This collection contains recordings from the Warren Tallman fonds (MsC-26) from the late-1960s to the early-1990s, including interviews conducted by Tallman, interviews of Tallman by other writers and critics, guests speakers and readings in Tallman’s classes, and other readings, lectures, and conversations with notable 20th-century Canadian and American poets.
Collection History
Warren Tallman was born near Seattle, WA in 1921 and grew up in Tumwater, WA. He began his academic life at St. Martin’s College and later attended graduate school at the University of Washington on the G.I. Bill, though he worked in limited service as a clerk typist in San Diego, CA during WWII. Tallman’s PhD research focused on D.H. Lawrence and Henry James, but after Marthe Rexroth (then wife of Kenneth Rexroth) shared a Jack Kerouac book with him, he became dedicated to a new generation of poets gathering in the Bay Area and visiting from Black Mountain College. Ellen Tallman, Warren’s second wife, was the catalyst, introducing him to the Rexroths, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, and Robin Blaser as well as Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, after she completed her BA in Music at Berkeley. The Tallman family moved to Vancouver in 1956 when Warren was offered a job in the Department of English at the University of British Columbia, where he taught until his retirement in 1986.
While at UBC, the Tallmans introduced their American literary community to the burgeoning student writers who would come to be known as the TISH poets after they published a newsletter under this name (George Bowering, Pauline Butling, Frank Davey, David Dawson, Gladys Maria Hindmarch, Robert Hogg, Lionel Kearns, Daphne Marlatt, Jamie Reid, and Fred Wah among others), as well as other young poets like bill bissett, Judith Copithorne, and Maxine Gadd and local artists like Roy Kiyooka. Warren and Ellen hosted American poets Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan for events at UBC beginning in the late 1950s. Most infamously, together with Creeley during his visiting professorship at UBC, the Tallmans organized the Landmark 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference: a summer course featuring guest lectures, readings, and events by Creeley, Duncan, Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, Charles Olson, and Canadian poet Margaret Avision that drew participants from all over the US and Canada. Tallman would continue to be involved in events of similar ambition or scale throughout his career, later establishing the Vancouver Poetry Centre and lecturing at Naropa University after its establishment in Boulder, CO by Ginsberg, Snyder and others in 1974. He served on juries for the Canada Council—infamously maligned even in the mainstream media as an American interloper—and continued supporting students, former students, and the broader literary community until his death in 1994.
Highlights
While researchers should note that recordings of the Vancouver 1963 Poetry Conference can be found in SFU Library’s Readings in BC audio collection (McS-199), the Warren Tallman Audio Collection contains a few related materials:
- early documentation of TISH, a recording featuring Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan in 1970, as well as audio from Tallman’s classes at UBC in 1976 and later.
- a suite of interviews or conversations conducted by Tallman (1970s-1990s): Don Allen (1975), Joanne Kyger (1979), Bobbie Hawkins, and Steve McCaffery (1988)
- interviews of Tallman by other writers and critics: Roy Miki (1983), Adeena Karasick (1990)
- guests in Tallman’s classes: bpNichol, Ellie Nichol (1990), Daphne Marlatt (1988)
- extended recordings of events associated with bpNichol’s memorials in 1988 and Robert Creeley’s visit in 1990, including radio specials produced for Co-Op Radio by Paul Mutton documenting both events
- readings, lectures, or conversations with bill bissett, Angela Bowering, Colin Browne, Basil Bunting, Judith Copithorne, Frank Davey, Karl Jirgins, Lionel Kearns, Lola Tostevin, and Anne Waldman (1970s-1990s)
- unique to Tallman’s fonds are materials that demonstrate his idiosyncratic use of audio recording in his own writing, thinking, and relationships. These include rehearsals (many featuring his student Adeena Karasick reading her work); invitations (Creeley); phone conversations (Davey); spoken drafts of outgoing letters (Miki); collections of people reading for birthday greetings (Ginsberg, Karasick); and tapes left rolling after public events (bpNichol memorial).
Acknowledgements
This digital collection has been made possible with support from the SSHRC-funded SpokenWeb project. The audio in this collection was digitized from cassettes and the metadata was created by SpokenWeb research assistants.
