Originally published in an edition of 100 copies for a class at the University of Alberta in 1976, Every Way Oakly is Steve McCaffery’s homolinguistic translation of Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons. The original edition, which appeared as a classy photocopied edition printed on letter-sized sheets and stapled along spine, has been unavailable since its publication. Over the years, bits and pieces have appeared in anthologies and selected works, but the collection has never been reissued in its entirety. Until now. Playful and engaging, these poems stem from detailed discussions with Dick Higgins on allusive referential and other unorthodox translational methods and McCaffery’s work with the Toronto Research Groups work on translation practice and theory.

Steve McCaffery was born January 24, 1947, in Sheffield, England. He came to Canada partly to work with bpNichol, and the two poets formed the Toronto Research Group. McCaffery and Nichol also combined talents with Paul Dutton and Rafael Barreto-Rivera as the Four Horsemen, creating and performing innovative sound poetry. McCaffery attended both the University of Hull and York University. During the seventies and eighties, he and Nichol were regular contributors to the poetic journal Open Letter. McCaffery's collection of critical writings, North of Intention, stands as one of the earliest and best collections of essays about experimental writing in Canada and the U.S., and it demonstrates and explores McCaffery's own affiliation with the practitioners of the so-called Language Poetry and poetics, often considered a uniquely American phenomenon. McCaffery has twice been nominated for a Governor General's award for poetry, and now holds the Gray Chair at SUNY Buffalo (Amherst).

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