First Statement was a Canadian literary magazine

Literary magazine

A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...

 published in Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

, Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

 from 1942 to 1945. During its short life the magazine, along with its rival publication Preview with which it often shared contributors, provided one of the few publication avenues for modernist Canadian poetry

Canadian poetry

- Beginnings:The earliest works of poetry, mainly written by visitors, described the new territories in optimistic terms, mainly targeted at a European audience...

 at a time when Canadian literature tended to be dominated by a more conservative aesthetic. John Sutherland

John Sutherland (Canadian writer)

John Sutherland was a Canadian poet, literary critic, and magazine editor based in Montreal, Quebec. Although he published numerous poems of his own, he was perhaps better known as the founder and editor of two important Canadian literary magazines, First Statement and Northern Review...

 and his sister Betty Sutherland (both half-siblings of the actor Donald Sutherland

Donald Sutherland

Donald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...

) established First Statement after a group of John Sutherland's poems was rejected by Preview, edited by Patrick Anderson.

What began as a mimeographed publication of a few stapled sheets grew within three years into a larger magazine of tentatively national significance (it had editorial representatives in Vancouver

Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

 although its core circulation was small -- about 75 copies per issue). A year into its history, Canadian poets Louis Dudek

Louis Dudek

Louis Dudek, OC was a Canadian poet, academic, and publisher known for his role in defining Modernism in poetry, and for his literary criticism. He was the author of over two dozen books...

 and Irving Layton

Irving Layton

Irving Peter Layton, OC was a Romanian-born Canadian poet. He was known for his "tell it like it is" style which won him a wide following but also made enemies. As T...

 joined the magazines editorial board; both would go on to become major figures in Canadian literature

Canadian literature

Canadian literature is literature originating from Canada. Collectively it is often called CanLit. Some criticism of Canadian literature has focused on nationalistic and regional themes, although this is only a small portion of Canadian Literary criticism...

. The so-called First Statement Group aligned itself with the cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...

 aesthetic in Canadian poetry, drawing inspiration from such avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

American poets as Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

 and William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...

. This placed the editorial policy of First Statement somewhat in opposition with that of Preview, which tended to favour such British anti-modernists as W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

 and Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas

Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...

. Despite these differences, the rivalry between the two magazines was never strong, and A. M. Klein

A. M. Klein

Abraham Moses Klein was a Canadian poet, journalist, novelist, short story writer, and lawyer. He has been called "One of Canada's greatest poets and a leading figure in Jewish-Canadian culture."...

, F. R. Scott

F. R. Scott

Francis Reginald Scott, CC commonly known as Frank Scott or F.R. Scott, was a Canadian poet, intellectual and constitutional expert. He helped found the first Canadian social democratic party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, and its successor, the New Democratic Party...

, and other important poets published in both periodicals.

In 1945 Sutherland, by now the major figurehead at First Statement, established First Statement Press, which outlived the magazine itself until well into the 1950s. Significant books published by First Statement Press included Other Canadians: An Anthology of New Poetry in Canada, 1940-46, Canada's first anthology

Anthology

An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...

 to feature modernist poetry exclusively (after F.R Scott and A.J.M. Smith published New Provinces

New Provinces (poetry anthology)

New Provinces: Poems of Several Authors was an anthology of Canadian poetry published in the 1930s, anonymously edited by F.R. Scott assisted by Leo Kennedy and A.J.M. Smith. The first anthology of Canadian modernist poetry, it has been hailed as a "landmark anthology" and a "milestone selection...

in 1936); Layton's first two monographs, Here and Now (1945) and Now is the Place (1948); Anderson's A Tent for April and Miriam Waddington

Miriam Waddington

Miriam Waddington was a Canadian poet, short story writer and translator.Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she studied English at the University of Toronto and social work the University of Pennsylvania . She worked for many years as a social worker in Montreal...

's Green World (both 1945), along with collections by Raymond Souster

Raymond Souster

Raymond Holmes Souster, OC is a Canadian poet whose writing career spans almost 70 years. He has published more than 50 volumes of his own verse, and edited or co-edited a dozen volumes of others' poetry...

 and Anne Wilkinson

Anne Wilkinson (poet)

Anne Wilkinson was a Canadian poet who was part of the modernist movement in Canadian poetry in the 1940s and 50s, one of only a few prominent women poets of the time along with Dorothy Livesay and P.K. Page. Wilkinson published two books of poetry, Counterpoint to Sleep and The Hangman Ties the...

.

In 1945 First Statement merged with Preview to become Northern Review

Northern Review

Northern Review was a Montreal-based literary magazine published in Canada between 1945 and 1956. It resulted from the merger between two earlier magazines, Preview and First Statement, both of which were also Montreal-based. Poet and literary critic John Sutherland, who founded First Statement,...

, a larger and more widely distributed publication that lasted until its managing editor

Managing editor

A managing editor is a senior member of a publication's management team.In the United States, a managing editor oversees and coordinates the publication's editorial activities...

 Sutherland's death from cancer

Cancer

Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

 in 1956. Today, all of these publications continue to be recognized as some of the important little magazines in Canadian literary history and as important forerunners of later critical and literary journals in Canada, such as Canadian Literature

Canadian Literature (journal)

Canadian Literature is a quarterly of criticism and review published out of the University of British Columbia.Canadian Literature was founded in 1959 by George Woodcock, who produced 73 issues before retiring in 1977. After Woodcock's retirement, the University of British Columbia invited William...

, the Tamarack Review

Tamarack Review

The Tamarack Review was a Canadian literary magazine, published from 1956 to 1982. Established and edited by Robert Weaver, other figures associated with the magazine's editorial staff included Anne Wilkinson, William Toye and John Robert Colombo....

, and The Fiddlehead

The Fiddlehead

The Fiddlehead is a Canadian literary magazine, published four times annually at the University of New Brunswick.The journal was established in 1945 by Alfred Bailey as an in-house publication for the Bliss Carman Poetry Society; it was converted into a general literary magazine in 1952...

.