Notes

Notes to Introduction

1. 1 The segment can be viewed online in two parts. See “Bill Bissett and BP Nichol - 1 - Interviewed by Phyllis Webb” [Extension: Here, Now, and Then; first aired 2 July 1967], YouTube, uploaded by bill bissett, 11 April 2009, 8:38, https://youtu.be/eBmxvfktZaM, and “Bill Bissett and BP Nichol - 2 - Interviewed by Phyllis Webb” [Extension: Here, Now, and Then; first aired 2 July 1967], YouTube, uploaded by bill bissett, 11 April 2009, 9:59, https://youtu.be/Vv8BN2NA6nk.
2. 2 bpNichol, “this is the death of the poem,” grOnk, no. 1 (January 1967): n.p.
3. 3 Katherine McLeod, “Poetry on TV: Unarchiving Phyllis Webb’s Extension,” in CanLit across Media: Unarchiving the Literary Event, ed. Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019), 83.
4. 4 The thirteen-episode show was dedicated to Canadian poetry and aired from 30 April to 23 July 1967. Guests included Earle Birney, Dorothy Livesay, A. M. Klein, and F. R. Scott, George Bowering, Victor Coleman, Gwendolyn MacEwen, and others.
5. 5 McLeod, “Poetry on TV,” 74.
6. 6 Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (New York: Signet, 1962), 14.
7. 7 First mentioned in The Gutenberg Galaxy, McLuhan suggests that the rise of electronic media will significantly reshape cultural relations around the world, recreating “the world in the image of a global village” (43). He offers a more specific definition of the “global village” in Understanding Media, where he writes, “Our specialist and fragmented civilization of center-margin structure is suddenly experiencing an instantaneous reassembling of all its mechanized bits into an organic whole. This is the new world of the global village. The village, as Mumford explains in The City in History, had achieved a social and institutional extension of all human faculties. Speed-up and city aggregates only served to separate these from one another in more specialist forms. The electronic age cannot sustain the very low gear of a center-margin structure such as we associate with the past two thousand years of the Western world” (93).
8. 8 “Bill Bissett and BP Nichol - 1 - Interviewed by Phyllis Webb.”
9. 9 Pauline Butling, “Phyllis Webb as Public Intellectual,” in Wider Boundaries of Daring: The Modernist Impulse in Canadian Women’s Poetry, ed. Di Brandt and Barbara Godard (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009), 237.
10. 10 “Bill Bissett and BP Nichol - 2 - Interviewed by Phyllis Webb.”
11. 11 “Bill Bissett and BP Nichol - 1 - Interviewed by Phyllis Webb.”
12. 12 Nichol, “eyes,” An Anthology of Concrete Poetry, ed. Emmett Williams (New York: Something Else Press, 1967), n.p.
13. 13 “Bill Bissett and BP Nichol - 1 - Interviewed by Phyllis Webb.”
14. 14 Smaro Kamboureli, “Preface,” in Trans.Can.Lit: Resituating the Study of Canadian Literature, ed. Smaro Kamboureli and Roy Miki (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2007), viii.
15. 15 Jahan Ramazani, A Transnational Poetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 14.
16. 16 It is also preferable to other terms such as “sub-tradition” or “subgenre,” since they connote hierarchical literary models that the poets in this book actively sought to resist.
17. 17 Dick Higgins (with Hannah Higgins), “Intermedia,” Leonardo 34, no. 1 (2001): 49.
18. 18 Higgins, 49.
19. 19 Higgins, 52
20. 20 Higgins is careful to distinguish intermedia from mixed media, for example. In “Intermedia,” he writes, “Many fine works are being done in mixed media: paintings which incorporate poems within their visual fields, for instance. But one knows which is which” (52).
21. 21 Gunther Kress and Carey Jewitt, “Introduction,” in Multimodal Literacy, ed. Gunther Kress and Carey Jewitt (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), 3. Emphasis in original.
22. 22 bpNichol, “Statement,” Journeying & the returns (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1967), n.p. The quote here comes from the back cover of the slipcase itself.
23. 23 Paul Barrett, “The Wild Rise of CanLit,” The Walrus, 12 October 2017, https://thewalrus.ca/the-wild-rise-of-canlit/.
24. 24 W. H. New, “Canada,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 24, no. 2 (January 1989): 40.
25. 25 As per the front cover of grOnk, no. 1 (January 1967): n.p.
26. 26 The dates provided here are based on the findings of my research. Given the ephemeral nature of much of this work, some dates were difficult to corroborate.
27. 27 See “About Penn Kemp,” Penn Kemp (blog), accessed, 15 December 2022, http://pennkemp.weebly.com/about.html.
28. 28 For more on the history of Coach House and its contributions to experimental and avant-garde writing within the discourse of Canadian nationalism, see Stephen Cain, “Imprinting Identities: An Examination of the Emergence and Developing Identities of Coach House Press and Anansi Press (1967–1982)” (PhD diss., York University, 2002).
29. 29 Janet B. Friskney, New Canadian Library: The Ross-McClelland Years, 1952–1978 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 154.
