Surreal Estate: Thirteen Poets Under the Influence

by Stuart Ross

Surrealism may be a dirty secret these days, unmentionable on the backs of poetry books. But there are more than a handful of poets in North America who have been heavily influenced by surrealism. Some of them even consider themselves surrealists. They might have read Benjamin Peret, or they might have had a dream. Maybe they write while they have a fever. But, whether consciously or not, these poets are kicking at the tidy, the academic, the lyric. They are kicking at the mainstream of North American poetry. This anthology brings together 13 Canadian poets under the influence of surrealism, including Gil Adamson, Kevin Connolly, Alice Burdick, and Lillian Necakov. Born in the 1960s and currently living in Toronto, Hamilton, Wolfville, Lunenberg, and Vancouver, they show that the influence of surrealism is still strong. There are imagist poems here, and language poems. Prose poems and manifestos. Things that could be called haiku. Surreal Estate is an anthology of alternative universes, a record of a movement that doesn’t know it’s a movement.

169 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003

About the author

Stuart Ross published his first literary pamphlet on the photocopier in his dad’s office one night in 1979. Through the 1980s, he stood on Toronto’s Yonge Street wearing signs like “Writer Going To Hell: Buy My Books,” selling over 7,000 poetry and fiction chapbooks.

A tireless literary press activist, he is the co-founder of the Toronto Small Press Book Fair and now a founding member of the Meet the Presses collective. He had his own imprint, a stuart ross book, at Mansfield Press for a decade, and was Fiction & Poetry Editor at This Magazine for eight years. In fall 2017, he launched a new poetry imprint, A Feed Dog Book, through Anvil Press.

Stuart has edited several small literary magazines, including Mondo Hunkamooga: A Journal of Small Press Stuff, Syd & Shirley, Who Torched Rancho Diablo?, Peter O’Toole: A Magazine of One-Line Poems, and, most recently HARDSCRABBLE.

He is the author of two collaborative novels, two solo novels, two collections of stories, and twelve full-length poetry books. He has also published two collections of essays, Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer and Further Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer (both from Anvil Press), and edited the anthology Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence (The Mercury Press) and co-edited Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament (Mansfield Press).

Stuart has taught writing workshops across Canada and works one-on-one with authors on their manuscripts. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario. In spring 2009, Freehand Books released his first short-story collection in more than a decade, Buying Cigarettes for the Dog, to almost unanimous critical acclaim.

Stuart was the fall 2010 writer-in-residence at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and the winter 2021 writer-in-residence at the University of Ottawa.

In 2017, Stuart won the eighth annual Battle of the Bards, presented by the International Festival of Authors and NOW Magazine. In spring 2023, Stuart received the biggest book award in Ontario, the Trillium Book Prize, for his memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers. In fall 2019, Stuart was awarded the Harbourfront Festival Prize for his contributions to Canadian literature and literary community. His other awards include the Canadian Jewish Literary Prize for Poetry and the ReLit Award for Short Fiction. His work has been translated into Russian, French, Spanish, Estonian, Slovene, and Nynorsk.

Stuart is currently working on ten book projects.

Reviews

[Kevin Hogg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very interesting collection of poems. While they are all included under the surrealist banner, there are several different styles represented. Stuart Ross does a good job of explaining the vision and offering a brief overview of surrealism in the introduction. There are about ten pages devoted to each poet, with poems spanning from a single line to multiple pages.

As with all surrealism, I'm not sure that I necessarily "get" the meaning of most of the poems, but many of them speak to me, even if not in the way that the poet intended (assuming, of course, that that was their intention in the first place). What I really enjoy is that even the most incomprehensible poems often contain a brilliant phrase or two--combinations of words that I wish I had written, or that make me want to write my own poetry.

While it's obviously subjective and doesn't necessarily indicate any of the poets are "better" than others, a few stood out to me in particular--Gil Adamson's work is a strong start to the collection (the poets are included alphabetically), and I really enjoyed Alice Burdick and Stuart Ross (I don't think I could ever successfully explain why I enjoy the phrase "rectangular books" so much, but it feels brilliant in context). The variety of styles keeps things interesting, and there are influences of many other writers that I enjoy shining through. Definitely enjoyable, even if it isn't always easy to follow.