Prismatic Publics

(Paperback)

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Nicole Brossard, Margaret Christakos, Susan Holbrook, Dorothy Lusk, Karen Mac Cormack, Daphne Marlatt, Ern Moure, M. NourbeSe Philip, Sina Queyras, Lisa Robertson, Gail Scott, Nathalie Stephens, Catriona Strang, Rita Wong, Rachel Zolf.

These fifteen women are some of the best writers engaged in avant-garde literary production today, defining the contours of new movements and schools of writing in North America. By showcasing their work alongside extensive interviews, Prismatic Publics stages intimate encounters with these key figures as they work in and against Language, conceptual, post-conceptual, documentary, and investigative poetry traditions often across, between and at the interstices of genres.

The writers in this anthology do not represent a single movement or tradition, although they all recognize language as inherently problematic and a perpetual subject of inquiry. Theirs is writing that demands a heightened level of attentiveness and attunement to what language can do on the page and in the social worlds of its making.

Gathered in a single volume, these selections, some dating back to the early 1970s and others appearing in print for the first time, provide an opportunity to trace the diverse networks, influences, dialogues, dialectics, and interventions that continue make the work of Canadas innovative women writers a powerful force in avant-garde writing around the world.

Reviews

'Being the first anthology of 'Innovative Women's Poetry and Poetics,' Prismatic Publics has an automatic place in the CanLit canon. Fortunately, it is crafted skillfully enough to deserve it ... The anthology offers a smooth introduction to an array of texts that are often difficult and profoundly rewarding.' -- Matrix Magazine 'The interviews or, perhaps more accurately, conversations, are deft, fluid, sincere dialogues, delightful in the ways in which they inform not only the respective poets' work, but their work within the context of their peers.' -- Winnipeg Free Press 'The editors have assembled a polyphonic chorus of texts and interviews by some of Canada's most lauded writers that highlights the continuing prominence of women as theorists and cultural activists in avant-garde poetic movements. The borders of gender and genre shift as these poets explore the potentials of the porous subject in their work upon systems -- linguistic, textual and social. Innovative poetics, stimulating dialogues, inviting active readers.' -- Barbara Godard, author of Wider Boundaries of Daring

Author Bio

Kate Eichhorn is the author of Fond. She has guest-edited a special issue on poetics and feminism for Open Letter, and her critical writing has appeared in journals such as Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature and Public Culture. She is an assistant professor of Culture and Media Studies at The New School. Heather Milne is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Winnipeg. Her essays on women's writing have appeared in journals such as Canadian Poetry, Canadian Literature, a/b: Auto/biography Studies, and Open Letter. She is currently working on a book-length study of 21st-century innovative North American feminist poetics.