The corporate heart is cold

read not only in the library or in the magazines but in the subways and on buses. The writer's main interest, as I see it, is to make the best possible deal or combination of deals, taking into consideration his ability to reach the pubVic (and to know which public he is trying to reach) and the publisher's ability to reach that public also. Canadian writers, I firmly assert, are best served by their peers, for though good writing is to a degree international, emotional content is national. We are more likely to be understood here than in New York. There are Canadian words we don't want to be robbed of, and if it is provincial to use Canadian words, I would like to be that kind of provincial. However, if a publisher proves to be obstructive or incompetent, even in his Canadianism, the writer should not feel bound to stay with him. National·ism is apThe corporate heart is cold MIRIAM WADDINGTON I am here from the Poet's League today, and would like to make one or two comments . First of all, I would like to say that the Secretary of State is apparently unaware of the League's existence, for he has never consulted us. However, I believe he has consulted the Writers' Union. The League is an organ-ization separate from the Writers' Union, although we certainly have had a lot of help from them. The League has 150 members and was organized more than five years ago. We do not have a paid secretary and our membership fee is low. However, the poets have done probably more than any other single group in this country to promote Canadian literature in the schools. They have had a lot of help from the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council with Journal of Canadian Studies propriate to a point - beyond that point it is .foolishness. In conclusion, I should like to take exception to Mr. Hugh Kane's words this morning. I am proud of the government's willingness to tie block grants to a publisher 's general output rather than to specific books. I am pleased that grants are available even for Marxist histories of art. We need the small presses desperately because the large publishers have neglected huge areas of our culture. If a number of subsidized political books have come out of the new publishing movement - and these books are not to Mr. Kane's taste - he must also admit that the small publishers have risked their own capital, as well as the government 's, to bring to the Canadian people voices other than those officially sanctified by the large publishing houses. This is not the work of dilettantes. subsidized programmes in the schools and universities. Poets are sent by the League, or are invited by schools in rural districts of northern , western and eastern Canada to meet teachers who are labouring in their own little fields. It was in this way that I discovered that the Canada Council was distributing a book kit, containing representative selections of Canadian literature, to countries of Europe and Asia where we have external affairs representatives and to those remote areas of Canada without bookstores, or access to books. Librarians and teachers have asked who is responsible for the selection of books contained in the kit. I wrote to the Canada Council requesting a list of the books in its last kit, which I have received . However, I have not been able to 85 find out who is on the selection committee, or who appoints them. I can tell you for sure that no member of the Canadian League of Poets has ever been consulted on the choice of books. I would like to tell you something about the books that were chosen. There were 74 books of poetry; there were 354 books of prose. The University of Toronto Press had 19 books and 11/2 books of poetry written by 11/2 poets. Some were poems and essays by poets who have been dead 100 years; Now, I think we should circulate our 19th century classics in a separate kit. But should Isabella Valency...