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  • $29.95

    ISBN: 9780889226524 | Paperback

    336 pages | Pub. Date: 20100915
    6.00 W × 9.00 H × 1.5 D inches
    Backlist | Poetry | Bisac: POE000000
    Rights: WORLD

    Or find The Collected Books of Artie Gold in your local bookstore

Artie Gold wrote. And although he published only eight books, they were just the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Artie was always writing— on his manual Underwood, on the back of cigarette packs, on napkins, on the wall, on postcards to himself and to the rest of the world. He also sketched, sketches of the moment, the moment of a moment, like his poems, whose phrases and unsentimental melancholia left a permanent impression on your mind and in your heart. He and his poems made you realize that poetry, contrary to popular opinion, did matter.

Artie Gold was a poet who was sure of what he was. He paid rent in Fort Poetry. He had such breadth in his poems that he could leave you breathless and wondering “how did he do that?” There was a Bach-like complexity mixed with a Rube Goldberg playfulness in his poems. His poems were city flowers growing between the cracks of this concrete island at the strangest and most arresting angles.

—Endre Farkas

Born in 1947 in Brockville, Ontario, Artie Gold appeared like a supernova within the constellation of Montreal Anglophone poets in the late 1960s. Intensely devoted to poetry, having already discovered the work of Frank O’Hara, John Wieners and Jack Spicer in his teens, six books of his poems were published in each of the years 1974–79. Daunted by asthma, complicated by rapidly proliferating allergies and emphysema, he increasingly retreated from the world. At the urging of his friends, a Selected Poems was published in 1992, but only one further book appeared in print in 2003. Artie left the world on St. Valentine’s Day, 2007. His eight published books of poetry collected here shine like a beacon of Northern Lights across the literary landscape of the late twentieth century.

“… don’t come to these poems expecting to find a reference to the world, or a reference to Artie Gold’s world of feeling & perceptions. Be prepared to step into a world. The poem is, as Jack Spicer said to Lorca, ‘a collage of the real.’”
George Bowering

“Gold’s poems are protean…his imagination thrives on daily life.”
Montreal Review of Books

By Artie Gold

Artie Gold was born January 15, 1947 in Brockville, Ontario. He was raised in Montreal and continued to live there until he passed away on February 14, 2007.

Read more about Artie Gold


Edited by Ken Norris

Ken Norris was born in New York City in 1951. He emigrated to Canada in the early seventies, where he quickly became one of the infamous Vehicule Poets, essential in helping to develop and maintain a particular style of Anglo-poetry in Montreal.
He is the author of two dozen books and chapbooks of poetry, and is the editor of eight anthologies of poetry and poetics. His work has been widely anthologized in Canada and throughout the English-speaking world, as well as published in translation in France, Belgium, Israel and China.

Norris teaches Canadian literature and creative writing at the University of Maine. He divides his time between Canada, the United States and Asia.

Read more about Ken Norris


Edited by Endre Farkas

Endre Farkas was born in Hajdunánás, Hungary in 1948. Along with his parents, he escaped from Hungary during the 1956 revolution and has lived in and around Montreal ever since. He is a poet, playwright, and performer.

Read more about Endre Farkas


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Endre Farkas lauded by Quebec writers

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…elements to take in the Vancouver launch of both The Collected Books of Artie Gold and bill bissett‘s time. Vehicule poet Tom …


news | 2010-11-30
Garry Thomas Morse Reads Artie Gold in Vancouver

…Garry Thomas Morse is reading from The Collected Books of Artie Gold at the Vancouver launch. …


news | 2010-11-30
George Bowering Reads Artie Gold in Vancouver

…George Bowering is reading from The Collected Books of Artie Gold at the Vancouver launch. …


news | 2010-11-30
Tom Konyves Reads Artie Gold in Vancouver

…Tom Konyves is reading from The Collected Books of Artie Gold at the Vancouver launch. …


news | 2010-11-23
Report from the Artie Gold Launch in Montreal

…Schwartz’s, people were reading his poems from The Collected Books of Artie Gold and it was happening at The Word book store. A …


news | 2010-09-01
The Collected Books of Artie Gold Have Arrived!

…first poems Gold has always shown taste.“  The Collected Books of Artie Gold includes his eight published books, which arrive …