This issue marks the beginning of our fourth series, an occasion that has prompted us to reflect not only on the path that has led us here – our 151st issue – but also on the directions that we imagine and desire for The Capilano Review pushing into the coming decades. Most of all, we find ourselves returning, time and again, to the immense community of people and relations that has incited and upheld this publication now for over fifty years. TCR has always been, and continues to be, a very collective project.
Rather than hold up this issue as a laudatory milestone, we wanted to explore the idea of an “anti-monumental” sensibility in art and writing. On the one hand, this approach dismantles the spectacular monumentality that is bound up with capitalist innovation, colonial extraction, and accelerated growth, instead focusing on how we can slow down, care for, and strengthen existing relationships across time. On the other hand, it leans into a diffuse temporality that distances itself from “before and after” binaries, thinking instead about nuance, process, gentleness, and return as daily practices, both personal and political, that might better draw out the continuous events and encounters that make up the space between precedents and antecedents.
The works in this issue position themselves variously against the monument in its historical, political, and aesthetic significance. Maggie Groat’s artist project and accompanying conversation bring together questions of site, ritual, care, and inheritance to model decolonial modes of thinking and making “in this era of overlapping crisis and anxiety.” Tracie Morris and Tawhida Tanya Evanson’s works think through the microbial as environmental surround, considering the long, more-than-human memory of bacteria and viruses. The text of Danielle LaFrance’s collaborative intermedial project Yes, Sydo chips away at the monolithic epic The Odyssey, repurposing its narrative components to explore intimate desire, pain, and grief. And in Kaie Kellough’s selection from the longer work position, “x” stands in for the abolished first-person subject and its living detritus, instead vibing through the universal din.
We are also excited to present in this issue two works that return to past writing and dialogue: an extensive folio on early TCR contributor Hope Anderson that includes poems from past publications, new work, as well as an interview with Wayde Compton reflecting on Anderson’s long and significant presence in the West Coast and Canadian writing scenes; and a conversation between Roy Kiyooka and Gladys Maria Hindmarch that took place on October 5th, 1975 and which comprises part of Kiyooka’s unpublished manuscript Laughter – a love letter to the everyday connections that make art possible. An extended image folio showcasing the work of five artists – Qian Cheng, Eunice Luk, Aubin Soonhwan Kwon, Jenine Marsh, and Cadence Planthara – likewise gathers around the figure of slowness as it manifests in various craft- and process-based practices, and is illuminated by a poetic response by Zoe Imani Sharpe.
This issue of course also notably debuts our stunning new design, thoughtfully conceived by Victoria Lum. Featuring a fresh, art-forward cover, carefully expanded layouts, and a loving return to the magazine’s original 1972 typeface, Baskerville, the new format sees us looking to both the past and the future of what an interdisciplinary publication of contemporary art and writing can be.
Taken together, these feats are in no way monumental, but see us doubling down into the fundamental acts of care and deep engagement that have given sustenance to our work all these years. We hope you’ll keep reading. We hope you’ll stay close to us.
—Deanna Fong and Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross
