The following text of a proposed introduction and welcome to bill bissett
was not read for two reasons.
.
Firstly, we were running behind time & were being encouraged to finish early
by the landladt so that we could all see the performance artists who were
coming later. They turned out to be Morris dancers.
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Secondly, the talk was aimed at people who in the event did not turn up. It
was meant only to clarify and there was no point in reading it there and
then. Had one more time, it would be interesting to look at bissett's
relation to popular film and popular music - and a lot of other things. But
I leave that for others.
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For what it's worth, here is what wasn't said.
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L
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An introduction to bill bissett at S.V.P. London 16th June 1999
.
The main premise of this series is that it is important to hear and see
poets perform because it helps one's understanding and enjoyment of what
they are about....
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It can be extremely important when the experience does not just add detail
to one's response but transforms it, correcting one's own misapprehension
and inadvertent imbalance... Sometimes what had seemed difficult can become
easy. Similarly, those who had not seemed to present difficulties may be
seen to be doing something far more complex and rich than had at first been
understood. Something like that can happen with regard to responses to
tonight's guest: there's thought to be nothing in it!
.
And there is a further smaller set of performances, the experience of each
of which changes things permanently, perhaps everything, and perhaps
extensively, unsettling the mind and modifying its set.
.
All of this is of course subjective and what is classified as a verse
encounter of this kind varies from person to person. My list includes Ed
Dorn reading Gunslinger, Tom Leonard performing My name is Tom, Bernard
Heidsieck performing Vaduze, a rather young Derek Walcott reading at a
Poetry International in the 60s. I won't list them all, but they are not all
from long ago - Tom Raworth reading in this room a few years ago, much more
so than earlier readings...
.
I am not talking about epiphany, not necessarily. We can learn from and
change course because of an experience without anything like the insight
that is implied by epiphany: it's useful without it if one is trying to make
poetry, one wants to be a bit confused I believe; and anyway I don't like
some of the ideas implicit in the word. What I am talking about is more like
finding that there are more and interesting rooms to a house one has been
comfortable in without previously suspecting the existence of those rooms,
or taking a walk and finding a new woods or meadow near at hand which one
has not seen before, especially, for me, unexpectedly finding oneself in
very quiet and empty countryside when it had seemed that the town was close.
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Also in my list is a performance by bill bissett, the first time I saw him
perform. It was a sound poetry festival in the mid 70s in London and I was
getting hit from all sides with what I called then and call now, with no
originality, mind-fucking poetry. There would be politer terms; but they
wouldn't quite do it, as euphemisms rarely do. What I have just said, though
a biologically impossible metaphor this side of brain implants, is not
intended as an euphemism but as a statement approaching fact, with regard to
bill bissett - and others, but I wish to concentrate on bill, rather than
extending to the inventiveness which marks out many aspects of modern
Canadian poetry.
.
I had never seen or heard anything like it. There was chanting, but not like
any chanting I had come across; repetition, pulsing and organic repetition:
it was extremely physical, the poet performing with his whole body. Though,
for me, unprecedented, it was familiar. I didn't quite know what to make of
it.
.
Something of what I saw, a very little, in descriptive terms, is conveyed by
this, from 1979, that is, a little while after the time I am talking about:
"in a soft felt hat, a thin red bandana around his neck, wearing a uniform
of T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, he chants and dances, shakes a rattle."
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The words "chants and dances", though not inaccurate, do not convey the
nature of the experience.
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I cut her first word, "Fey", because nothing I saw was fey; but its use may
be significant. I have deliberately cut the quotation short because I did
not want to give credence to the final three words: "in shamanistic ritual".
I just gave up on "uniform"...
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I don't know how I categorised to myself at the time what bill did at the
then liberated poetry society, but it would soon have been apparent to me
that shamanism isn't in it, as it usually isn't when commentators use the
word.
.
If we are to have a generalisation about bill bissett, I prefer this from
Erin Mouré: "an amazing poet, amazing sound and language performances, he's
been a classic here, his own school for 30 years, he's a treat and a fine
person".
.
I'll emphasise, for a moment, that "fine person", though I have no desire to
suggest that being a fine person has anything to do with being a fine poet.
But you ought to know that on a number of occasions bill has been given a
particularly hard time by those with power. He's been attacked for obscenity
and pornography; and that's just the beginning of it.
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I have discovered much of this in retrospect, and, of course, at a distance;
but what I have been told and read about is appalling.
.
Born in Halifax Nova Scotia he went to Vancouver in 1958, though he now
lives in Ontario. He started and ran blewointment press from 1967 until
1983. That press, I believe, grew out of an earlier magazine of the same
name, started in 1963. It received reasonable but not total grants from
Canada Council for some years and it was on the basis of the grants that
some Canadian MPs and others accused him of publishing obscenities with
public money.
