Nelson Ball (January 14, 1942 – August 16, 2019) was a Canadian poet, editor, publisher, and bookseller.
Biography
Nelson Ball was born in 1942 in Clinton, Ontario. He attended the University of Waterloo where he worked as a reporter for the student newspaper, ''The Coryphaeus.'' He worked at the Village Book Store in Toronto in the mid-1960s, and opened his own bookstore in 1972, first as William Nelson Books and later as Nelson Ball, Bookseller (beginning in 1985).
Ball was married to artist, writer, and publisher
Barbara Caruso
Barbara Caruso (1937–2009) was an abstract painter.
Career
After graduation from the Ontario College of Art in 1965, Caruso worked in Toronto. In 1985, she moved to Paris, Ontario with her husband poet, editor and publisher and bookseller Nels ...
. They lived in Kitchener, Toronto, and Paris, Ontario. Catherine Stevenson produced a photo documentary about Ball and Caruso’s home in Paris, Ontario and an accompanying documentary about Caruso’s art
Ball died on August 16, 2019. He chose a medically assisted death.
Writing and editing
As a publisher, he was responsible for landmark Canadian small press Weed/Flower Press (1965-1973). Through Weed/Flower, Ball published 40 books, including work by
George Bowering
George Harry Bowering, (born December 1, 1935) is a prolific Canadian novelist, poet, historian, and biographer. He was the first Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate.
He was born in Penticton, British Columbia, and raised in the nearby town o ...
bpNichol
Barrie Phillip Nichol (30 September 1944 – 25 September 1988), known as bpNichol, was a Canadian poet, writer, sound poet, editor, Creative Writing teacher at York University in Toronto and grOnk/Ganglia Press publisher. His body of work enc ...
, John Newlove, William Hawkins, and David McFadden. As an editor, he was responsible for three literary magazines: ''Volume 63'' (1963-1967), ''Weed'' (1966-1967), and ''Hyphid'' (1968). Through his magazines, he published work by
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of non-fiction, nin ...
David Donnell
David Donnell (born 13 October 1939, died 2020) was a Canadian poet and writer. Born in St. Marys, Ontario, Donnell moved to Toronto, Ontario in 1958 before publishing his first book. Poems (1961), During this period Donnell frequented the Bohem ...
,
Pat Lowther
Patricia Louise Lowther (born Patricia Louise Tinmuth) (July 29, 1935 – September 24, 1975) was a Canadian poet. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, she grew up in the neighboring city of North Vancouver.
Life
Lowther's first published poem ...
,
Daphne Marlatt
Daphne Marlatt, born Buckle, CM (born July 11, 1942 in Melbourne, Australia), is a Canadian poet and novelist who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
At a young age her family moved to Malaysia and at age nine they moved to British Columbia, ...
Joe Rosenblatt
Joseph Rosenblatt (December 26, 1933 – March 11, 2019) was a Canadian poet who lived in Qualicum Beach, British Columbia. He won Canada's Governor-General's Award and British Columbia's B.C. Book Prize for poetry.Coach House,
ECW Press
ECW Press is a Canadian book publisher located in Toronto, Ontario. It was founded by Jack David and Robert Lecker in 1974 as a Canadian literary magazine named ''Essays on Canadian Writing''. They started publishing trade and scholarly book ...
, The Mercury Press, Mansfield Press, CURVD H&z, and Proper Tales Press, and in many magazines, including ''Blewointment'', ''El Corno Emplumado'', ''Hamilton Arts & Letters'', ''illiterature'', ''Spudburn'', ''The Ant’s Forefoot'', and ''The Café Review''. His poems have been published in translation in Chinese, Romanian, Nynorsk, Russian, and Swedish.
Ball was renowned for his minimalism. His poetry has been reviewed in Canadian and International journals, including ''Canadian Literature'' and ''Poetry''.
Frank Davey
Frankland Wilmot Davey, FRSC (born April 19, 1940) is a Canadian poet and scholar.
Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, he grew up in the Fraser Valley village of Abbotsford. In 1957 he enrolled at the University of British Columbia where, in 1 ...
has written that Ball "is a poet of the minimal image; his poems, like the haiku, aim to combine the utmost economy with the sharpest possible visual clarity. They are brief, understated, and—on close scrutiny—explosive." Ball has been profiled in
Canadian Notes and Queries
''Canadian Notes & Queries'' is a literary magazine published in Canada on a triannual basis.
