Doug Barbour writes:
>Gee David
>
>I wish you could read the late bpNichol, one of our greatest. A major
>talent, & beautifully working against mere egotism (among so many other
>things his work did).
Yeah, for someone who wrote almost exclusively about himself (The
Martyrology series), bp was completely devoid of all the negative
connotations of egotism. He is remembered as one of the most
generous, selfless folks on the Canadian literary scene.
I've just been going through his work again lately -- particularly
his visual/concrete poems. You can just tell what a *nice guy* he was
through the playfulness and spirit of that work.
I taught a poetry workshop at an arts retreat this past summer, and
one of my "students" was a hopeless poet. At least, that's what I
thought. You know, godawful rhyming crap about her cat and stuff. And
her spelling was atrocious; she was dyslexic. Anyway, I screened the
bpNichol documentary Pushing The Boundaries and she was transformed!
She was so excited -- the image of letters dancing around the screen
and the sounds of words repeating and transmuting... she said that
that was just how she saw language. And she started writing all this
incredible free-form stuff, and even did a pretty good sound poem at
the final night's reading. Wish I coulda told bp about her.
Stu
in Toronto
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