Posted on February 27, 2025
Days before The Fiddlehead celebrated its 80th anniversary, the current managing editor of the magazine, Ian LeTourneau, was cleaning out a desk when he discovered an old tape labeled "Fiddlehead 50th Anniversary Feb 27/95." After finding a tape player, the office was excited to discover that the tape contained a still audible recording of the event! In the recording you will hear about the importance of The Fiddlehead, its inception, and how it has changed over the years.
This recording is from a tape of The Fiddlehead's 50th anniversary on February 27, 1995. On the recording, you will hear from Director of Libraries John Teskey, Dean of Arts Peter Kent, and former editors Robert (Bob) Gibbs and Fred Cogswell.
Transcript:
John Teskey: Sorry to get you into the other room, start you on eating and drinking and then make you come back. But anyway, my name is John Teskey. I'm Director of Libraries, and I'd like to welcome you here this afternoon on this occasion in terms of the 50th anniversary of The Fiddlehead. And I have a few duties this afternoon, but basically mine is only to bring on our first presenter. And hopefully you'll take some time this afternoon to take a look at the displays that some of our staff have been preparing and certainly enjoy the refreshments that have been provided by The Fiddlehead. At this point, I'd like to call on Dean Kent to introduce our proceedings this afternoon. Dr. Kent.
Dean Peter Kent: Ladies and gentlemen, it's my great pleasure to bring birthday greetings to The Fiddlehead from the university on behalf of President Robin Armstrong, who is presently on tour in the Far East looking for funds to keep our library collections going and other things. The university is very proud of the existence and the achievements of The Fiddlehead. This magazine represents the connection of this university with the cultural traditions of this province and this community. From the poetry of Don Mackay, through that of Fred Cogswell and Alfred Bailey, to the work of Francis Sherman, Sir Charles G.D. Roberts and Bliss Carmen, The Fiddlehead has built on and sustained this university's heritage as the Poet's Corner of Canada. In like fashion, the University of New Brunswick has a responsibility to protect, nurture, and promote the cultural manifestations and aspirations of the people of New Brunswick, of the Atlantic region, and of Canada. Just as the university is very proud of The Fiddlehead, the Faculty of Arts is also very proud of the existence and the achievements of The Fiddlehead, because The Fiddlehead represents the essence of our faculty's concern for the nature of our common humanity. All too often, we tend to forget the essence of our mission, concerned as we are about budget deficits, about economic development, about job creation, and about the university playing the role of the engine of development for the province. The Fiddlehead serves to put into perspective our true mission, the true mission of our faculty, the true mission of our university. which is to reflect upon the human condition in times of joy, in times of sorrow, in times of plenty, and in times of drought. So I'd like to wish a happy birthday to The Fiddlehead, tell it to prepare itself for its 100th birthday and for many more beyond that. And I understand it's now my pleasant duty to introduce to you Bob Gibbs, a former editor of The Fiddlehead. Bob.
Bob Gibbs: And I, in turn, am here to introduce another speaker, not to speak myself at any length. But Sabine did ask me to convey the good wishes from the vice president academic who couldn't be here this afternoon. The old cliche about so-and-so doesn't need any introduction is certainly true in our circles when it comes to Fred Cogswell. But it's my pleasure this afternoon to introduce him. I cast my mind back to my early days here as a freshman when I first heard of The Fiddlehead. And of course, the person who was our mentor in those days was Donald Gammon, who happened to be in the residence where I was staying. And I was very happy to see him here today. And he was at that time editing The Fiddlehead, and we became aware of it, and I happened to wander into Madge Smith's shop downtown and saw it for the first time and purchased several of the early issues. And of course, we became acquainted with the various names, the various people, Don Gammon and Francis, who was then Francis Firth, and Dr. Bailey, Margaret Cunningham, Elizabeth Brewster, and other people whom I never actually met, who were before my time but who had published in those issues. And it was only, I think, in 1949 that I was invited to become a member of the Poetry Society which produced The Fiddlehead, which was known as the Bliss Carmen Society. And it had been founded, actually, in 1940 by Alfred Bailey. as what we would call today a poetry workshop, but they called it the Bliss-Carmen Poetry Society, I believe. And The Fiddlehead was an organ of that particular society. And so, to begin with, it was a very exclusive magazine, exclusive in two ways. One, the poems published in it were by the members of the Bliss-Carmen Society. And the other form of exclusion was that each issue consisted for, I think, about the first, oh, 10 or 12 issues, I don't have the exact figures here, consisted exactly of 10 poems on 10 pages. And when it was in its large format, mimeographed, it never exceeded 15 or so poems, so it was exclusive in that way. In fact, the basis on which it was published was simply when they had accumulated enough poems of the quality that they judged to be right, they brought out an issue, and so it was appearing about three times a year, I believe. By the time I got here and became associated with Fred Cogswell, of course, was one of the people publishing in it, although he had he came in '45, and I think the magazine was already in existence, and his first appearance was in February 1946, exactly 49 years ago. And Don Gammon pointed out that the actual first issue of The Fiddlehead came out almost to the day, 50 years ago, on Sunday or something. So this is an appropriate time to be celebrating. There is one respect in which The Fiddlehead was not exclusive, and I think that's an important respect. Right from its beginning, it was not confined aesthetically or politically in the way that some little magazines are by people who share a common view, you know, and who issue