History and profile
The magazine was first published in 1968 by William Morley as a four-page supplement to the ''Abacus'', the newsletter of the Antiqua ...
,
The Globe and Mail
''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...
, the
Toronto Star
The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part ...
, and ''Essays on Canadian Writing.''
In 2016, Ball won the bpNichol Chapbook Award for the collection ''Small Waterways'' (Apt. 9 Press). Also in 2016, he published a book of poems for children, ''A Vole on a Roll'', which was illustrated by
JonArno Lawson
JonArno Lawson is a Canadian writer who has published many books for children and adults, was born in Hamilton, Ontario and raised in nearby Dundas. He now lives in Toronto, Ontario, with his wife and three children.
Career and education
Lawson h ...
. In 2017, his selected poems ''Certain Details'' (edited by Stuart Ross) was published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press in the Laurier Poetry Series. In 2020, “The Nelson Ball Prize” was founded to honour “poetry of observation.” To date, it has been won by Mark Truscott, Chantal Neveu (translated by Erin Moure), and Pearl Pirie.
His literary papers are held at the McMaster University Library.
Selected publications
* ''Rooms of Clocks: Poems (1964–65)''. Kitchener: Weed/Flower press, 1965.
* ''Beaufort’s Scale''. Kitchener: Weed/Flower press, 1967.
* ''Sparrows''. Toronto: Weed/Flower press, 1968.
* ''Force Movements''. Toronto: Ganglia, 1969. econd edition—Toronto: CURVD H&Z, 1990* ''Water-Pipes & Moonlight''. Toronto: Weed/Flower Press, 1969.
* ''The Pre-Linguistic Heights''. Toronto: The Coach House Press, 1970.
* ''Points of Attention''. With Barbara Caruso. Toronto: Weed/Flower Press, 1971.
* ''Round Stone''. Toronto: Weed/Flower Press, 1971.
* ''Sparrows''. Paris: presspresspress, 1990.
* ''With Issa: Poems 1964-1971''. Toronto: ECW Press, 1991.
* ''Sightings''. Toronto: CURVD H&Z, 1992.
* ''Bird Tracks on Hard Snow''. Toronto: ECW Press, 1994.
* ''Round Table''. twobitter 62. Toronto: Letters, 1996.
* ''The Concrete Air''. Stratford: The Mercury Press, 1996.
* ''Almost Spring''. Toronto: The Mercury Press, 1999.
* ''A Gathering''. Paris: Rubblestone Press, 2003. econd edition—Toronto: BookThug, 2014* ''Scrub Cedar''. Ottawa: above/ground press, 2003.
* ''At the Edge of the Frog Pond''. Toronto: The Mercury Press, 2004.
* ''Three-Letter Words''. Mount Pleasant: Laurel Reed Books / Paris: Rubblestone Press, 2006.
* ''In This Thin Rain''. Toronto: Mansfield Press, 2012.
* ''The Continuous Present''. Cobourg: Proper Tales Press, 2012.
* ''Minutiae''. Ottawa: Apt. 9 Press, 2014.
* ''A Rattle of Spring Frogs''. Hamilton: HA&L / samizdat press, 2014.
* ''You Must Look Hard to See What’s There''. Portland, Oregon: press-press-pull, 2014.
* ''Some Mornings''. Toronto: Mansfield Press, 2014.
* ''All and Everything''. Mount Pleasant: Laurel Reed Books, 2015.
* ''Small Waterways''. Ottawa: Apt. 9 Press, 2015.
* ''This Close to Being a Tree''. Delhi: Monk Press, 2015.
* ''Chewing Water''. Toronto: Mansfield Press, 2016.
* ''A Vole on a Roll''. With JonArno Lawson. Dundas: Shapes & Sounds Press, 2016.
* ''You Can’t Make the Sky a Different Blue''. Sarnia: Big Pond Rumours Press, 2017.
* ''Walking with Catherine at Lake Erie''. Paris: Rubblestone Press, 2016. [Second edition—Dundas: Shapes & Sounds Press, 2017)
* ''Certain Details: The Poetry of Nelson Ball''. Selected with an Introduction by Stuart Ross. Laurier Poetry Series. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2017.
* ''Walking''. Toronto: Mansfield Press, 2017.
* ''A Letter to Amanda Bernstein and a Checklist of Weed/Flower Press''. Ottawa: Apt. 9 Press, 2019.
* ''54''. [Swedish Translation by Charlotte Jung and Eva Ribich.] Gothenburg, Sweden: Trombone, 2022.