| Through a method which combines close readings of literary texts with archival research, I provide in this dissertation a critical history of the Kootenay School of Writing (KSW): an independent, writer-run centre established in Vancouver and Nelson, British Columbia in 1984. Emerging at a time in which the B.C. provincial government's program of “restraint” entailed drastic cuts to funding for education and the arts, KSW became a site for oppositional and innovative writing practices. KSW was an open-ended community insofar as the parameters of the community were never firmly established, or its principles explicitly codified. This model of community corresponded with an open form poetics practiced by writers associated with the school, as well by writers across North America—in particular writers associated with Language Writing. For the writers working in and around KSW, I argue, community and poetics co-existed in a mutually informing and productive relationship: the politics of the writers entered their work, and their work enabled the imagination of an alternative politics.; My study approaches KSW through the overlapping frames of “History,” “Community,” and “Poetics.” My introductory chapter considers KSW's institutional and historical position within the wider frame of Canadian literature, and the degree to which the school reflects and negotiates the shifting political, cultural and economic context of contemporary North America. I then situate the formation of the school, and the writing that emerged from its context, within B.C.'s tradition of poetic communities and innovative poetics. KSW also extends a dialogue with important poets in the United States which began in Vancouver in the late 1950s, and my project situates their work in relation to American writers such as Jack Spicer and Lyn Hejinian. The following chapter on “Community” considers KSW's collective role through an examination of its relations with several differing communities: the language writers in the U.S., “work writing,” Vancouver's visual arts scene and a transnational network of feminist writers. My chapter on “Poetics” looks closely at the work of four writers associated with KSW: Kevin Davies, Deanna Ferguson, Lisa Robertson and Jeff Derksen. My “Coda” briefly addresses more recent developments at the school up to the present moment. |
