FRED TRUCK, Camping Out (Cookie Press, Des Moines 1975)

FRED TRUCK, Tangerine Universe (Cookie Press, Des Moines, 1975)

When Fred sent me these two little books in 1975, I was imediately charmed and awarded Fred the 1976 Kontexts Originality Award in the short review I wrote: "...two marvellous booklets of short poems transcribed from chance-generated clusters of invented hieroglyphs..."
Since then, Fred and I have kept up a regular correspondence, which is almost enough to fill a whole book. I visited him and his librarian wife Lorna in Des Moines on my cross-country Greyhound bus trip in 1977, and they've also been a couple of times in Holland as well. I remember one memorable time while I was still living in the Eerste van der Helststraat when Lorna cooked us a fantastic Southern meal, using all sorts of ingredients bought from the nearby Albert Cuyp streetmarket.
In recent years, despite us both having email, we've been less in contact.