The ''Tamarack Review'' was a Canadian literary magazine, published from 1956 to 1982. Established and edited by Robert Weaver, other figures associated with the magazine's editorial staff included Anne Wilkinson, William Toye and
John Robert Colombo
John Robert Colombo, CM (born March 24, 1936) is a Canadian author, editor, and poet. He has published over 200 titles, including major anthologies and reference works.
Early life
Colombo was born in Kitchener, Ontario, in 1936. He attended ...
. In addition, Ivon Maclean Owen was among the founding editors. During the early years of the magazine, there was also an editorial advisory board made up of F.R. Scott, A.J.M. Smith,
James Reaney
James Crerar Reaney, (September 1, 1926 – June 11, 2008) was a Canadian poet, playwright, librettist, and professor, "whose works transform small-town Ontario life into the realm of dream and symbol." Reaney won Canada's highest literary a ...
,
Alan Crawley
Alan may refer to:
People
*Alan (surname), an English and Turkish surname
*Alan (given name), an English given name
**List of people with given name Alan
''Following are people commonly referred to solely by "Alan" or by a homonymous name.''
* A ...
, and
George Woodcock
George Woodcock (; May 8, 1912 – January 28, 1995) was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, a philosopher, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet and published several volumes of travel wri ...
. The magazine was published on a quarterly basis and had its headquarters in
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...
.
''Tamarack Review'' published literature in a wide variety of genres, including fiction,
poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...
. However, the magazine also covered the best examples of contemporary poetry.
In 1962, an anthology of work collected from the ''Tamarack Review'' was published, entitled ''The First Five Years''. In the introduction, Robert Fulford gives a good picture of the role of the magazine in the early years. He claims that the founders of the magazine represented what was then Toronto's literary establishment. Their careers—one poet, three publishing-house editors, one academic, and one CBC program organizer—give an apt sense of what the literary establishment of the time was like. He continues:
We can assume that one of their purposes in starting the magazine was to stop talking almost exclusively to each other and begin addressing a somewhat larger world. Six years later it might seem, on the surface, that in this respect the ''Tamarack'' is a failure. It has never sold more than twelve hundred copies, and (except in some small, peculiar circles) has not become a fashionable magazine for coffee-table display. Nor is it profitable; editors, in fact, have had to make up its deficit out of their own pockets, and the Canada Council's steady assistance has now become almost a necessity of survival. But these facts are deceptive. The ''Tamarack'' has won, over the years, an influence that is, as they say, out of all proportion to its circulation. Poets send it their best poems, fiction writers offer it their best stories, critics labour for it with glad heart. Publishers read it, and so do magazine editors, and so do many of the most eminent citizens of the country. Only a contributor can know how true this is: one article I wrote for the ''Tamarack'' four years ago has been mentioned to me more often, and discussed more widely, than many piece I have written for publications which have a thousand times as many readers. ''Tamarack'' readers, I have learned, read carefully and remember well.
Notable writers whose early work was published in ''Tamarack'' include
Hugh Hood
Hugh John Blagdon Hood, OC (b in Toronto, Ontario 30 Apr 1928 – d in Montreal, Quebec 1 Aug 2000) was a Canadian novelist, short story writer, essayist and university professor.
Hood wrote 32 books: 17 novels including the 12-volume New Ag ...
,
Alice Munro
Alice Ann Munro (; ; born 10 July 1931) is a Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Munro's work has been described as revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its tendency to move f ...
,
Jay Macpherson
Jean Jay Macpherson (June 13, 1931 – March 21, 2012) was a Canadian lyric poet and scholar. '' The Encyclopædia Britannica'' calls her "a member of 'the mythopoeic school of poetry,' who expressed serious religious and philosophical themes in ...
and
Mordecai Richler
Mordecai Richler (January 27, 1931 – July 3, 2001) was a Canadian writer. His best known works are '' The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz'' (1959) and '' Barney's Version'' (1997). His 1970 novel '' St. Urbain's Horseman'' and 1989 novel ...