manifestos and that sort of thing. It was never that kind of magazine, and I think the spirit behind that sort of eclecticism and openness may well have been Dr. Bailey, because certainly when I joined the magazine, it seemed, we were encouraged, everyone to, you know, to develop in whatever way we wished. And there were people still writing fairly formal verse, and there were others writing more experimental verse. And in fact, most of the poets at that time were experimenting with, you know, with both kinds. The thing that impressed me about Fred's early work was that, and going back to it just recently, was that I read poems in that very first issue in which he appeared in February of 1946 that he might have written yesterday. He already had developed a very mature style. In 1948, he became a joint editor of the magazine with Robert Rogers, and in number 9, issue number 9, his poem Lost Dimension appeared. And this is a poem that I have never forgotten from the time it first appeared. It always impressed me for its economy and wit. A little poem, I from my minus must a you create. For your yourness is inviolate. Likewise, your yourness makes the me you've known, for my minus is all my own. Hardness fears are we whose edges join, seeking to grasp the illusion, that lost dimension whose laws are such, not circumference, but center's touch. I was very much impressed, as I say, by the economy and the wit, and also, of course, that the subject, which in a way celebrates the uniqueness of each human being and the fact that each human being, in a sense, creates the world around him, perceives and creates, as Wordsworth would have put it. But there's the negative side, too, of this, that we are, in a sense, imprisoned in ourselves and any kind of relationship we might want to have with another is always limited and in effect superficial. We join at the edges or at the circumferences, but not at the center. I mention this because this is a theme that Fred has pursued throughout his life, this concern with the limitations of being a human being and then also the concern with relating to other people. And when Fred took over the magazine in 1953 and became its editor and really ran the magazine for the next 15 years, up until 1967, 14 or 15 years, he one of the first things he began to do was to make it a less exclusive. In fact, it became, I would say, a very inclusive magazine. There were reasons for that. Of course, the original group that had published it had pretty well dispersed by that time. But almost immediately, he decided to invite people from outside the group to submit work. And then soon after that, they began accepting reviews and short stories. This was after he decided to go to a smaller format and have the magazine printed professionally. And so from being a very exclusive magazine in the '40s and early '50s, it became a very inclusive one. The call went out, not just in Canada, but eventually internationally. And Fred published an awful lot of writers and an awful lot of young writers and beginning writers. His generosity proceeded, I think, from his credo that every serious writer who shows any potential deserves an audience, certainly deserves a reading and I think The Fiddlehead today has that legacy that young writers often write to us and say I know The Fiddlehead or I've been told that you're sympathetic to young writers or new writers and that goes right back to those days and Fred not only looked at their work and responded to it, usually not using a rejection slip, but usually corresponding with his contributors. He established many friendships and many of these writers became friends and confidants and these relationships have continued since that time. So Fred is almost universally known in the writing community across Canada, especially for his association with The Fiddlehead and then later Fiddlehead Books, which eventually evolved into the publishing firm that exists now as a more sort of professional type of firm, Goose Lane. So no one could be, I think more appropriate, although there are others who might speak today, certainly Fred became, for many people, Mr. Fiddlehead, and it's with great pleasure that I introduce him to you today.
Fred Cogswell: Thank you, Bob. Ladies and gentlemen, Can you hear me? Oh, I'm sorry. Trying to — I think if anybody is primarily responsible for The Fiddlehead, is the man who had the idea of having it and then put that idea into being by founding the Bliss Carman Poetry Society and developing the writers in it to the point where the magazine was possible. I'm referring here to Alfred Bailey. And Bailey had an extremely good seconder in the work of Desmond Pacey, who went to these meetings of the Society and had the people into his house and participated in all the meetings extremely vigorously and in a positive rather than a negative attitude. Then, of course, you have to give credit to the writers themselves, because without them there certainly would have been no magazine. And among the pioneer ones was Donald Gammon, who did the early numbers of The Fiddlehead, all the work that is necessary in xeroxing, stapling, mailing, things of this particular sort. I didn't arrive on the scene until, Bob tells me it was issue number 4, I was in first. I went to meetings, I think, through issue number 3, but didn't make that one. Now, when I became editor of The Fiddlehead, I made, of course, a great many changes because the people who had been supplying us with the material were scattered, and some of them had exchanged poetry for other careers. Consequently, it was also a time in Canada where a magazine was desperately needed. The last magazine comparable to The Fiddlehead was Contemporary Verse, and Contemporary Verse had just stopped publication. So I got a hold of Alan Cowley, and he sent me his subscription list, and I was familiar with the poets who published in that magazine. So I wrote them for material, and in no time at all, the problem of having a magazine that had good poems was pretty well solved. Now, there are certain things I did when I was editor. Some of the things I don't exactly like to confess, but I suppose now is a good time to do it. Have you ever heard of things such as sucker lists? Where you have names and addresses, and you sell them so much a name and address? Well, I did that. And you know that the chickens have come home to roost. There's no question