The Vehicule Poets

The Vehicule Poets was a collective formed in Montreal in the 1970s by poets Endre Farkas, Artie Gold, Tom Konyves, Claudia Lapp, John McAuley, Stephen Morrissey and Ken Norris, who shared an interest in experimental American poetry and European avant-garde literature and art.

"The Vehicule Poets bonded together long enough to form one of the most cohesive poetry movements in Canada since the early 1960s… The group was a beehive of activity, collaborating to produce some of Montreal's most original multimedia performances, collage texts, videopoems, literary magazines and books."

Inspired by the experimental environment of the gallery, the Vehicule Poets worked at the cutting edge of mixed media, poetry and video art.

The Vehicule Poets were an irreverent, adventurous lot, provoking both praise and vitriol from the public and the critics.” (Introduction to Vehicule Days: An Unorthodox History of Montreal's Vehicule Poets by Ken Norris)[3] “That this collection of essential people (then) is a set or subset that would seem to exhaust with the seven is probably a claim that I should confess, like the title, is a trifle more convenient than true...nevertheless, in these seven writers and their works, a world begins to emerge that might merit a separate look.

Not as one, then, do we present ourselves, but AT ONCE.” (Introduction to The Vehicule Poets, Artie Gold)[4] “All seven poets seem intent on proving the truth of Louis Dudek’s observation that ‘it is the destiny of Montreal to show the country from time to time what poetry is.’” [5] (John Robert Columbo, Globe and Mail) “… in the history of recent English-language poetry in Montreal, the Vehicule group, Ken Norris, Stephen Morrissey, Tom Konyves, Claudia Lapp, Artie Gold, John McAuley and Endre Farkas, provided a very welcome radical chapter."