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The blewointment books are sympathetically produced, the design matching
their content, even though sometimes the production is rather rough, in ways
analogous perhaps to the approach of Writers Forum... I wouldn't push that
too far; but I want to make the point that these are memorable, unusual
books. I have brought a couple along in case anyone would like to look at
them later.
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Reading bissett's poetry on the page is unavoidably a visual experience,
with his careful attention to the spatial design of the writing, and the
accompanying drawings.
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A brief quotation, from bissett 30 years ago:
"spelling - mainly phonetic
syntax - mainly expressive or musical rather than grammatic
visual form - apprehension of th spirit shape of th pome rather than
stanzaic nd rectangular
major theme - search for harmony within the communal self thru sharing"
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blewointment published bissett himself and other young poets. One thing
which makes clear his editorial acuity was his publishing of the American
d.a.levy... A recent write up referred to bill bissett as: "One of Canada's
most celebrated literary talents, he is a poet, a painter, a sound-poet and
all around visionary."
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That word visionary is a bit dodgy. He's been compared to Blake. Many people
have; and a lot can depend on what interpretation you put on the idea of
Blake. It can be a cop out and a put down as much as an insight and a
praise. Remember that word "Fey" which I cut out? I don't see whole-hearted
support or even much understanding conveyed by such words, especially when
they lead the sentence.
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The judgement: "Like Blake, bissett is a visionary, mystic poet who makes
his own rules of poetry as he goes along" has been taken to task by Don
Precosky for the particular diction used. I shan't give the reference to the
judgement as I only know it through the quotation in Precosky's article. But
"makes his own rules as he goes along" does not stand up against bissett's
own statement, already quoted: "syntax - mainly expressive or musical rather
than grammatic / visual form - apprehension of th spirit shape of th pome"
.
Let's keep Blake out of it, whether it's relevant or not. Connecting poets
with Blake, except where the poets do it themselves and remain in control of
the discourse, can be a way of thanking people for their idiosyncratic ideas
and then leaving them in the waiting room where they won't do any harm to
the more ordered and planned business one has set oneself. But that's just
the point. In this case, the books and their maker oppose and defy that kind
of order and that kind of planning. It is in their nature to disrupt though
that is not the centre of their nature. Instead of categorising the work, we
ought to welcome it and then go with it. In that connection, let me quote
Len Early: bissett's "methods of defying standardization seem inexhaustible"
and that, I think, is more useful. Long may bill bissett resist
standardisation.
.
I have too another quote from bill on bill: he "seeks 2 keep xploring byond
narrativ as well as lyrik politikul romanse n storee telling."
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One Canadian collection of papers states that "bissett has published several
collections of poetry". In fact he has published over 50, including
* fires in th tempul OR th jinx ship nd othr trips
* awake in th red desert
* Liberating Skies
* drifting into war
* dragon fly
* th high green hill
* living with th vishyun
* the first sufi line
* Nobody owns the earth
* Vancouver Mainland Ice and Cold Storage
* MEDICINE my mouths on fire
* yu can eat it at th opening
* pass th food release th spirit book
* stardust
* Pomes for Yoshi
* the wind up tongue
* an allusyun to macbeth
* Plutonium missing
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and all of those and more came before Beyond Even Faithful Legends, his
Selected Poems, and that was in 1980. (There's a list of his books still in
print in tonight's magazine, Sub Voicive Poetry 1999 # 12)
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Precosky, referred to earlier, said words to the effect that you don't make
that much poetry as a naive visionary waiting for inspiration. Such a
consistent and high volume output indicates intention and commitment.
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Intention and commitment... well, commitment, are among the qualities Sub
Voicive Poetry celebrates, along with resistance to standardisation,
experimentation, adventurousness, odd book sizes and sheer bloody-minded
artistic longevity. Therefore, it gives me enormous pleasure to welcome bill
bissett here tonight to perform.
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Books in print by bill bissett:
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Selected Poems: Beyond Even Faithful Legends; Talonbooks, 1980; ISBN 0 88922
172 3
seagull on yonge street; Talonbooks, 1983; ISBN 0 88922 207 X
canada gees mate for life; Talonbooks, 1985; ISBN 0 88922 232 0
Animal Uproar; Talonbooks, 1987; ISBN 0 88922 247 9
hard 2 beleev; Talonbooks, 1990; ISBN 0 88922 277 0
inkorrekt thots; Talonbooks, 1992; ISBN 0 88922 303 3
th last photo uv th human soul; Talonbooks, 1993; ISBN 0 88922 322 X
th influenza uv logik; Talonbooks, 1995; ISBN 0 88922 357 2
skars on the seahors; Talonbooks, 1999
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Source: "Who's Who in The League of Canadian Poets"; The League of Canadian
Poets, 1999; ISBN 1 896216 11 0




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