about it. I get more of this kind of mail now than anybody else ever received. So I suppose it served me jolly well right. But you got, you got, I think, five cents a line for those things in those days, which wasn't exactly to be sneezed at. We didn't have the kind of backing that people got now. And every so often, when the editor, when the head of the English department would get angry at me for some reason or other, he would tell me that I ought not to be mailing this magazine out at the university's expense. So then I would have to resort to various kinds of subterfuges until the heat was off once more. To his credit, he never did absolutely forbid me to do it, but he certainly was not encouraging at times. But that depended on his mood. And my position in that mood. Now, another thing I did, I thought was a very good idea if we took all the names off and put numbers on instead, and I retyped all the material. You didn't have the kind of Xeroxing you had now in Six Tupper or something like that. And all the various editors whose names were on the editorial board were supposed to read it. The only thing wrong with this, there were two things wrong with it. Thing #1, the only people who read it usually was Desmond Pacey and myself. And thing #2 is that we turned down an awful lot of well-established poets who never quite forgave us forever after for having done this. Ron Finks, for example, James Rainey. Now, that was something I shouldn't have done. Something else I did, though, that I'm glad I did do. There was a rather weird and wonderful dame in Texas who called herself Lilith Lorraine, and she edited the magazine with a very cool name of Flame. And she used to read every submission, answer it in her own handwriting, and get the answer off by return mail. And I attempted to duplicate what she was doing. And through most of my career as editor, I pretty well did. I always thought that this particular touch was a great encouragement, particularly to the people who needed encouragement. And believe it or not, there are actually poets in the world who need encouragement, despite the fact that everybody is knocking on their doors mostly, but sometimes they don't. So I was very glad about that. The other good thing, I suppose, is that some of these things lead to friendships. Some of the friendships you sometimes wish you didn't have, because some of these people actually were not teetotalers. And when they'd had something to drink, they'd forget what time of night it was or the difference in time zone, and your telephone would ring. And did you ever try to get a drunken poet off the phone? I got some this year, actually, from a fellow called Harold Fleming, who 40 or 50 years ago, close to 50 years ago, about 45 I had in The Fiddlehead, And I was glad to hear him, actually, because it sort of stirred up old memories again. There were all kinds of strange things that happened when one was editor of The Fiddlehead back in those days. The other thing, of course, is that I tried to put different kinds of poems in. You might label them A, B, C, D, E, different kinds of poems, poems, modernist poems, poems like Raymond Sauster using the kind of approach of Carl Sandburg, you know, that kind of thing. And so you would get letters occasionally. I like this poems in this group A, but why the heck do you publish B, C, D, E, et cetera? Then somebody else would write, I like the poems in E, but why do you do A, B, C, D? Almost like musicians who only appreciated one particular kind of music or one particular key, if you like, in music. I always preferred Hiplings. There are 9 to 90 ways of indicting tribal ways, and every blessed one is right. And I also, when I was in the war, read a poem called Nature, which is ornithologically all wrong. It said, every bird on every spray sings his own song in his own way. That shows nothing for genetics at all. But it struck me as being memorable, and I still remember it. How many times do you get a memorable poem, regardless of, or in fact because of, the vast erudition of so many of your students? They know so much, they get so complex, that nothing becomes terribly memorable. I remember once when I was a visiting professor at UBC, I made a peculiar remark to the head of the department. I thought, I said, I think English poetry has gone downhill an awful lot since Chaucer. He agreed with me, but I didn't know till afterward that he was the leading expert in the place on Chaucer. One can make a faux pas, it doesn't turn out too badly. Anyway, what I am going to say is that I am very pleased that The Fiddlehead has lasted many years and that probably despite the budget that's coming out tonight, it may last quite a few years more. At least I certainly hope so. And I get a sort of a feeling of satisfaction every time I get one of these big things, in the campus mail, and look at it. I find, you know, a kind of sense of pride of having at one time belong to something that has become like this. It's not quite the same pride I used to get when you write the address on the envelope, you put the magazine in the envelope, you put an invoice in the envelope, you seal it up, you put on a stamp, and you drop all these packages of things into the mail, and then you have a wonderful sense of relaxation and relief about four times a year. That's really what I liked best of all about the whole thing. It didn't require the effort of writing a poem. It didn't have the effort of giving a lecture or anything like that. And for that, it was very, very much worth doing. That was for me. I got paid in my own peculiar way, this way. Nowadays, I hope the editors get paid every time they look at the magazine, and that Sabina gets her pay when she's doing all those things that are being done for the magazine now, probably by her, rather than by the editors, apart from her. You know what I mean? So I'm not going to say anything more other than that, this has been done, and it's been done here, and I'm proud that it has, and I'm proud that I had a part in it. And I take my hat off to all those people who have succeeded me and in their own way done something. The only reason I like some of the stuff that I did myself better was because I did it. I like what they did too. Thanks very much.
John Teskey:That's the end of the formal program. Please help yourself to the wine and refreshments in the other room. Thank you very much.
