An Evening with Back Shore Press

Last night there was a “thick’o’fog”, as the old Gloucestermen say. A fog so dense and impenetrable that you could scarcely see your way down the street, let alone across a harbor, rolled in. I was headed for the West End Theater for a SEArts Artist on Artist presentation with Back Shore Press.

I’ve mentioned before my affection for the West End Theater because of its location in the old Blackburn Tavern Building. It was a perfect night to be there and one would be hard pressed to find a more perfectly Gloucester-appreciative way to spend the evening. I always come away from these events thinking how fortunate I am to attend them.

The three men who form Back Shore Press, Peter Tuttle, Peter Anastas, and Schuyler Hoffman, are a poet, a novelist, and a poet respectively. Each man read from his work and each showed, in his own unique and eloquent way, his absolute love of Gloucester and why so many of us choose to be here.

Peter Tuttle writes lyric, narrative poetry that spin stories of great beauty through a form that is both accessible (something I don’t always find in poets) and musical. His first piece was a tribute to Vincent Ferrini, the Poet Laureate of Gloucester, who was seated in the first row and sat with his hand cupped behind his ear to scoop up every word. Each of Tuttle’s poems told a story and, lover of stories that I am, I loved each one. One in particular, about a family dispute over a watercolor by artist Stowe Wengenwroth, was particularly delicious.

Peter Anastas is a writer whose work I have long respected. His pieces in North Shore North and Cape Ann Island News were the main reason I picked up those newspapers when they were around. He read a deeply moving segment from his new novel, No Fortunes, but it was the chapter from his memoir, At the Cut, that charmed me last night - a recollection of growing up a Greek immigrant boy among Irish and Italian immigrant boys - was so meticulously illustrative that we traveled ever step and cringed at every insult as he read.

Schuyler Hoffman is an impressive man with considerable power of language. His poetry is experimental and edgy, more like verbal music - more like jazz. His first poem was particularly fluid with an obvious love of language that reminded me of Hopkins and, thus, made me smile. He spoke of his poems inspired by the paintings of Jackson Pollock as “collaborations” between him as a poet and Pollock’s work. I was reminded of the summer workshop I took in 1975 with Lee Krasner who was Pollock’s wife - another form of collaboration - and was quite sure that she would have loved Hoffman’s “collaboration”.

These three men have created Back Shore Press to publish their books and promote their work. After the readings they spoke about it and Anastas said, “It is time for artists to take control of how our work is distributed.”

I think this is particularly true for writers. Painters started their own cooperatives years ago. Film makers and playwrights have gained new audiences through independent film production companies and off-off-off Broadway venues. In recent years, sick of “corporate rock”, musicians have founded their own labels. Publishing alone seems to writhe under the thumb of the BNYPs (Big New York Publishers) but the small presses - like Back Shore Press, like Parlez-Moi Press - are coming into their own.

When I left the West End Theater the fog was so dense I could scarcely see my car parked off beyond Tally’s but as I walked down the street through that fog I was reminded of how fortunate I am to be in Gloucester - because of Gloucester but also because of men like those of Back Shore Press.

Thanks for reading.