This work explores the circular relationship between notation and faith in bp Nichol's life-long poem, The Martyrology. Pun and paradox, the ability to believe simultaneously in apparently contradictory things, lie at the heart of Nichol's writing, which this work discusses. This work proposes pataphysics as a useful category for understanding Nichol's poetics.
Avant Canada presents a rich collection of original essays and creative works on a representative array of avant-garde literary movements in Canada from the past fifty years. From the work of Leonard Cohen and bpNichol to that of Jordan Abel and Liz Howard, Avant Canada features twenty-eight of the best writers and critics in the field. The book proposes four dominant modes of avant-garde production: “Concrete Poetics,” which accentuates the visual and material aspects of language; “Language Writing,” which challenges the interconnection between words and things; “Identity Writing,” which interrogates the self and its sociopolitical position; and “Copyleft Poetics,” which undermines our habitual assumptions about the ownership of expression. A fifth section commemorates the importance of the Centennial in the 1960s at a time when avant-garde cultures in Canada began to emerge. Readers of this book will become familiar with some of the most challenging works of literature—and their creators—that this country has ever produced. From Concrete Poetry in the 1960s through to Indigenous Literature in the 2010s, Avant Canada offers the most sweeping study of the literary avant-garde in Canada to date.
Poetic Community examines the relationship between poetry and community formation in the decades after the Second World War. In four detailed case studies (of Black Mountain College in North Carolina, the Caribbean Artists Movement in London, the Women's Liberation Movement at sites throughout the US, and the Toronto Research Group in Canada) the book documents and compares a diverse group of social models, small press networks, and cultural coalitions informing literary practice during the Cold War era. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished archival materials, Stephen Voyce offers new and insightful comparative analysis of poets such as John Cage, Charles Olson, Adrienne Rich, Kamau Brathwaite, and bpNichol. In contrast with prevailing critical tendencies that read mid-century poetry in terms of expressive modes of individualism, Poetic Community demonstrates that the most important literary innovations of the post-war period were the results of intensive collaboration and social action opposing the Cold War's ideological enclosures.
This volume discusses more than a dozen poets who commanded large audiences in the first part of the 20th century, and presents separate chapters on the public poetry and criticism of the period. In most cases, the book contains the most substantial treatments of the poets available to date.
Suitable and recommended for interdisciplinary professionals in gerontology, sociology, anthropology, and geriatrics, this text balances recent empirical findings based on the author's research with a unique theoretical interpretation of interaction in the nursing home.
Examines the area of agricultural land through regional environmental accounting in the Ottawa South Central Region of Eastern Ontario Canada from 1981 to 1996. This study proposes a regional model based upon census data analysis to illustrate the process and level of change in agricultural land area.
