What goes around, comes around. Many years ago, when bill bissett was a poetry pioneer on Fourth Avenue in Kitsilano during the so-called hippie days, he generously published many of the poets he met under an imprint he called blewointmentpress. When money problems forced him to reluctantly transfer ownership of the press decades later, it was moved to Ontario as Nightwood Editions where it specialized in jazz-related books. In the late 1990s, under the direction of Silas White, son of publisher and writer Howard White, the imprint was re-invigorated as a poetry press in Toronto, then brought back to the West Coast, having rekindled the press' original reputation for publishing yet-to-be-known writers. As an appreciation of bissett's enduring importance in Canadian literature, Jeff Pew of Kimberley, co-founder of "Poetry on the Rocks", and Stephen Roxborough of Anacortes, Washington, edited a broad sampling of writing that celebrates bissett, published in 2006 by the press he originated.

BOOKS:

Radiant Danse Uv Being: A Poetic Portrait of bill bissett (Nightwood Editions / A blewointment book, 2006). Edited by Jeff Pew and Stephen Roxborough. $23.95 0-88971-210-7

[BCBW 2006] "Poetry"