Some Lines of Poetry: From the Notebooks of bpNichol

(Paperback)

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For bpNichols 80th birthday, a selection of 80 pieces from his 1980s notebooks, an astounding trove of never-before-seen work.

One of Canadas most beloved poets, bpNichol (19441988), left a huge legacy of poetry, prose, scripts, comics, and playful interrogation of language after his untimely passing in 1988. In celebration of what would have been Nichols eightieth birthday, Some Lines of Poetry gathers excerpts from Nichols journals across the 1980s to give a unique perspective on craft, process, and a writers life. Featuring works in progress, insight into Nichols thinking, previously unpublished prose and lyric, visual, and sound poems, Some Lines of Poetry documents Nichols apprenticeship to language and his playful daily exploration of the limits of writing.

Lovingly edited by noted poet-scholars Derek Beaulieu and Gregory Betts, who provide an afterword contextualizing Nichols practice, Some Lines of Poetry is a map of hidden corners, a guidebook to poetic play, and a tribute to Nichols ongoing influence.

Author Bio

bpNichol (19441988) created a vast and intricate body of work that stretches from Fraggle Rock and childrens books to comic books and operas, from delicate visual poems to The Martyrology, a nine-volume, life-long epic. Nichol was awarded the Governor Generals Award in 1970 and spent decades exploring the borderblur between image and text, sound, prose, and poetry, including some of the worlds first computer-animated poems. In a career known for collaboration and innovation, bpNichols writing continues to be generous and generative. Nichols The Martyrology Books,Ad Sanctos, zygal: a book of Mysteries and Translations, Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer, The Alphabet Game, a book of variations: love zygal art facts, and Nights on Prose Mountain: The Fiction of bpNichol all remain in print from Coach House Books.

Derek Beaulieu is the author/editor of over twenty-five collections of poetry, prose, and criticism. His most recent volume of conceptual prose, Silence: Lectures and Writings, was published by Swedens Timglaset Editions, his most recent volume of poetry, Surface Tension, was published by Coach House Books. Beaulieu has won multiple local and national awards for his teaching and dedication to students, the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal for this dedication to Albertan literature and is the only graduate from the University of Calgarys Department of English to receive the Faculty of Arts Celebrated Alumni Award. Beaulieu holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Roehampton University, has served as Poet Laureate of both Calgary and Banff, and the Director of Literary Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Gregory Betts is the author of ten books of poetry, two monographs on the Canadian avant-garde (including Finding Nothing: The Vangardes 19591975) and editor of ten collections of, or on, Canadian experimental writing. He is a professor at Brock University and curator of the bpNichol.ca Digital Archive. His most recent book is The Fabuous Op, a collection of poetry co-written with Gary Barwin, was published by Irelands Beir Bua Press.