30. 30 Similarly, in Joe Rosenblatt’s “The Butterfly Bat,” the letters W, O, and M are laid out to form a W in one part of the poem, forming probably the closest thing to an example of concrete poetry in this collection.
31. 31 Quoted in Friskney, New Canadian Library, 112.
32. 32 Friskney, 63.
33. 33 Nichol, THE RETURN OF GRONK (Toronto: Ganglia Press, 1968): n.p.
34. 34 Nichol, THE BIG MID-JULY grOnk mailout (Toronto: Ganglia Press, 1969), n.p.
35. 35 bpNichol, “What Is Can Lit?,” in Meanwhile: The Critical Writings of bpNichol, ed. Roy Miki (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2002), 118.
36. 36 Nichol, 119.
37. 37 Nichol shared the award with his friend Michael Ondaatje for his own book of prose poems entitled The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed Poems (Toronto: Anansi, 1970).
38. 38 bpNichol, The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid (Toronto: Weed/Flower Press, 1970), n.p.
39. 39 Frank Davey, aka bpNichol: A Preliminary Biography (Toronto: ECW Press, 2012), 144.
40. 40 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 10 June 1971 (Mac T. McCutcheon), https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC2803_06/1008?r=0&s=1.
41. 41 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 10 June 1971, (W. B. Nesbitt), https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC2803_06/1011?r=0&s=1.
42. 42 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 10 June 1971 (J. P. Nowlan), https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC2803_07/812?r=0&s=1.
43. 43 “Literary Award Juror Annoyed at Criticism of Choice,” Toronto Star, 10 June 1971.
44. 44 bill bissett, “Part 3 bill bissett documentary” [Strange Grey Day This; first aired 1965], YouTube, uploaded by bill bissett, 25 January 2009, 10:26, https://youtu.be/cEbTzMgeD4k.
45. 45 Tim Carlson, “bill bissett,” in bill bissett: Essays on His Works, ed. Linda Rogers (Toronto: Guernica, 2002), 46.
46. 46 See Ryan J. Cox, “HP Sauce and the Hate Literature of Pop Art: bill bissett in the House of Commons,” English Studies in Canada 37, nos. 3–4 (2011): 147–62, and Don Precosky, “bill bissett: Controversies and Definitions,” Canadian Poetry, no. 27 (Fall/Winter 1990), https://canadianpoetry.org/volumes/vol27/precosky.html.
47. 47 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 2 December 1977 (Bob Wenman), https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC3003_02/383?r=0&s=3.
48. 48 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 3 April 1978 (Hugh A. Anderson), https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC3003_04/710?r=0&s=3.
49. 49 Alan Twigg, “B.C. Poets Faces Critics,” Quill and Quire 44, no. 9 (1978): 27.
50. 50 John Glassco, “At the Mermaid Inn—Poet as Performer,” Globe and Mail, 12 November 1977.
51. 51 bissett’s appropriation of Indigenous chanting is discussed briefly in chapter 1.
52. 52 Alan Twigg, “#105 bill bissett,” B.C. BookLook, 2 February 2016, https://bcbooklook.com/105-bill-bissett/.
53. 53 Jamie Hilder, “Introduction,” Designed Words for a Designed World: The International Concrete Poetry Movement, 1955–1971 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), 20.
54. 54 Hilder, 20.
55. 55 Nineteen sixty-three saw the pivotal Vancouver Poetry Conference, organized by American expatriate professor Warren Tallman and poet Robert Creeley at UBC, a landmark gathering of mostly established American poets, including Allen Ginsberg, Charles Olson, Denise Levertov, and Robert Duncan, and Canadian Margaret Avison, for an intensive three-week program of discussions, lectures, and readings on and of contemporary poetry and poetics. This gathering is recognized as a crucial moment for the establishment of an American-influenced Canadian paratradition known as TISH, which involved poets such as Frank Davey, Fred Wah, Daphne Marlatt, Jamie Reid, and others.
56. 56 Michael Turner, “Expanded Literary Practices,” Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixties, ed. Lorna Brown, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and Grunt Gallery, 1 March 2011, http://expandedliterarypractices.vancouverartinthesixties.com/.
57. 57 R. Murray Schafer, “Letter to David UU, dated 16 September 1992,” LMS-0217, Box 15 1996-01, David Harris Fonds, Library and Archives Canada.
58. 58 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 280. Emphasis in original.
59. 59 Gregory Betts, Avant-Garde Canadian Literature: The Early Manifestations (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 7.
60. 60 Pauline Butling, “(Re)Defining Radical Poetics,” chap. 1 in Writing in Our Time: Canada’s Radical Poetries in English (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2005), 19.
61. 61 Maxine Gadd, Lost Language: Selected Poems by Maxine Gadd, ed. Daphne Marlatt and Ingrid Klassen (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1982), 177.

Notes to Chapter 1

1. 1 Brian Dedora and Michael Dean, “The Symposium of Linguistic Onto-Genetics: An Introduction,” Canadian Poetry, nos. 84–5 (2019): 56.
2. 2 Dedora and Dean, 57.
