work on the Ukiyo-e heroes kickstarter crowd-funding project together with Jed Henry, recreating modern video-game scenes in old-style woodblock prints. The Mokuhankan studio has a shop and offers 'print parties' for amateurs, where they can try the craft of printing. I met Dave at his studio in Tokyo where we talked, among other things, about Toronto's Stuart Jackson gallery, the physical nature of woodblock prints (not the content!), moving to Japan, the "death" of traditional Japanese woodblock printing in the 20th century, ukiyo-e prints as 'low' culture, 'visual letterpress,' French salons, pop culture, cliff-hanger picture books, mixing illustration and text, Hokusai and Manga, Japanese Meiji era, the desirability of "mouth pictures," Video game characters, Washi paper, and the importance of the 18th century book One Hundred People, One Hundred Poems to modern Japanese culture.   Check out Dave's extensive library of videos on Japanese woodblock printing here.

Born in Reykjavik in 1962, Sjón is a celebrated Icelandic novelist. He won the Nordic Council's Literary Prize for his novel 'The Blue Fox' (the Nordic countries' equivalent of the Man Booker Prize) and the novel 'From The Mouth Of The Whale' was shortlisted for both the IMPAC  Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. His novel 'Moonstone – The Boy Who Never Was' was awarded every Icelandic literature prize, among them the 2013 Icelandic Literary Prize. His latest published work is the definite edition of the trilogy CoDex 1962. Also a poet, librettist and lyricist, Sjón has published nine poetry collections, written four opera librettos and lyrics for various artists. We talk here about the influence of David Bowie; modernist poetry; self publishing and promotion; the Icelandic penchant for collaboration; the Surrealist metaphor; respect among practitioners of different art forms in Iceland; Guy Madden; magpies; Icelandic folklore and sagas; beginnings and creation stories; dream logic; story-telling and figuring out life; myths and metamorphosis, the Future Library Project; Reykjavik, city of literature; literary tourism; and his forthcoming book CoDex 62. 

Alice Notley is a poet whose work has influenced generations of poets; she is considered a pioneering voice on topics such as motherhood, feminism, disobedience and domestic life. Notley has experimented widely with poetic form and has written a book of criticism, a play, and a biography. She has also edited three publications. Her collage art appeared in Rudy Burckhardt's film "Wayward Glimpses" and her illustrations have appeared on the cover of numerous books, including some of her own. With over forty books and chapbooks and several major awards to her credit, she is one of America's most prolific and lauded poets. She lives in Paris, France. We met in Ottawa, Canada to talk about, among other things, the enjoyment, pleasure and necessity of poetry; language, communication, voice, and hearing versus reading; Shakespeare; the difficulty of being a female poet; Sylvia Plath; postpartum depression; John Keats; Homer; reading aloud; suffering, skepticism, fate, the death of those close to you and the world of the dead.

Eli MacLaren is an Assistant Professor of English at McGill University in Montreal. Subjects taught include Canadian poetry and fiction; First Nations writers; bibliography and the history of the book. We met to discuss an article he wrote for Canadian Poetry entitled ‘Significant Little Offerings: The Origin of the Ryerson Poetry Chap-Books, 1925–26'.   We talk, among other things, about the literary publishing environment in Canada during the 1920s, Lorne Pierce's idealistic nation building, risk, the desire for a national literature, restrictive copyright laws, Confederation poet Charles G.D. Roberts, Ryerson's Makers of Canadian Literature series, authors covering publishing costs, romantic versus modernist poetry, the arts and craft look of the chap-books, poetry's goal of moving the average reader and making sense of death, author's lives informing their poetry, shining light on neglected works, the origins of chap-books, and the birth of the small press movement in Canada.

Jason Guriel is a poet and critic whose work has appeared in such publications as Poetry, Slate, Reader's Digest, The Walrus, Parnassus, Canadian Notes & Queries, The New Criterion, and PN Review. His poetry has been anthologized in The Best Canadian Poetry in English, and in 2007, he was the first Canadian to receive the Frederick Bock Prize from Poetry magazine. He won Poetry's Editors Prize for Book Reviewing in 2009. His essays and reviews are collected in The Pigheaded Soul (The Porcupine's Quill, 2013). Guriel lives in Toronto, Ontario.    We met at the Toronto Public Library on College in rooms where the Osborne Collection is kept. The collection was donated in 1949 by the English librarian Edgar Osborne in recognition of the Library's outstanding service to children.   We talk among other things about The Pig Headed Soul, the key to being a good critic, poems not poetry, obsessing, 'The Case Against Reading Everything', Carmine Starnino, 'culture' writing, confessional criticism, pop culture essays, the adoration of poet Peter Van Toorn, 'world class' poet Robyn Sarah, the importance of pleasure, thoughts the culture wont allow itself to have, "I don't care about your Life', literary community, honesty in criticism, response to reviews, Chris Wiman, Clive James, Michael Hoffmann's Behind the Lines, William Logan, Jill Bialoski and plagiarism, the Griffin Prize, dirty money, and diapers. 

Gillian Clarke is a Welsh poet, playwright, editor, broadcaster, lecturer and translator. Born in Cardiff in 1937 she has written more than ten books of poetry. In 2008 she was appointed the third National Poet of Wales (Ifor ap Glyn took over in 2016). In 2010 she was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, only the second Welsh person to receive the honour. In 2011 she was made a member of the Gorsedd of Bards and in 2012 she received the Wilfred Owen Association Poetry award. We met several years ago in Swansea, Wales at the Dylan Thomas Centre, where we talked about what is unique about Welsh poetry, the oldest living language in Europe, memorability, truth, Lear's Cordelia, Dylan Thomas's truth and exaggeration, the Welsh accent, Carol Ann Duffy, and the importance of imagination, creativity and music in education.

I met with Professor Nick Mount at his University of Toronto offices in "Toronto" to discuss his book Arrival, The Story of CanLit. We talk among other things about the pronunciation of Toronto, the non-Toronto-centricity of his book, Alistair MacLeod, the CanLit boom, early Canadian writers publishing first in the United States, novels that are so bad they're good, the 1960s, history turning into myth, academic versus commercial success, reviews of the book, Margaret Atwood's Survival, prosperity versus affluence, 1959 and 1974, economics and the arts, the Massey Report, the Canada Council, universities, Jack McClelland, the influence of Sheila Watson's The Double Hook, Arrival's sidebar star system, the erasure (or not) of Blackness, and Aboriginal works, from the CanLit canon, Austin Clarke, dotted points of light, #metoo and the Bahamas. Photo by N. Maxwell Lander

Zachariah Wells is the author of three collections of poetry (Unsettled, Track & Trace, and Sum), as well as a children’s book Anything But Hank, with Rachel Lebowitz), and a collection of critical essays . He is also the editor of Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets and The Essential Kenneth Leslie. His poems have been translated into Bosnian and Spanish and adapted into operatic songs by composer Erik Ross. He lives with his family in Halifax, Nova Scotia. We talk, heartily, here about Career Limiting Moves (Biblioasis, 2013), about my perverse pleasure in reading criticism, Zach's threadbare bathrobe, Paul Muldoon's critical style, Zach's negative review of Jan Zwicky's negative review of negative reviewing, the impossibility of suppressing subjectivity, the anvil of the agon, Zach's snide attack on Andre Alexis. About Michael Lista and Scott Griffin, going easy on friends, Michael Harris's poem 'Concentrate,' Margaret Atwood's Survival, Peter van Toorn, the importance of cutting to the core poems, King Lear, John Clare, the slim, stellar oeuvre of Elizabeth Bishop, and Lisa Robertson's take on Wordsworth's The Prelude