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list price: $29.99
edition:eBook
also available: Paperback
category: Literary Collections
published: Jul 2014
ISBN:9780889228726
publisher: Talonbooks

Meanwhile

The Critical Writings of bpNichol

by bp Nichol, edited by Roy Miki

tagged: canadian
Description

For bpNichol, who called himself a “writer who writes about the act of writing,” criticism was not only a means to address his own poetics and the textual practices of his generation; it was just as essential to his imagination as were his poems themselves.

Finally, after years of readers struggling to find or access many of Nichol’s innovative critical writings, this much needed and anticipated volume makes it possible to follow Nichol through his thirty-year-long thoughtful engagement with the process of creation. With essays, reviews, talks on poetics, letters, notes, photographs, and excerpts from interviews, editor Roy Miki has put together a provocative record of bpNichol’s always explorative approaches to the material conditions of textual production.

Representing a substantial collection of Nichol’s critical writing from the mid-1960s up to the year of his death in 1988, Meanwhile: The Critical Writings of bpNichol puts him, rightfully, on the vanguard of Canadian literature and critical theory. This collection is essential to our sense of Nichol not only as a writer, but also as a person of exemplary generosity, imagination, and intellectual range.

About the Authors

bp Nichol

bpNICHOL (Barrie Phillip Nichol) was born September 30, 1944, in Vancouver, British Columbia. His writing is, by definition, engaged with what he called 'borderblur': in his lifetime he wrote (somewhere between) poetry, novels, short fiction, children's books, musical scores, comic book art, collage/assemblage, and computer texts. Nichol was also an inveterate collaborator, working with the sound poetry ensemble The Four Horsemen (whose members were Nichol, Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton, and Steve McCaffery); Steve McCaffery as part of the Toronto Research Group (TRG); the visual artist Barbara Caruso; and, countless other writers. In the mid-1980s, bpNichol became a successful writer for the children's television show Fraggle Rock, produced by Jim Henson. His early work in sound was documented in Michael Ondaatje's film Sons of Captain Poetry. A second film has been made on Nichol, bp: pushing the boundaries, directed by Brian Nash; he also appears in Ron Mann's film Poetry in Motion. bpNichol died in Toronto, Ontario on September 25, 1988.


Roy Miki grew up in Winnipeg and moved to Vancouver in 1967. He has published widely on Asian Canadian writing, Canadian literature, cultural activism, and contemporary poetry, and has edited works by George Bowering, bpNichol, and Roy K. Kiyooka. He is the author of Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (2004) and In Flux: Transnational Shifts in Asian Canadian Writing (2011), as well as six books of poems. His third book of poems, Surrender (2001), received the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. Cloudy and Clear, his most recent book of poems, is part of Flow. With his wife, Slavia Miki, he has also co-written a children’s book, Dolphin SOS (2014), awarded the 2014 Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize. Roy taught in the English department at Simon Fraser University for over thirty years. He received the Order of Canada in 2006 and the Order of British Columbia in 2009.
Contributor Notes

bp Nichol
bpNichol was one of Canada’s most challenging and innovative poets. His writing spans a remarkable range—from concise allegories on a single letter, on through to sound poetry, fiction, theoretical investigations and culminating in his nine-volume poem The Martyrology. Meanwhile: The Critical Writings of bpNichol (2001), bpNichol Comics (2001), Rational Geomancy (1992) and Selected Writing: As Elected (1980) are also available from Talonbooks.

Editorial Review

“Almost 15 years after his untimely death, Nichol is being recognized as a major Canadian literary figure.”
— National Post

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