Practical Knowledge.
Gadd, Maxine. Practical Knowledge. Vancouver: Intermedia, 1969.
Narrow folio; illustrated throughout with mimeographed color images and line drawings; no binding, pages loosely held; purple pictorial cardstock wrappers.
First edition, limited printing of 250 copies, the entire edition.
Practical Knowledge was written, designed, and self-published by Vancouver-based poet Maxine Gadd in the summer of 1969, using a color mimeograph machine for its production.
Ten issues of the edition had slices of white sandwich bread stapled to them, all of which
were stamped and numbered by the author.
Gadd was a central figure within the close-knit artistic circles of 1960s Vancouver. Born in England, Gadd’s family immigrated to Canada in 1946, and she was first published in the University of British Columbia’s literary journal, The Raven. Her first full-length book of
poetry, Guns of the West, was published by local editor Bill Bissett’s blewointment press in 1967, and he would also publish her second collection, Hochelaga, in 1970. For five years
Gadd lived in a cabin without running water or electricity on Galliano Island, just off the coast
of Vancouver, and returned to the city’s Downtown Eastside neighborhood in 1984, where
she continues to live today.
Her work is noted for its engagement with contemporary art and an activist sense of community, as well as her willingness to experiment with both word play and the arrangement of text on the page. Fellow Vancouver poet Michael Turner states, “Maxine is one of our city’s greats. Reading her earliest works, to the newer ones, is a record of the city…. [I]t is the challenging poems that, in my opinion, are among her most sustaining.”
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