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“Poet and Audience Actually Exist”: The Contact Poetry Reading Series and the Rise of Literary Readings in Canada

This essay documents and assesses the history of the Contact Poetry Reading Series (Toronto, 1957-62), arguing that the Contact readings mark the emergence of a vital form of modern literary expression in Canada. The essay has two primary goals. The first is to contextualize the Contact Poetry Reading Series as a fundamental component of Raymond Souster’s editorial work in order to enrich dominant critical perspective of Souster’s accomplishments as an editor and publisher. The Contact readings express the same drive on Souster’s part to “make contact” (between generations, between international communities, between poet and reader) that is identifiable in his work with Contact and Contact Press, only in this case under material conditions unique to the public performance of poetry. The second goal is to situate the Contact Poetry Reading Series within current book history and performance studies scholarship. In doing so, this essay positions the literary reading as an essential but understudied component of processes of publication, distribution, and reception of poetry in Canada.