Some Lines of Poetry

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

One of Canada’s most beloved poets, bpNichol (1944–1988), 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 Nichol’s eightieth birthday, Some Lines of Poetry gathers excerpts from Nichol’s journals across the 1980s to give a unique perspective on craft, process, and a writer’s life. Featuring works in progress, insight into Nichol’s thinking, previously unpublished prose and lyric, visual, and sound poems, Some Lines of Poetry documents Nichol’s “apprenticeship to language” and his playful daily exploration of the limits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 Nichol’s practice, Some Lines of Poetry is a map of hidden corners, a guidebook to poetic play, and a tribute to Nichol’s ongoing influence.

"No other writer of our time and place was so diverse, attempted so much, and never lost sight of his intent." – Michael Ondaatje

bpNichol (1944–1988) created a vast and intricate body of work that stretches from Fraggle Rock and children’s books to comic books and operas, from delicate visual poems to The Martyrology, a nine-volume, life-long epic. Nichol was awarded the Governor General’s Award in 1970 and spent decades exploring the ‘borderblur’ between image and text, sound, prose, and poetry, including some of the world’s first computer-animated poems. In a career known for collaboration and innovation, bpNichol’s writing continues to be generous and generative. Nichol’s 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 Sweden’s 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 Calgary’s 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 1959–1975) 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 Ireland’s Beir Bua Press.