Ex-Coach House member says he’s target of vendetta

CanLit Janitors Collective’s email to publisher accuses him of sexual misconduct Jeramy Dodds says he has been subject to online harassment from a group of ex-girlfriends.

Two months after Toronto’s Coach House Press put its prestigious poetry program on hiatus, one of the former board members, Jeramy Dodds, has published a statement on his website saying he was being targeted by a group of people “with a personal sense of vendetta.” He has talked about the incident with the Star.

At the time, in mid-January, Coach House editorial director Alana Wilcox said the program was being put on hiatus because “Poetry is changing, and the way people read is changing.

“We live in a Twitter world now — what does that mean for poetry?” she added.

Dodds now says in the statement that in January a group calling itself the CanLit Janitors Collective sent an email to Coach House asking that he be removed from the poetry board “due to sexual misconduct and abuse of power.”

He had remained silent about the incident until a few days ago when he posted a statement on his website; he has since spoken to the Star at length from London, England, where he is doing research and accompanying his fiancée, who is pursuing post-doctoral studies.

Dodds says that he has been quiet until now because “I had to take some time to look over everything and see what I wanted to do … I wanted to make sure I’d done my research.”

In the wide-ranging four-page statement, the former Coach House poetry editor wonders whether the CanLit Janitors are “driven by a more personal sense of vendetta.”

He also said he wanted to give some “context” to his reputation within the poetry community. His statement referred to a relationship that ended six years ago — before he became an editor at Coach House — and an incident in which he mailed his ex-girlfriend “a taxidermy chicken, which I packed in a box and wrapped in used target silhouettes.” That is, he wrapped them in used papers from gun target practice. He says that it was inspired by their shared “macabre sense of humour about gun culture.”

While Dodds doesn’t name the woman, she is Robin Richardson, a poet and the editor of the Minola Review. Richardson confirmed to The Star that she got the chicken package but said “we never talked about gun culture. Not once that I can recall.”

She also says that “after I broke up with him, he continued to call, and email and pursue me to get back together with him. I was surprised and frightened when he sent the chicken with the bullet-riddled targets.”

When asked why he talks about this relationship in his post, Dodds makes a connection between Richardson and the CanLit Janitors group. When asked why he thinks the group might be “driven by a sense of personal vendetta,” he told the Star that “over the years I’ve been subject to online harassment and from what I can tell it was a small group of exes that are colluding and talking to each other.” The Star: “How many exes?” Dodds: “I’m not sure. I don’t really want to go into that because I want to be careful.”

The Star: “Why would you think a group of exes are colluding?”

Dodds: “Because of wanting to pursue this at some point perhaps legally, or maybe having to, I can’t really divulge the evidence I have for that.”

A question or two later the Star asks: “This sort of makes a connection between what happened before and what is happening now. Is that right? You want to make that connection?” Dodds: “I think there is a connection.” The Star: “I spoke briefly to Robin, who is the person you are speaking about here, I assume.” Dodds: “That’s right.” Richardson told the Star she is not in any way involved in the CanLit Janitors Collective and does not know who is. She says that the incident with the targets happened six years ago and that she has no involvement in any of the recent accusations or harassment Dodds complains of.

The Star has spoken with three women who dated Dodds, all of whom said there were inaccuracies in his post, but who said they were fearful of speaking out publicly and so would not go on the record.

A day after speaking with the Star, Dodds sent an email to a group of women, including this reporter, whose names did not appear anywhere in the email. He says he has a “theory” that the CanLit Janitors may be one person speaking on their behalf.

“If I have behaved badly in the past, it is not in the manner the Janitors allege,” Dodds writes in the email. “I have tried to atone for this behaviour with the majority of you, and some of us have reached some understanding. I have not committed any behaviour that requires me to lose my livelihood and love.”

He then urges them to come forward to either this reporter or to Coach House. “If any of you are in contact with the Janitors and/or feel the allegations are accurate, I hope that you will consider coming forward, if only to protect the others among you who have been implicated in the letter without their consent.”

The Star has obtained a copy of the CanLit Janitors Collective’s email, though the Star does not know who is behind the anonymous group. The email says the group is “concerned with failures of individuals and institutions in the community at large and how those failures perpetuate cycles of abuse.”

There were no names and no specific accusations in the email. Rather, it alleges “abusive and manipulative behaviour” that it says includes “using intimidation tactics with the threat of defamation lawsuits to women who had voiced their concerns about Dodds’ behaviour to others, using threatening and abusive language towards women who refused to accept his advances, exhibiting behaviour consistent with stalking and criminal harassment,” among other things.

Dodds says that he has sent a ceaseand-desist letter once, to an organization asking it not to talk about the current situation with the CanLit Janitors, but says he has never sent such a letter to anyone talking about dating, relationships, etc.

Soon after putting the poetry program on hiatus, Coach House posted a harassment policy on its website. Dodds wants women to come forward with a formal accusation so that an investigation can be held.

“The best I can ask for is that people come forward in a safe manner to Coach House or to a place where they need (to) and make a formal accusation so I can answer,” Dodds said when speaking with the Star. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m fully ready to be completely open and I have been thus far.”

Coach House still has six poetry titles planned for publication this year and another six for 2019.

“We’ve thought long and hard about how we might conduct such an investigation,” Wilcox said this week. “The anonymous complainants have chosen not to reveal their identities, and we think it would be disrespectful to force them to do so. Without that information, we can’t imagine how it would be possible to investigate, and so we’ve decided not to. As ever, we would be grateful if anyone with information who wishes to share it with us would do so.”