3. 3 Dom Sylvester Houédard, “Concrete Poetry and Ian Hamilton Finlay,” Typographica, no. 8 [1963?]: 48, quoted in Greg Thomas, Borderblurs: Concrete Poetry in England and Scotland (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019), 17.
4. 4 Dom Sylvester Houédard, “Arlington Une/Poetischesuntersuchungen in Glostershire,” in Arlington Une: Summer ’66, [5–11], quoted in Thomas, Borderblurblurs, 17.
5. 5 While Houédard is specifically writing about concrete poetry—primarily understood as a visually oriented form in this context—he does acknowledge the importance of sound and sonic extensions in this kind of work. With that said, my understanding of borderblur is specific to the Canadian context, which I contend includes concrete, sound, and kinetic poetries.
6. 6 Dom Sylvester Houédard, “‘Between Poetry/Painting’ Letter from Dom Sylvester Houédard 07/10/1965,” bpNichol.ca, accessed 20 December 2021, http://bpnichol.ca/archive/documents/between-poetrypainting-letter-dom-sylvester-hou%C3%A9dard-07101965.
7. 7 Houédard, “Between Poetry/Painting.” Note that the punctuation used here reflects the original style choices made by the author, as is true of many other quotations reproduced throughout this book.
8. 8 Irene Gammel and Suzanne Zelazo, “Introduction,” in Florine Stettheimer: New Directions in Multimodal Modernism (Toronto: Book*hug, 2019), 4.
9. 9 Dick Higgins (with Hannah Higgins), “Intermedia,” Leonardo 34, no. 1 (2001): 49.
10. 10 For this reason, I have chosen the notion of intermediality to conceive of borderblur. This strikes me as more appropriate than, say, the concepts of interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary, since it is the very idea of discipline, which connotes control, rules, and codes, that these poets sought to resist.
11. 11 Stephen Scobie, bpNichol: What History Teaches (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1984), 32.
12. 12 bpNichol, “Interview: Pierre Coupey, Dwight Gardiner, Gladys Hindmarch, and Daphne Marlatt,” in Meanwhile: The Critical Writings of bpNichol, ed. Roy Miki (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2002), 153.
13. 13 André Breton, “Manifesto of Surrealism” [1924], UbuWeb, accessed 15 December 2020, https://www.ubu.com/papers/breton_surrealism_manifesto.html.
14. 14 Dedora and Dean, “Symposium of Linguistic Onto-Genetics,” 57.
15. 15 bill bissett, “Bill bissett’s Acceptance Speech for Woodcock Award,” BC Booklook, last modified 2 April 2008, https://bcbooklook.com/105-bill-bissett/.
16. 16 See Jamie Reid, A Temporary Stranger (Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2017).
17. 17 I have chosen to use the italicized blewointment to refer to the magazine and “Blew Ointment Press” (no italics) to refer to bissett’s book-publishing venture. I must confess that my choice still violates the radical and playful spirit of the venture, but, following the lead of other scholars, I opted for this version of the latter title over various alternative renderings, such as Blewointmentpress, or blewointmentpress, which were used interchangeably across different publications.
18. 18 Warren Tallman, “Wonder Merchants: Modernist Poetry in Vancouver during the 1960’s,” boundary 2 3, no. 1 (Autumn 1974): 78.
19. 19 Tallman, 78.
20. 20 bill bissett, “About In Search of Innocence: film by Len Forest, director; Jack Long, camera; addressed to them both,” blewointment, no. 1 (1963): n.p.
21. 21 bissett, n.p.
22. 22 Patrick Lane, “bill bissett circa 1967–1968,” Capilano Review 2, no. 23 (1997): 85.
23. 23 Ken Norris, The Little Magazine in Canada, 1925–80 (Toronto: ECW Press, 1984), 144.
24. 24 Barry McKinnon, “Blewointment,” Open Letter 7, no. 23 (1988): 74.
25. 25 McKinnon, 74.
26. 26 McKinnon, 76.
27. 27 Gregory Betts, In Search of Blew: An Eventual Index of Blewointment Magazine, 1963–1977 (Buffalo, NY: Among the Neighbours, 2016), 7–8.
28. 28 On the formative role the “Sig Sam” library played in the formation of Nichol’s poetics and his Toronto network, see Stephen Cain, “‘A Vision in the UofT Stacks’: bpNichol in the Library,” in Avant-Canada: Poets, Prophets, Revolutionaries, ed. Gregory Betts and Christian Bök (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2019), 59–75.
29. 29 bpNichol et al., grOnk, no. 1 (1967): n.p.
30. 30 Higgins, “Intermedia,” 50.
31. 31 Paul Dutton, “Underwhich Editions and the Radical Tradition,” Underwhich Editions, accessed 1 May 2018, http://freemarketrecords.com/underwhich/about.shtml.
32. 32 bpNichol, “Statement,” Journeying & the returns (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1967), n.p.
33. 33 Nichol, n.p.
34. 34 Nichol, n.p.
35. 35 Jerome Rothenberg, “The Anthology as Manifesto & as an Epic Including Poetry,” in Poetics & Polemics, 1980–2005 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2008), 15.
