Poet and publisher of little literary magazines, Raymond Souster

Nice obituary in today's Globe and Mail about one of Canada's better-known poets, Raymond Souster, who also edited several avant garde literary journals -- Direction, Contact and Combustion -- followed by Contact, which later morphed into Contact Press in 1952, which was a joint venture of Souster, Irving Layton and Louis Dudek. Contact published work by Leonard Cohen, Phyllis Webb, P.K. Page, Michael Ondaatje, Anne Hébert, George Bowering, Milton Acorn and Gwendolyn MacEwen.

“I did enjoy the magazines; they were little centres of energy,” Souster said. “Small in the scheme of things, but important to many who were looking for a place to display their work.”