Some Lines of Poetry gathers excerpts from bpNichol’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 Featuring works in progress, insight into Nichol’s thinking, previously unpublished prose and lyric, visual, and sound poems, Some Lines of Poetry documents Nichol’s “apprenticeship to language” and his playful daily exploration of the limits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.
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Aug 8 / 88
Landscape #9: Flock of birds over the ocean
Jan 11 / 81
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 1&2, The Martyrology Books 3&4, The Martyrology Book 5, The Martyrology Book 6 Books, Gifts: The Martyrology Book(s) 7&, Ad Sanctos: The Martyrology Book 9, 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.
Reprinted with permission of Coach House Books.
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Heavy Feather Review 