36. 36 bpNichol, “some afterwords,” in The Cosmic Chef, ed. bpNichol (Ottawa: Oberon, 1970), 78.
37. 37 bill bissett, “cordially death,” in Nichol, ed., Cosmic Chef, 67.
38. 38 Dedora and Dean, “Symposium of Linguistic Onto-Genetics,” 57.
39. 39 bill bissett, “bissett to bp 1972,” MSC 12b.1.11.1, Ganglia Press Archive, Simon Fraser Library Special Collections and Rare Books, 3.
40. 40 bpNichol, “Primary Days: Housed with the Coach at the Press, 1965–1987,” in Miki, ed., Meanwhile, 422.
41. 41 Nichol, 424.
42. 42 bpNichol, “Interview: Fred Gaysek, Editor, Artviews,” in Miki, ed., Meanwhile, 459.
43. 43 See Stephen Cain, ed., bp: Beginnings (Toronto: BookThug, 2014). Also see Cain, “Imprinting identities.”
44. 44 See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 2006).
45. 45 Alan Twigg, “#105 bill bissett,” B.C. BookLook, 2 February 2016, https://bcbooklook.com/105-bill-bissett/.
46. 46 Steve McCaffery, “Trans-Avant-Garde: An Interview with Steve McCaffery,” interviewed by Ryan Cox, Rain Taxi, Winter 2007–8, https://www.raintaxi.com/trans-avant-garde-an-interview-with-steve-mccaffery/.
47. 47 Stephen Voyce, Poetic Community: Avant-Garde Activism and Cold War Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 204.
48. 48 Graham Sharpe, “Pushing International Concrete Canada: ‘The Communication Link’ of Ganglia Press,” Open Letter 10, no. 6 (Summer 1999): 119.
49. 49 Sharpe, 121.
50. 50 McCaffery, “Trans-Avant-Garde,” n.p.
51. 51 McCaffery, n.p.
52. 52 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 4.
53. 53 Appadurai, 4.
54. 54 “Bill Bissett and BP Nichol - 1 - Interviewed by Phyllis Webb” [Extension: Here, Now, and Then; first aired 2 July 1967], YouTube, uploaded by bill bissett, 11 April 2009, 8:38, https://youtu.be/eBmxvfktZaM.
55. 55 Marshall McLuhan, “Canada: The Borderline Case,” in The Canadian Imagination, ed. Dave Staines (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 241.
56. 56 Voyce, Poetic Community, 208.
57. 57 Marshall McLuhan, COUNTERBLAST (Toronto: n.p., 1954).
58. 58 Marshal McLuhan. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962; New York: Signet, 1969), 7.
59. 59 McLuhan, 9.
60. 60 bill bissett, Nobody Owns th Earth (Toronto: Anansi, 1971), n.p.
61. 61 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: Signet, 1964), 19.
62. 62 Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 4.
63. 63 bpNichol, “Statement,” n.p.
64. 64 Frank Davey, Post-National Arguments: The Politics of the Anglophone-Canadian Novel since 1967 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 15.
65. 65 Nichol, “Statement,” n.p.
66. 66 bill bissett, We Sleep Inside Each Other All (Toronto: Ganglia Press, 1966), n.p.
67. 67 bissett, n.p.
68. 68 “Bill Bissett and BP Nichol - 2 - Interviewed by Phyllis Webb” [Extension: Here, Now, and Then; first aired 2 July 1967], YouTube, uploaded by bill bissett, 11 April 2009, 9:59, https://youtu.be/Vv8BN2NA6nk.
69. 69 It is worth noting, too, that Webb also interviewed McLuhan on her CBC Radio show Ideas sometime between 1964 and 1969.
70. 70 See Nichol, “The Medium Was the Message,” in Miki, ed., Meanwhile, 298.
71. 71 Ed Varney, Concrete Poetry: An Exhibition in Four Parts (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1969), n.p.
72. 72 Steve McCaffery, “a poetry of blood,” in Text-Sound Texts, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1980), 275.
73. 73 John Robert Colombo, New Direction in Canadian Writing (Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada, 1971), 39.
74. 74 Butling, “(Re)Defining Radical Poetics,” 17.
75. 75 Gregory Betts and Christian Bök, “Time for the Avant-Garde in Canada,” in Avant-Canada: Poets, Prophets, Revolutionaries, ed. Gregory Betts and Christian Bök (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2019), 3.
76. 76 Cathy Park Hong, “Delusions of Whiteness in the Avant-Garde,” Lana Turner Journal, no. 7 (Winter 2014): 248.
77. 77 Hong, 248.
78. 78 Hong, 249–50.
79. 79 Hong, 253.
80. 80 Butling, 21.
81. 81 Butling, 21.
82. 82 Jamie Reid, “th pome wuz a store nd is th storee: th erlee daze uv blewointment,” in A Temporary Stranger, (Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2017), 77.
83. 83 Jim Daems, “‘i wish war would fuck off’: bill bissett’s Critique of the Military-Cultural Complex,” Topia, nos. 23–4 (2010): 368.
