Transcript (continued from Part One)

Ann Brennan - Well, he was a poet and the other one was, I was trying to think this morning, I know his name as well, but like Nancy says, we forget names now, we’re a little bit older. The gentleman from Saint John, I was originally from Saint John, my hometown. And he wrote about a street across where I grew up and I thought, he's writing about Saint John - I can do it, too. You know, that was, to me, opened a whole new world. I thought you had to be famous or something to write about Saint John. Not everybody did. Yeah. So, the Maritime Writers’ Workshop and through my connection with the people there, I went a few times to the Ice House and it was just sort of a natural birth of all of these people coming together. But I would go back and say the instigators were Fred and Alden and all the other authors and professors at UNB and the people that really believed in the writing profession. And it meant so much to those of us that were just starting, to believe in ourselves.

Rhonda Bulmer - What's the Ice House? Anne, what's the Ice House?

Ann Brennan - Well, Nancy's better probably to tell the details on that one, but it was a place where they were meeting, I think, once a week or maybe once a month. How did that go, Nancy? I just knew it was, you were pretty, it was a pretty, how can I say? key position for anybody to get invited to the Ice House or for me.

Nancy Bauer - No, that too was very definitely a place where anybody could come. And as Bill said, my husband said, the excitement was who was going to come through that door. And he loved that. And so nobody had to be invited. People did find out about it and came, and we welcomed them. You know, there was an incredible range of people. And the strange thing is that about 10 minutes ago-- and this is kind of like-- I got a manuscript from Jocelyne Thompson. She started a thing called The New Brunswick Bibliography. It's a series and there's five books so far and a couple in the works. And the bibliography for this fifth one is of the McCord Hall or Ice House Gang or, you know, Tuesday night group that had three different names. And it was the work that people published at that time, not the work that they went on to publish later, but the work that they published in the, I think it was 13 years, 14 years that we met. And we did meet every week, Tuesday night. And we met, you know, summer and winter. And I think the strange thing is that a West Coast poet, Dorothy Livesay [one of Canada's most influential modernist poets], had started this. She was a writer-in-residence at UNB, and she had people meeting in her apartment. Kent Thompson [author, editor, poet, playwright, and director] came to UNB and she invited him. And after she left, he decided to keep up the group. And eventually, well, at the first of it, we met in each other's homes. But eventually we settled on the Ice House. He had kind of commandeered it. It was a wonderful building, but nobody was using it. And it had the most fantastic atmosphere. I mean, really, it was almost like a chapel, I think. And Mary Lund came to that and as a self-confessed workshop junkie, conceived the idea of the Maritime Writers’ Workshop. And then as Ann said, everybody loved it so much and they heard so much about the Tuesday Night Group. And since then, people have established these little writing places, little writing groups all over the place. I think there are quite a few really in Fredericton now, so…

Jenna Morton - Allan, I'm wondering, how did you get drawn into the sphere of all this? Because you weren't part of the Fredericton crowd or the UNB crowd.

Allan Cooper - No, I was, I went to Mount A [Mount Allison University]. I almost went to St. Thomas, but that didn't - when I was going to do music. And when I went to Mount A, I was introduced to John Thompson, who's become a very important Canadian poet since that time. Although I also had association with Alden Nowlan. On the first day of, we had a meeting to elect the first president. And I went with my wife, and we were there and we were doing our you know, just going up to the meeting, and Peter Thomas came up to me and said, I want to nominate you for that position. And because Fred Cogswell, who was originally going to be the first president, had received an exchange, writer exchange program in Scotland, I believe. And so, I didn't know what I was doing. And I think Lori leaned over and hit me on the elbow and said, why don't you do it? And I said, well, I don't, you know, whatever. I was a greenhorn. I was 29 years old. You know, I had three small books of poetry published. I was about to start, take over a magazine called Germination from Harry Thurston. And so, I let my name stand. And it happened. But there's one little story I wanted to tell you about Alden Nowlan. He was at that meeting. It wasn't too long before he died. And before the vote, I decided I'd sneak outside. I smoked a pipe, and I wanted to go out, and I needed to calm my nerves because I didn't know what I was getting into really. I mean, I'd been involved with things at Mount A, but nothing like this. So I went outside, and Alden was there. He was having a cigarette. So we had a little conversation. And I said, ‘how's your writing going?’ And he said, ‘I'm still scratching away.’ And it was so neat. And he came back and he was sitting at the very back of the room that day. And when I came in, I thought, there was Alden. I'd never spoken to him before. So, we had a little conversation outside. So that was neat. And he was always one of my favorite poets. So, Greg Cook came up when we started getting the Writers’ Federation going and gave us all kinds of advice. He was executive director of the Nova Scotia Writers’ Federation. And that was, we had a committee, Ann and Nancy, I can remember some of the people who were on that committee, but can you guys fill me in? I know that Suzanne Alexander represented the government, and I remember that you were there. Was Michael Nowlan there? Yes, and I think who else was on that committee?

