''TISH'' was a Canadian poetry newsletter founded by student-poets at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

in 1961. The publication was edited by a number of

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

poets until 1969. The newsletter's poetics were built on those of writers associated with North Carolina's Black Mountain College experiment. Contributing writers included

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 ...

Fred Wah Frederick James Wah, OC, (born January 23, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, scholar and former Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. Life Wah was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, but grew up in the interior (West Kootenay) of British Columbi ...

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 ...

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, ...

, David Cull,

Carol Bolt Carol Bolt (August 25, 1941 – November 28, 2000) was a Canadian playwright. She was a founding member and, for several years, president of the Playwrights Union of Canada. Career Bolt's play ''Buffalo Jump'', an examination of Canada during ...

Dan McLeod Dan McLeod (born 1943) is one of the founders and the former owner, publisher, and editor of the influential weekly newspaper, the ''Georgia Straight'' in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Dan was born and raised in Vancouver. He graduated fr ...

, Robert Hogg, Jamie Reid, and

Lionel Kearns Lionel John Kearns (born February 16, 1937) is a Canadian poet and teacher He was born in Nelson, British Columbia, and attended the University of British Columbia, where he was a student of Earle Birney. He later taught at Simon Fraser University ...

. Influenced by the poetry theorist

Warren Tallman Warren Tallman (17 November 1921 – 1 July 1994) was an American-born poetry professor who influenced the Vancouver Tish poets. History Born in Seattle, Tallman was raised in Tumwater, Washington. He attended the University of California, B ...

, the Tish Group also drew inspiration from the Seed Catalogue and

Robert Creeley Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. He was close with Char ...

, Robert Duncan, Jason Wiens Lee, Charles Olson and Jack Spicer. ''TISH'' launched a number of other publications including the alternative newspaper '' The Georgia Straight'', edited by McLeod; the poetry newsletter ''SUM'' (1963–65), edited by Wah; the magazine of the long poem ''

Imago In biology, the imago (Latin for "image") is the last stage an insect attains during its metamorphosis, its process of growth and development; it is also called the imaginal stage, the stage in which the insect attains maturity. It follows the f ...

'' (1964–74), edited by Bowering; the journal of writing and theory '' Open Letter'' (1965–2013), edited by Davey; the prose journal ''Periodics'' (1977–81), edited by Marlatt and Paul de Barros; ''Motion: A Prose Newsletter'', edited by David Cull and Robert Hogg (1962), the ''TISHBooks'' imprint, and the online journal '' Swift Current'' (1984–1990), edited by Davey and Wah, who described it as the world's first e-magazine. In 2001, George Fetherling wrote in ''The Georgia Straight'' that "the journal 'TISH''started by

, David Dawson, Jamie Reid and

is probably the most influential literary magazine ever produced in Canada, of greater significance than even '' Preview'' or '' First Statement'', the two that brought poetic modernism to the country in the 1940s."Quoted in "http://www.abcbookworld.com/view_author.php?id=59 Author Bank: Warren Tallman"

References

Further reading