84. 84 Judith Copithorne, “A Personal and Informal Introduction and Checklist Regarding Some Larger Poetry Enterprises in Vancouver Primarily in the Earlier Part of the 1960s,” in Making Waves: Reading BC and Pacific Northwest Literature , ed. Trevor Carolan (Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2010), 90.
85. 85 Gregory Betts, Avant-Garde Canadian Literature: The Early Manifestations (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 71.
86. 86 Betts, quotations at 72 and 71, respectively.
87. 87 Betts, 71.
88. 88 Betts, 74.
89. 89 Only a small fraction of this dimension has been accounted for in this chapter, and even with the additional context provided in the following chapters, this book still cannot do it justice.
90. 90 Sophie Seita, Provisional Avant-Gardes: Little Magazine Communities from Dada to Digital (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019), 16.
91. 91 Seita, 3.
92. 92 Charles Bernstein, “Provisional Institutions: Alternative Presses and Poetic Innovation,” Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory 51, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 134.
93. 93 Bernstein, 143.
94. 94 Bernstein, 144.
95. 95 Nichol, “Statement,” n.p.
96. 96 David Antin, “what it means to be avant-garde,” in what it means to be avant-garde (New York: New Directions, 1993), 46.
97. 97 Antin, 46–7.
98. 98 Antin, 53.
99. 99 Though, as I detail in chapter 2, women artists like Copithorne faced their own gender-based obstacles and barriers, which often made them feel dislocated from the scene.
100. 100 bpNichol, Doors: To Oz & Other Landscapes (Toronto: grOnk, 1979): n.p.
101. 101 Hong, “Delusions of Whiteness,” 248.
102. 102 Maxine Gadd, Lost Language: Selected Poems (Toronto: Coach House, 1982), 179.
103. 103 Gadd, 179.
104. 104 This is an important point to consider when examining these poets’ politics more broadly, which included anti-colonial and anti-imperial stances, suggesting, perhaps, a premature embrace of McLuhan’s ideas about connectedness and the global village.
105. 105 See Andy Weaver, “‘The White Experience between the Words’: Thoughts on Steve McCaffery’s Carnival, the Second Panel: 1970–75,” Open Letter 14, no. 7 (Fall 2011): 130–46.

Notes to chapter 2

1. 1 Beat poet, inventor, and painter Brion Gysin was also included in this anthology. Born in Taplow, England, to Canadian parents, Gysin largely renounced his connections to Canada and spent most his life as an expatriate living abroad in France, Morocco, and elsewhere.
2. 2 Mary Ellen Solt, “Introduction,” in Concrete Poetry: A World View, ed. Mary Ellen Solt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), 7.
3. 3 Richard Kostelanetz, Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1993), 45.
4. 4 Lori Emerson, Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 99.
5. 5 Marjorie Perloff, Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 50.
6. 6 Canadada is also the title of a Four Horsemen album mentioned in chapter 3.
7. 7 David UU, “Beyond Concrete Poetry,” British Columbia Monthly 1, no. 3 (December 1972): n.p.
8. 8 UU, n.p.
9. 9 UU, n.p.
10. 10 Notably, too, critics Caroline Bayard, Stephen Scobie, Frank Davey, and others have placed the work of Canadian concrete poets in dialogue with international currents, including continental philosophies and literary theories, historical avant-gardism, and the international concrete poetry movement. In this way, concrete poetry in Canada is provoked by its strained relationship to cultural nationalism and animated by its relationship to international currents of avant-gardism.
11. 11 David Antin, “what it means to be avant-garde,” in What It Means to Be Avant-Garde (New York: New Directions, 1993), 53.
12. 12 Wai Chee Dimock, Through Other Continents: American Literature across Deep Time (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 3.
13. 13 Stephen Bann, Concrete Poetry: An International Anthology (London: London Magazine Editions, 1967), 7.
14. 14 Bann, 7.
15. 15 Eugen Gomringer, “Concrete Poetry,” in Solt, ed., Concrete Poetry, 67.
16. 16 Haroldo de Campos, Augusto de Campos, and Decio Pignatari, “Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry,” in Solt, ed., Concrete Poetry, 71.
17. 17 bill bissett, “bissett to bp 1972,” MSC 12b.1.11.1, Ganglia Press Archive, Special Collections and Rare Books, Simon Fraser University Library.
18. 18 bpNichol, “Interview: Stuart Ross,” in Meanwhile: The Critical Writings of bpNichol, ed. Roy Miki (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2002), 345.
19. 19 David UU, “Press Release for Microprosophus,” LMS-0217, Box 14 1996-01, David Harris Fonds, Library and Archives Canada.
20. 20 Antin, “what it means to be avant-garde,” 53.
21. 21 Ed Varney, Concrete Poetry: An Exhibition in Four Parts (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1969), n.p.
22. 22 UU, “Press Release for Microprosophus.”
23. 23 Marshall McLuhan, The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1951; London: Duckworth Overlook, 2011), v.
24. 24 McLuhan, 22.
25. 25 McLuhan, 115.
