Writing

Between 1978 and 1980, the Waterfront Writers and Artists (WWA) collectively produced three chapbooks and a full-length anthology. The aim of this work was two-fold. As Robert Carson wrote in the introduction to the first chapbook, they sought “to uphold the lure and the lore of the sea, preserved by an ongoing oral tradition,” while also offering readers “a better understanding of the problems of men trying to hold on to and use their creative talents in a dehumanized and automated environment.”

Formed in 1977, the group brought together both seasoned writers and those who simply enjoyed swapping stories on the job. Among them was George Benet, who had already published two novels; Herb Mills, a political scientist who had written extensively on longshore labor and politics; and the poet Lew Welch, who was closely associated with the Beat movement.

Their first self-published chapbook, Waterfront Writers (1978, blue cover), quickly found an audience among Bay Area dockworkers. Encouraged by its reception, they released an expanded second edition later that year (Waterfront Writers, yellow cover), selling it for just $1. This led to a book deal with Harper & Row, which published The Waterfront Writers: The Literature of Work in September 1979—just two years after the group’s first public reading. This anthology combined poetry, prose, and plays with photographs and illustrations by Brian Nelson and Frank Silva, offering a vivid portrait of dockworkers grappling with the sweeping changes associated with containerization. As Carson described it, their writing captured “a dramatic shift from a colorful past to a mechanized, routinized future.”

By 1980, WWA members were performing their work at social halls, college classrooms and poetry readings up and down the West Coast. Their travels connected them with other working artists, including the Vancouver Industrial Writers’ Union (VIWU) in British Columbia. That same year, they produced their final chapbook, which featured contributions from two VIWU members. While this marked the end of their collective publications, the group continued to perform together through the mid-1980s, and many individual members went on to publish widely.

Explore a selection of their writings below.

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(click to view in full):

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• ◦Lee Olds. Too Much Sun. The Vanguard Press, 1960. (Novel)
• ◦George Bennett A Place in Colusa. Singlejack Books, San Pedro, 1978. (Novel)
• ◦Tom Wayman (editor). Going for Coffee: Poetry on the Job. Harbour Publishing, 1981. (Poetry anthology)
• ◦Frank Silva and Gene Dennis. Waterfront: Longshoremen in the Era of American Labor. True North Editions, 2016. (Photographs and poetry.)
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