ISBN: 978-0888010-29-2 • 1979
My first publication was Jimmy Bang Poems in 1979. I left town before it was released and came back in January 1980. I hadn’t received a copy, so I wanted to go to Mary Scorer’s on Osborne to buy a copy. Foolishly I asked my dad for a ride – and told him the truth when he asked why. Instead of just dropping me at Confusion Corner, he insisted on coming into the bookstore with me. I quickly picked up my copy from the rack displaying Turnstone chapbooks , paid, and fled. My dad in the store, turned to the first poem: “They fucked/for a girl/so they said. ….Planned for comfort/got me/instead.“ Mom said later over tea before bed that Dad was upset, but would get over it. She said, “Having read Margaret Laurence I know what goes on in books these days. Dad prefers the older stuff.”
My father appears in other forms in later work, and I owe him for encouraging my love of reading, instilling a love of both new and used bookstores, and teaching me that real men had a personal library. That day, though, I was likely not his favourite child.
“Crazy as a shithouse rat!” – David Arnason
Published by: Turnstone Press