26. 26 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 285.
27. 27 Hardt and Negri, 289.
28. 28 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 4.
29. 29 John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books, 1972), 129.
30. 30 Berger, 131.
31. 31 Berger, 154.
32. 32 Eugen Gomringer, “From Line to Constellation,” in Solt, ed., Concrete Poetry, 67.
33. 33 Marjorie Perloff, Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of Media (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 116.
34. 34 Perloff, 111.
35. 35 Perloff, 117–18.
36. 36 Perloff, 118–19.
37. 37 Perloff, 119.
38. 38 Steve McCaffery, “Lyric’s Larynx,” in North of Intention: Critical Writings, 1973–1986 (New York: Roof, 2000), 178.
39. 39 Steve McCaffery, “Diminished Reference and the Model Reader,” in North of Intention, 13.
40. 40 Steve McCaffery, “Writing as a General Economy,” in North of Intention, 201.
41. 41 See Sianne Ngai, “Raw Matter: A Poetics of Disgust,” Open Letter 10, no. 1 (1998): 98–122.
42. 42 Derek Beaulieu, “an afterward after words: notes toward a concrete poetic,” in fractal economies (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2006), 80.
43. 43 An equally compelling but divergent reading of “Blues” could locate the word’s significance in the context of the 1960s counterculture and the diffuse application of the word as part of the anti-war and hippie movements.
44. 44 bpNichol, “Captain Poetry in Love,” in The Captain Poetry Poems Complete (Toronto: BookThug, 2011), n.p.
45. 45 Stephen Voyce, “Love in Precarious Times: bpNichol’s Poetry of Re-invention” (presentation, Avant-Canada Conference, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, 4–6 November 2014).
46. 46 bpNichol, “Journeying & the Returns,” Journeying & the returns (Toronto: Coach House, 1967), n.p.
47. 47 Voyce, “Love in Precarious Times.”
48. 48 Nichol, “Journeying,” n.p.
49. 49 David UU, Touch (Toronto: Ganglia Press, 1967), n.p.
50. 50 UU, n.p.
51. 51 This is an approach to book making that lives on with jwcurry’s 1c series, for which he imprints poems onto the backs of soup can labels and used envelopes.
52. 52 McLuhan, The Mechanical Bride, v.
53. 53 Darren Wershler, The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 85.
54. 54 Wershler, 140.
55. 55 Wershler, 141.
56. 56 Emerson, Reading Writing Interfaces, 87.
57. 57 Emerson, 100.
58. 58 Emerson, 88.
59. 59 Stephen Cain, “Introduction: Clinamen/Context/Concrete/Community/Continuum,” in “Breakthrough Nostalgia: Reading Steve McCaffery Then and Now,” ed. Stephen Cain, special issue, Open Letter 14, no. 7 (Fall 2011): 5.
60. 60 Nichol, bp, “The Annotated, Anecdoted, Beginnings of a Critical Checklist of the Published Works of Steve McCaffery,” Open Letter 6 no. 9 (1987): 72.
61. 61 Emerson, Reading Writing Interfaces, 114.
62. 62 Steve McCaffery, Carnival: The Second Panel, 1970–75 (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1978), n.p.
63. 63 McCaffery, n.p.
64. 64 Andy Weaver, “‘the white experience between the words’: Thoughts on Steve McCaffery’s Carnival, the second panel: 1970–75,” Open Letter 14, no. 7 (Fall 2011): 135.
65. 65 Weaver, 136.
66. 66 McCaffery, Carnival: The Second Panel, n.p.
67. 67 Steve McCaffery, “Voice in Extremis,” in Prior to Meaning: The Protosemantic and Poetics (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 161.
68. 68 McCaffery, Carnival: The Second Panel, n.p.
69. 69 McCaffery, 6.
70. 70 Charles Russell, Poets, Prophets, and Revolutionaries: The Literary Avant-Garde from Rimbaud through Postmodernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 35.
71. 71 For more on McCaffery’s consideration of these ideas, see his essay “Writing as a General Economy” in North of Intention.
72. 72 Paul Dutton, The Plastic Typewriter (London: Writer’s Forum; Toronto: Underwhich Editions, 1993), n.p.
73. 73 In particular, the rendition of the hymn that Dutton knew at the time was “Certainly Lord” by the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, an American gospel quartet active between the years 1936 and 1994.
74. 74 Paul Dutton, “Flamenco Sequence/1977,” in Sound Poetry: A Catalogue, ed. bpNichol and Steve McCaffery (Toronto: Underwhich Editions, 1978), 44.
75. 75 Dutton, 46.
76. 76 See “Interview: Carole Itter with Lorna Brown,” Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixties, ed. Lorna Brown, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and Grunt Gallery, 1 June 2009, vancouverartinthesixties.com/interviews/carol-itter.
77. 77 Wershler, The Iron Whim, 86.
78. 78 Wershler, 86.
79. 79 Wershler, 91.
80. 80 Wershler, 92–3.
81. 81 Wershler, 93.
82. 82 N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), xi.
