This exhibition catalogue celebrates the life and work of avant garde poet and playwright Wilfred Watson. Drawing on the rich collection of letters, notebooks, manuscripts and sketchbooks in the University of Alberta Archives' Wilfred Watson Fonds, this exhibition traces Watson's development from his early encounters with the work of T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and Emily Carr to his decades-long engagement with the writing of Gabriel Marcel, Wyndham Lewis, and Marshall McLuhan, and from his initial work on stage to his career-changing involvement in the Edmonton theatre community centred on Studio Theatre, Walterdale Theatre and the Yardbird Suite. The archives include a rich correspondence between Wilfred Watson and his wife, Sheila Watson, and many notebook entries describing the two writers' lifelong dialogue.

In 1914, Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound-the founders of vorticism-undertook an unprecedented analysis of the present, its technologies, communication, politics, and architecture. The essays in Counterblasting Canada trace the influence of vorticism on Marshall McLuhan and Canadian Modernism. Building on the initial accomplishment of the magazine Blast, McLuhan's subsequent Counterblast, and the network of artistic and intellectual relationships that flourished in Canadian vorticism, the contributors offer groundbreaking examinations of postwar Canadian literary culture, particularly the legacies of Sheila and Wilfred Watson. Intended primarily for scholars of literature and communications, Counterblasting Canada explores a crucial and long-overlooked strand in Canadian cultural and literary history. Contributors: Gregory Betts, Adam Hammond, Paul Hjartarson, Dean Irvine, Elena Lamberti, Philip Monk, Linda M. Morra, Kristine Smitka, Leon Surette, Paul Tiessen, Adam Welch, Darren Wershler.