Contact Press

Contact Press was a Canadian book publisher in the mid-20th century.

History
Contact was founded in 1952 as a publishing co-operative by Louis Dudek, Irving Layton, and Raymond Souster, as a publishing outlet for Canadian poetry, and continued in existence until 1967, publishing writers from F.R. Scott to Margaret Atwood and George Bowering

The ''Canadian Encyclopedia calls it "the most important small press of its time ... it published all the major Canadian poets of the period, and transformed literary life and small-press activity in Canada by its openness to a variety of poetic styles and its assertiveness of the poet's role in the production of his own work."

Contact published poetry by 33 authors, in 61 separate editions. It also produced three important poetry anthologies: Canadian Poems 1850-1952 (1952), co-edited by Dudek and Layton, for use in schools; and Poets 56 (1956) and New Wave Canada: The New Explosion in Canadian Poetry (1966), both edited by Souster, featuring the work of new poets.