83. 83 Gregory Betts, “Postmodern Decadence in Canadian Sound and Visual Poetry,” in Re:Reading the Postmodern: Canadian Literature and Criticism after Modernism, ed. Robert David Stacey (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press), 167.
84. 84 Caroline Bayard, New Poetics in Canada and Quebec: From Concretism to Post-Modernism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 142.
85. 85 Judith Copithorne, Release (Vancouver: Bau-Xi Gallery, 1969), 7.
86. 86 Copithorne, 7.
87. 87 Copithorne, 7.
88. 88 Copithorne, 3.
89. 89 Basmajian, like many other poets discussed in this book, used various different spellings of his name, including Shant Basmajian and Sha(u)nt Basmajian.
90. 90 bpNichol, “Tabling Content: writing a reading of Shant Basmajian’s Quote Unquote,” in Miki, ed., Meanwhile, 194.
91. 91 bill bissett, “why ths stars,” in Stardust (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1975), 8.
92. 92 Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 145.
93. 93 Kittler, 119.
94. 94 bill bissett, “THE TUBE IS GASEOUS,” in Stardust, 12.
95. 95 bissett, 12.
96. 96 bissett, 12.
97. 97 Sam Rowe, “Panopticon—Steve McCaffery,” Full Stop, 15 May 2012, http://www.full-stop.net/2012/05/15/reviews/sam/panopticon-steve-mccaffery/.
98. 98 Charles Bernstein, A Poetics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 62.
99. 99 Rowe, “Panopticon—Steve McCaffery.”
100. 100 Steve McCaffery, Panopticon (Toronto: Bookthug, 2011), n.p.
101. 101 Bernstein, A Poetics, 64.
102. 102 McCaffery, Panopticon, n.p.
103. 103 Ann Rosenberg, The Bee Book (Toronto: Coach House, 1981), 58–9.
104. 104 Rosenberg, 59.
105. 105 Rosenberg, 61.
106. 106 Rosenberg, 61.
107. 107 Rosenberg, 86.
108. 108 Rosenberg, 188.
109. 109 Rosenberg, 188.
110. 110 Rosenberg, 189.
111. 111 George Bowering, “Vancouver as Postmodern Poetry,” Colby Quarterly 29, no. 2 (June 1993): 113.
112. 112 Stephen Morton, “Multiculturalism and the Formation of a Diasporic Counterpublic in Roy Kiyooka’s StoneDGloves,” Canadian Literature, no. 201 (Summer 2009): 89.
113. 113 Roy Kiyooka, Stoned Gloves (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1971), n.p.
114. 114 Kiyooka, n.p.
115. 115 Brian Dedora, “I Have a Remember When,” Journal of Canadian Studies 54, nos. 2–3 (Spring/Fall 2020): 322.
116. 116 Dedora, 321.
117. 117 Dedora, 321.

Notes to chapter 3

1. 1 “Why Are These People Screaming?,” Globe and Mail, 23 March 1970.
2. 2 Don Delaplante, “A Scream for Canada: Poet’s Salute to Spring,” Globe and Mail, 17 March 1970.
3. 3 Delaplante.
4. 4 Swede quoted in Delaplante.
5. 5 Joe Rosenblatt, “Live in the West” (liner notes to the album Live in the West), Electronic Poetry Center, University of Pennsylvania, accessed on 2 January 2023, https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/horsemen/liner.html.
6. 6 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (New York: Signet, 1964), 82.
7. 7 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 280.
8. 8 Hardt and Negri, 285.
9. 9 Hardt and Negri, 286.
10. 10 Hardt and Negri, 285.
11. 11 Hardt and Negri, 289.
12. 12 bpNichol, “Statement,” Journeying & the returns (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1967), n.p.
13. 13 Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, “Introduction,” in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 1.
14. 14 Dennis Lee, “Cadence, Country, Silence: Writing in Colonial Space,” boundary 2 3, no. 1 (1974): 153.
15. 15 “Bill Bissett and BP Nichol - 1 - Interviewed by Phyllis Webb” [Extension: Here, Now, and Then; first aired 2 July 1967], YouTube, uploaded by bill bissett, 11 April 2009, 8:38, https://youtu.be/eBmxvfktZaM.
16. 16 See Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2015); Sianne Ngai, Ugly Feelings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
17. 17 See Brian Massumi, Parables of the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), and Massumi, Politics of Affect (Cambridge: Polity, 2015).
18. 18 Myrna Kostash, Long Way from Home: The Story of the Sixties Generation in Canada (Toronto: James Lorimer and Co., 1980), xvi.
19. 19 Hardt and Negri, Empire, 293.
20. 20 Charles Bernstein “Provisional Institutions: Alternative Presses and Poetic Innovation,” Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory 51, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 144.
21. 21 Steve McCaffery, “Sound Poetry: A Survey,” in Sound Poetry: A Catalogue, ed. bpNichol and Steve McCaffery (Toronto: Underwhich Editions, 1978), 6.
22. 22 McCaffery, 16.
23. 23 Jerome Rothenberg, “Preface,” in Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania, 3rd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017), xvii.
24. 24 Rothenberg, xvii.