Nancy Bauer - A girl from Saint John.

Allan Cooper - Yeah, there was a group, but we would meet, we met at Nancy's place, and then everybody came to our house in Riverview. So, we had several meetings, and Greg Cook came up and sat with us for one of those meetings and gave us all kinds of advice. He was very, I found them very helpful, you know. The Nova Scotia writers were helping us.

Jenna Morton - When you were having those first meetings to bring this all together, what kind of vision did you have? What kind of discussions were you having about what you wanted to create?

Allan Cooper - Well, one of the things that Nancy mentioned was whether we would have two tiers or one tier. Nova Scotia Writers’ Federation had two tiers. We decided on one, so that it would be inclusive. That way you had established writers. alongside beginning writers. And there could be a nurturing, a natural nurturing going on in that kind of situation. And I think that for the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick, that worked very well. And I think it helped a lot of younger writers as they were coming up. So, and as Nancy said, there's two sides to that. But at the same time, if you've got everybody together, you know, it's like having, you've got three or four professional musicians together and then you bring in some children, and you let them play some instruments, you know, and it feeds the creative process that way, you know, and starts right at the bottom with the younger writers. So, the first year or so, the year that I was president, we had a lot of things we were trying to do. We were trying to get money to establish and, do more things, do book fairs and that kind of stuff. And eventually there ended up being a Writers’ Federation New Brunswick office in Fredericton. But we were trying to do that, and we tried to get a manuscript reading program together, where people could send in their manuscripts. And when I talked to Greg, he said, ‘there are a lot of writers out there who will help you.’ So I contacted writers in the Atlantic region and Ontario and further west, and called them and they agreed to sign up for that. So, we got some things going. There were hiccups that first year because we were starting basically with nothing but our own enthusiasm. So yeah, it was an interesting process.

Nancy Bauer - To Allan, the writers in the school, that was a great thing. And it was actually Michael Nowlan's idea, or we got it from him, sort of, because he used to have people into his classroom at Oromocto High School. And it just seemed like such a great thing that, and it was, we were quite, quite ahead of our times with that. Since then, all kinds of people have had that, but we were - it was interesting because writers would go all over the place. And it's a strange thing. New Brunswick is a small place geographically, but we, and I suppose it's the terrible roads or the awful winters or whatever. We don't seem to go from place to place.

Jenna Morton - I actually wondered a bit if maybe both Ann and Allan, if you could kind of talk to the importance you think the Federation has had in the rural parts of the province in finding those connections. You kind of alluded to it a bit before, Ann, about the importance, but I'd love to hear a bit more about how you think creating this Federation has helped grow literary, you know, people through the province.

Ann Brennan - Absolutely it did. I know even from my own part, I came up back up home, of course, as we progressed and we formed a small group ourselves up here. You know, it would come and go and we'd meet and I forget, there'd maybe be four or five of us, but we would continue to meet. And then, like I mentioned earlier, a group of us went down to the Ice House from up here, which would have been, you know, quite a trip for an evening. We drove down and it was so exciting to go down. We were going to meet with all these people that were published and it was a fun thing. So, I'm still in the same place in rural New Brunswick, and was very knowledgeable about trying to ride at a distance and not being able to go to everything. So that the Writers’ Federation itself was important, but the message was important too. I think we kept encouraging young writers. People would come and say, ‘Oh, I hear you're writing.’ And when Klondike Kate come out, just to go back to the writers’ in school, it was published by Goose Lane, and they were very supportive. And I did a lot of schools when that book come out in the early '90s. I mean, that was big for me because you didn't make money, but you got your expenses and you got to go to the schools and meet the children. And it supported not only the publication, but myself, as a writer to gain confidence. And I always enjoyed the children. In fact, we're still inviting the children to the coming to the farm now, since the Fairy Chronicles come out, the school children come here now and walk and it promotes the book, but it also promotes the writing part of it. So yeah, it's key, I think, to have your own organization. And it's the friendship, too, because I find as the years went by, I was always more than enthusiastic to help new writers myself, because I know how important it was for me in the beginning just to have some support. Yeah. So it's key, I think, to have your own organization that allows everybody in. Yeah.

