TISH was a Canadian poetry newsletter, founded by student-poets at the University of British Columbia

University of British Columbia

The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...

 in 1961 and edited by a number of 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,...

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

Black Mountain College

Black Mountain College, a school founded in 1933 in Black Mountain, North Carolina, was a new kind of college in the United States in which the study of art was seen to be central to a liberal arts education, and in which John Dewey's principles of education played a major role...

 experiment.

Contributing writers included George Bowering

George Bowering

George Harry Bowering, OC, OBC is a prolific Canadian novelist, poet, historian, and biographer. He has served as Canada's Parliamentary Poet Laureate....

, Fred Wah

Fred Wah

Frederick James Wah is a Canadian poet, novelist, and scholar.Wah was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, but grew up in the interior of British Columbia. His Canadian-born father was raised in China, the son of a Chinese father and a Scots-Irish mother. Fred Wah's mother was a Swedish-born...

, Frank Davey

Frank Davey

Frankland Wilmot Davey 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 1961, shortly after receiving his BA, he became one of the founding editors of the...

, Daphne Marlatt

Daphne Marlatt

Daphne Marlatt, née Buckle, CM , is a Canadian poet who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia....

, David Cull, Carol Bolt

Carol Bolt

Carol Bolt was a Canadian playwright. She was a founding member and, for several years, president of the Playwrights Union of Canada....

, Dan McLeod

Dan McLeod

For the professional wrestler Dan McLeod, see Dan McLeod .Dan McLeod is one of the founders and the present owner, publisher, and editor of the influential weekly newspaper, the Georgia Straight in Vancouver, Canada....

, Robert Hogg, Jamie Reid

Jamie Reid

Jamie Reid is a British artist and anarchist with connections to the Situationists. His work, featuring letters cut from newspaper headlines in the style of a ransom note, came close to defining the image of punk rock, particularly in the UK...

, and Lionel Kearns

Lionel Kearns

Lionel John Kearns is a Canadian poet and teacher.Kearns was born in Nelson, British Columbia, and attended the University of British Columbia, where he was a student of Earle Birney...

. Influenced by the poetry theorist Warren Tallman

Warren Tallman

Warren Tallman was an American-born poetry professor who inspired the Canadian Tish movement and influenced the mid-20th century poetry scene in Canada.- History :...

, the Tish Group also drew inspiration from Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley 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's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...

, Robert Duncan

Robert Duncan (poet)

Robert Duncan was an American poet and a student of H.D. and the Western esoteric tradition who spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Though associated with any number of literary traditions and schools, Duncan is often identified with the poets of the New American Poetry and Black...

, Charles Olson

Charles Olson

Charles Olson , was a second generation American modernist poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance...

 and Jack Spicer

Jack Spicer

Jack Spicer was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer won the American Book Award for poetry.-Life and work:...

.

TISH was the launching pad for a number of other publications including the alternative newspaper The Georgia Straight

The Georgia Straight

The Georgia Straight is a free Canadian weekly news and entertainment newspaper published in Vancouver, British Columbia, by the Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp...

, edited by McLeod, the poetry newsletter SUM (1963–65), edited by Wah, the magazine of the long poem Imago

Imago

In biology, the imago is the last stage of development of an insect, after the last ecdysis of an incomplete metamorphosis, or after emergence from the pupa where the metamorphosis is complete...

(1964–74), edited by Bowering, the journal of writing and theory Open Letter (1965– ), edited by Davey, the prose journal Periodics (1977–81), edited by Marlatt and Paul de Barros, and the on-line journal Swift Current (1984–1990), edited by Davey and Wah, and described by them as the world's first e-magazine.

Of Tish George Fetherling wrote in 2001 in The Georgia Straight that "The journal started by George Bowering

George Bowering

George Harry Bowering, OC, OBC is a prolific Canadian novelist, poet, historian, and biographer. He has served as Canada's Parliamentary Poet Laureate....

, Frank Davey

Frank Davey

Frankland Wilmot Davey 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 1961, shortly after receiving his BA, he became one of the founding editors of the...

, David Dawson

David Dawson

David Dawson may refer to:*David Thomas Dawson , American convicted murderer*David Dawson , English actor*David Dawson , , British choreographer*David Dawson , Painter*David Dawson , Canadian poet...

, Jamie Reid

Jamie Reid

Jamie Reid is a British artist and anarchist with connections to the Situationists. His work, featuring letters cut from newspaper headlines in the style of a ransom note, came close to defining the image of punk rock, particularly in the UK...

 and Fred Wah

Fred Wah

Frederick James Wah is a Canadian poet, novelist, and scholar.Wah was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, but grew up in the interior of British Columbia. His Canadian-born father was raised in China, the son of a Chinese father and a Scots-Irish mother. Fred Wah's mother was a Swedish-born...

 is probably the most influential literary magazine ever produced in Canada, of greater significance than even Preview

PREview

PREview is a requirements method which focuses on the early stage of Requirements Engineering: discovering and documenting requirements. PREview uses a Viewpoint-Oriented Approach to enable the conversion of top-level goals into requirements and constraints...

or First Statement

First Statement

First Statement was a Canadian literary magazine published in Montreal, Quebec 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 at a time...

, the two that brought poetic modernism to the country in the 1940s."

Further reading

• A Digital History of Canadian Poetry
• Virtual Library of Canadian Small Press
• Author Bank: Warren Tallman at BC Bookworld
• Author Bank: Frank Davey at BC Bookworld
• Author Bank: Fred Wah at BC Bookworld
• Author Bank: George Bowering at BC Bookworld
• Author Bank: Daphne Marlatt at BC Bookworld