Anthos

You may have already seen that Patrick White has died. He launched his last poetry collection two weeks before he died. He was the last Poet Laureate of Ottawa.
When I was to see mom last she said she found a paper I left behind. A 1987 Anthos:

White organized Anthos, the magazine (“The magazine is produced entirely with an Apple Macintosh Computer and Laser Printer”), as well as the readings series, the publisher, the radio series (“Radio Anthos on Q101”), and the poster poem series.

I sent poems to that magazines then, terrible, terrible couplet refrain verses. I wonder if somewhere is still my rejection letter. But, here’s something more interesting: a bit of Patrick White’s poem,

The names were all just letters to me then. In the issue, there were people I would eventually come to meet through Tree, Blaine Marchand, Ronnie Brown and Henry Beissel.
The issue includes people I would come to meet: the person who was judge on the first poetry competition I short-listed for aka first cash from poetry, Tony Cosier; one of my first teachers for poetry in Ottawa, Ruth Latta and someone I would become slightly offset from, Jorge Etcheverry who hosts Third World Players, the show right before Literary Landscapes.
And there’s a Michael Dennis whose poetry book review blog is a year old today.

It’s good to see that people writing then are writing still. In it there were poems by other people who are either still writing, or died while still writing: Louis Fagan, Catherine Ahearn (First Poet Laureate of Ottawa), Ralph Cunningham, Patrick Phillmore, Charles Fisher, Robin Matthews, Sandra Nicholls, Audrey Dean Cowan and Heather Ferguson who still does Ygdrasil, Antonino Mazza and Yvonne Trainer.