Allan Cooper - Well, I'm sort of back and forth between Riverview and Alma, but we spent a great deal of time there still, yeah. I think that I'm thinking of one particular event in the fall of '83 when we had our first book fair at Mactaquac. And it was an interesting event because Premier Richard Hatfield arrived with his chauffeur, and I was having supper and Leona Keenan came in and said, the premier's here, you've got to go see him. So I got up, and I went into the room, and I introduced myself to Richard Hatfield and he started buying books. And he started at one end of the room, and he went all the way around and he bought a copy of every single book that was in the room. And his chauffeur was standing there with his hands below his waist and books tucked under his chin when he went out of the room. And it was one of those wonderful events. We hadn't had that kind of a book fair that I can remember, but I'd never been to one like that before, where it was all creative writers. And I launched my first book of poetry, or my third book of poetry, excuse me, at that fair. And these days with poetry and especially, the numbers are going down so much that a lot of publishers are now backing out of publishing books of poetry, which is a real shame because we have some of the finest writers in North America living uh, uh, here, but, uh, uh, I sold 50 copies of my book at that book fair. I couldn't, you couldn't do that today unless you were, you know, a well-known Canadian or American poet, you know, but 50 books! And my publisher was really happy to get the money because it basically paid for the cost of publishing the book, those first 50. And I find that, that, that the community has grown in New Brunswick simply because of the development of the Writers’ Federation. And I think younger writers perhaps are more liable now to go to more established writers or older writers and saying, ‘what do you think of this?’ And take advice and are sort of nurtured by older writers. And I think probably it was, it's all because of the development of the federation in the province.

Nancy Bauer - Richard Hatfield started giving out money. I forget exactly how the Arts New Brunswick evolved, but it did evolve. There was a kind of excitement, I think, and Richard Hatfield himself, I think he was interested in all the arts and crafts and was, you know, kind of a jolly, cheerful kind of a person who would be interested in the arts. And that made a huge difference, I think. But to hear Allan talking about selling 50 copies, it just it's kind of amazing. I think the whole thing is - that's amazing. We have a lot of poetry published, but Allan's right. It's not, not so much by the big publishers. It's, it's very, you know, it's little publishers as well. Maybe that's always been the way it is.

Allan Cooper - I think sometimes what happens is those, those little groundswells of small publishing companies, well, like your chapbook series. That's how I got to know of David Adams Richard's work and Brian Bartlett's work. And those were people that I wouldn't have met otherwise, I think, because of your publishing venture. Robert Gibbs, who else did you publish in that series, the New Brazil chapbooks?

Nancy Bauer - Oh, it was Kent and Jim Stewart, and they were all except one was a New Brunswicker. And Michael Pacey, yes. Most of them went on to write more poetry, but some of them, you know, disappeared. Michael Bryan Oliver. We didn't publish you. I don't know why we didn't publish you?

Allan Cooper - I was too young. They were older than I. I came along later.

Nancy Bauer - Yes, it's true.

Allan Cooper - I was probably still in diapers when you started that.

Nancy Bauer - That's right.

Allan Cooper - I just found it amazing because I remember-- I don't know whether Brian Bartlett's poem, This Bridge is No Bridge, was in that book. Or maybe it was the first one that Fred published after you published him. But you published him first, didn't you?

Nancy Bauer -  I published him first, and then we had another one. So we published two of them, yeah.

Allan Cooper -  Yeah, yeah. But there was one in there, and the poem still sticks with me. I told him when he was working on his selected poems a few years ago, how much that poem meant to me. And he said, other people have said that. But he said, I didn't think it was very good until later. And it was, it was, I'm sure it was in, was it Brothers Insomnia? Is that the book that you did?

