Muses' Company

Poet Endre Farkas founded the Montreal-based press known as Muses’ Company in 1980. While Farkas was both the primary publisher and editor from 1980 to 1995, the Muses’ Company board members included Ken Norris and Ruth Taylor. The company promoted the growth of English poetry in Quebec and contributed to the expansion of Montreal’s literary community. Also affiliated with Montreal's Véhicule Press, Muses' Company offered a literary home for poets with a broad multicultural and avant-garde vision that included new and other voices such as those of lesser-known and experimental poets. Seeking to move the poem from page to stage, Muses’ Company also created poetry performances with dancers, actors, and composers. Muses’ Company remained a small independent press headquartered in Farkas’ basement. With the support of government funding, the Muses’ Company published approximately 30 books from 1980 to 1995. Farkas’ own Face-off (1980) was the first of several book-length poems. While making space for new voices, it also published some well-known Montreal poets, such as Ken Norris, and fiction writers, such as Kenneth Rudu, whose book, The cost of living (1987), was nominated for the 1998 Governor General's Award. Like other writer-run presses, the Muses’ Company encouraged a community of poets to be involved in all phases of their own and each other’s publications. Muses’ Company was bought by Manitoba-based J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing Inc. in 1995. Farkas served as an advisor editor for a year after the purchase. Under its new umbrella, the Muses’ Company press publishes titles from poets with established publishing records.

http://viaf.org/viaf/158442734 http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n96104580