CIV/n was a dynamic magazine published in Montreal between the years 1953 and 1955. In only seven issues it published the early work of Leonard Cohen, Eli Mandel, Louis Dudek, Robert Creeley, Phyllis Webb, Raymond Souster, Irving Layton, Robert Currie, Gael Turnbull, Avi Boxer, Cid Corman, D.G. Jones, Charles Olson and A.J.M. Smith. As Irving Layton states in his essay "Recalling the 50's" included in this book: "There was tremendous excitement in the air?anyhow, in certain streets and alleyways of Montreal?and it signalled the post-war ferment that was to knock into a cocked hat some of the cherished literary and political notions of the past." In this book all the issues of CIV/n have been reprinted along with Michael Gnarowski's Index to the magazine which appeared in 1965. Previously unpublished photographs and letters complete this flashback to literary Montreal of thirty years ago.

Louis Dudek, born in Montreal, was educated both at McGill and Columbia University. In New York, as a young poet, he corresponded extensively with Ezra Pound. Back in Montreal, he joined the McGill faculty, where his lectures on literature became legendary. In combination with other key figures in the first and second waves of Canadian poetic modernism, he commenced many of the most important small magazines and literary presses of the mid-century. As a writer, critic, and cultural observer, his career has been dedicated to ongoing intellectual and artistic discussion. Justly identified as Canada's premier man of letters, Dudek died in 2001.

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