Writer’s and publisher’s mixer offers look at local literary talent, new and established
In a casual, conversational, and friendly atmosphere, Vocamus Press hosted its annual “Book Bash” at eBar on Sunday, Sept. 28. With musical accompaniment by The Rolling Blackouts and Mo’ Kauffey, the evening was an illuminating celebration of the city’s thriving literary talent.
A slew of authors spoke about their books, in what MC Dan Evans (host of CFRU’s Books for Breakfast program) described as a “speed-dating” setup. Each author spoke for about five minutes, discussed their work without giving much away, and raffled off a free copy of each book to lucky ticket holders.
Among the writers present were University of Guelph Latin American literature professor Stephen Henighan, local slam poet Amelia “Meme” Meister, science fiction author Matt Payne, and philosophy professor Karen Houle, whose translation of musician Lê Quan Nihn’s book Improvising Freely: The ABCs of an Experience was released earlier in September during the jazz festival.
David J. Knight, general editor of Vocamus and author of Sound Guelph, sat down to speak about his new book Guelph Versifiers of the 19th Century.
“Guelph Versifiers of the 19th Century is basically an anthology of all those writers of verse – that includes poetry and also long verse – who were being published in Guelph in the 19th century. I thought I would be lucky if [I found] twenty, but there was 44 of them. Some of those names, like obviously John McCrae we all know, James Gay we probably know, John Galt, [Guelph’s] founder, wrote some poetry, […] I was able to identify all books that were published in Guelph in the 19th century, so there’s eight appendices of bookmaking, publishing, bookstores, newspapers, and reading/writing culture of Guelph. It was a hot place, it was a happening place!”
Knight also remarked on his work as a general editor with Vocamus Press: “What’s nice about being in the position now, as general editor of Vocamus Editions, is that we can start to blur and get rid of the mythological distance between the local community and the university community. There shouldn’t be a division of any kind, [because] this new wave of literary life and culture in Guelph is really exciting.”
At the end of the evening’s “speed-dating” conversations, I had a chance to speak with Jeremy Luke Hill, owner and editor-in-chief of Vocamus Press.
“John [Jantonen] and I started doing this unofficially a long time ago. Probably almost four years ago, where we saw each other at a baby group. Our kids were running around, and I had a novel with me. […] We started having this conversation about books […] we were both serious about it, although neither of us had been published at that point. […] I went looking for self-publishing options, and all of them, basically, whatever you gave them was what you get, and that’s kind of how self-publishing works. The quality you give is the quality you get back. So, I was really unhappy with the quality of the typesetting and all that.”
The two then started editing, typesetting, and critiquing each other’s work. Hill said, “I noticed our quality was better, and we thought ‘At some point, we need to do this more broadly. More people need this.’ […] We basically realized that part of what we were facing as novelists or as writers was trying to get that next step, and that having a platform made it easier. We wanted to offer that to other authors. So we started doing it with other people, and I was doing typesetting for money, but also we were doing all kinds of promotion and whatever came up.”
As made clear by the abundance of local talent present, Vocamus Press plays an important part in Guelph’s unique and diverse literary scene. By offering a kind of “stepping stone” in publishing and promoting the work of local authors, the press supports new writers to the scene, bridges the gap between the academic community and the public, and anthologizes works from Guelph’s extensive and important literary past.