Nancy Bauer - Yes. Yeah.

Allan Cooper - I think it was in that book. It might have been one of the early poems too. But that's how I got in touch with a lot of New Brunswick writers. I knew of Alden Nowlan. because someone had given me a book of his in the late 60s, but I didn't know who my contemporaries were as I was getting going, you know. And yeah, it opened my eyes a lot.

Jenna Morton -  I think that's such an important part that I've been kind of thinking in my head of a quote I heard the other day. I was talking with a friend and we were talking about, you know, how, how slow things are when you're in them to change or to evolve, but when you look back and you see how important that time was. And that comment you made there, Ellen, about, you know, being able to actually find your contemporaries in that moment and how powerful that is for driving things forward, like the legacy you three and everyone else who's been involved have created with the Federation over 40 years, it's such a powerful thing to bring people together and pull down those boundaries you were talking about. You know, it's not just that these people are famous and writing about famous things. These are the people that live near me and write about what I see. And I think it's very powerful what you all helped create with that.

Nancy Bauer - The people at the Ice House at Tuesday night or McCord Hall, whichever you call it, were not published. One of the motivations for the New Brunswick Chapbooks was to be published because the concept of chapbooks had kind of blossomed, and people were allowed to join the League of Canadian Poets if they had published a chapbook. We did all start out at the same, kind of the same level. My husband had not, I mean, he had written a PhD thesis on 18th century letter writing, but that was it. But I was having so much fun. and was so excited about going to the Ice House that he decided he wanted to come. But in order to come, he had to write, so he started to write. And Bob Gibbs saw that poetry didn't get quite the big excitement that stories and novels did. It's true, it's difficult to understand poetry. It's profound and there's no narrative thrust. So, one night he came, and he had written a story, and he said he'd written it just because he wanted to be entertaining. And there was that kind of mingling of things, why people wrote. And looking at the time, exactly as you said, Jenna, when you're in the middle of it, you don't see it. But from my perspective now, I'm amazed at how much one thing influenced the other. And it was …There was an excitement, I think the excitement had started in '67 - was Expo and Canada's birthday. And, you know, after the war and the baby boomers, all that kind of thing, there was an excitement in the air. And I'm wondering now, at this moment, explosion of Canadian kind of nationalism, elbows up, we're not going to do this. Well, I was raised and educated in the United States, and didn't come here until I was 31, and I'm 90. I'm going to be 91 very soon. I've always realized that Canada was very, very different than the United States. And I think the elbows up kind of thing is indicative of that. I mean, I could have told anyone who asked me that this is not, it is not going to be easy to annex Canada. And you maybe probably don't even want to. It's probably not be a good idea because there is a, it's a whole, it just seems like the same. When my parents would come, my father would say, ‘oh, it's just like the United States.’ And he would tell me something and I would realize, no, he doesn't get it. It's just not at all like the United States. But more like New England, I think the emphasis of Bliss Carman, and the influence of the Transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau had been immense here. I would say that, wouldn't you, Allan?

Allan Cooper - Absolutely. There's something else I wanted to add about Bill. I told you this a few years ago, I think. Coleman Barks, the American translator, the famous American translator of Rumi, went to university with Bill, right? Yes, yeah. And I was in touch with him a few years ago with Coleman, and we had quite an exchange for a couple of years. And I told him about Unsnarling String. He said, ‘How much did…’ because Bill, I don't know whether he was writing at that time or he was maybe not writing a lot when they went to university together. He went, he ordered a copy of Unsnarling String on Amazon and then he sent me a box of his own books, six or seven of his own book - Coleman Parks' translations - and his own poetry. And in the inside of one, he said, he put, ‘Remembering Bill Bauer, his presence lives on.’ So you have one of the probably the most famous American translator who went to university with Bill Bauer, who came to New Brunswick, and influenced a lot of us. And then like 40 years later, he's influencing Coleman Parks. So I love that big circle.

Nancy Bauer - Yes. It's wonderful. Yeah, it is. Yeah.

Allan Cooper - So he read that book and he mentioned in the letter which poems particularly struck him, but he said the whole book was lovely.

(Transcript continued in Part 3)