25. 25 Rothenberg, xvii.
26. 26 Stephen Scobie, “Bissett, Bill,” Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, ed. William Toye and Eugene Benson, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095508815.
27. 27 bpNichol and Lionel Kearns, “bpNichol and Lionel Kearns at SGWU, [November] 1968,” SpokenWeb Montreal, accessed 18 May 2018, https://montreal.spokenweb.ca/sgw-poetry-readings/bpnichol-and-lionel-kearns-at-sgwu-1968/#1.
28. 28 Stephen Cain, “CaNADAda: The Four Horsemen’s Ambivalent Nationalism” (presentation, Modern Language Association Convention, Toronto, ON, 7–10 January 2021).
29. 29 Nichol and Kearns, “bpNichol and Lionel Kearns at SGWU.”
30. 30 Warren Tallman, “Wonder Merchants: Modernist Poetry in Vancouver during the 1960’s,” boundary 2 3, no. 1 (Autumn 1974): 66.
31. 31 Michael McClure, “Tantra 49,” Ghost Tantras (1964; San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2013).
32. 32 bpNichol, “Interview: Nicette Jukelevics,” in Meanwhile: The Critical Writings of bpNichol, ed. Roy Miki (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2002), 133.
33. 33 Jim Brown and Wayne Carr, See/Hear: A Record Magazine, See/Hear Productions, 1970, 33⅓ rpm. I am quoting here from the back of the record sleeve.
34. 34 Dedora was initially involved in these sonic explorations but did not become an official member of the group.
35. 35 Douglas Barbour, “Interview with Douglas Barbour,” by rob mclennan, Jacket, no. 18 (August 2002), http://jacketmagazine.com/18/c-barbour-iv.html.
36. 36 bpNichol, “Improvising Sound: Ten Poets on the Poetics of Sound,” Music Works, no. 38 (1987): 10.
37. 37 See “Douglas Barbour,” UAlberta.ca, accessed 1 May 2018, https://sites.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/bio.html.
38. 38 Sean O’Huigin sometimes also rendered his name in lowercase, as sean o’huigin.
39. 39 Sean O’Huigin and Ann Southam, Sky Sails, MHIC, 1973, 33⅓ rpm.
40. 40 Rachel Zolf, “Travailing Gerry Shikatani’s Protean Poetics,” West Coast Line 41, no. 4 (Winter 2008): 8.
41. 41 “Penn Kemp: Publications,” Canadian Poetry Online, University of Toronto, accessed 6 February 2023, https://canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca/kemp/pub.htm.
42. 42 For more on the Writers’ Weekend, see Zena Cherry, “Poetry Meet ‘Liberating,’” Globe and Mail, 4 June 1982.
43. 43 Susan McMaster, The Gargoyle’s Left Ear: Writing in Ottawa (Windsor, ON: Black Moss Press, 2007), 23.
44. 44 McMaster, 23.
45. 45 Susan McMaster, “Epilogue,” Arc, no. 22 (Spring 1989): 67.
46. 46 McMaster, The Gargoyle’s Left Ear, 26.
47. 47 Charles Bernstein, “Provisional Institutions: Alternative Presses and Poetic Innovation,” Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory 51, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 132.
48. 48 Pauline Butling, “bpNichol and a Gift Economy: ‘The Play of Value and the Value of Play,’” chap. 4 in Writing in Our Time: Canada’s Radical Poetries in English (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2005), 68.
49. 49 “Around Toronto This Week,” Globe and Mail, 19 January 1973.
50. 50 bpNichol, Underwhich Checklist, 1978–1984 (Toronto: Ganglia Press, 1984), n.p.
51. 51 Underwhich maintained the energy and spirit of Nichol’s and McCaffery’s efforts to internationalize Canada’s connections to a transnational network. Of the nearly fifty cassettes produced as part of the Audiographics Series, not only did Underwhich feature the work of Canadians, including many of the poets mentioned so far, but they also released the work of international contributors, including Paula Claire, P. C. Fencott, and Bob Cobbing (England); Susan Frykberg (New Zealand–born); and Larry Wendt (United States).
52. 52 Rudy and Butling, “Chronology 1 (1957–1979): From the Canada Council to Writing in Our Time,” in Writing in Our Time, 13.
53. 53 Richard Cavell, McLuhan in Space: A Cultural Geography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 137.
54. 54 Jamie Hilder, Designed Words for a Designed World: The International Concrete Poetry Movement, 1955–1971 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), 194.
55. 55 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 82.
56. 56 McLuhan, 83.
57. 57 R. Murray Schafer, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1993), 3.
58. 58 Schafer, 273.
59. 59 Schafer, 91.
60. 60 Schafer, 91.
61. 61 McCaffery, “Sound Poetry,” 10.
62. 62 McCaffery, 11.
63. 63 McCaffery, 10.
64. 64 bpNichol, introduction to The Prose Tattoo: Selected Performances, by the Four Horsemen (Milwaukee, WI: Membrane Press, 1983), n.p.
65. 65 Hardt and Negri, Empire, 33.
66. 66 Steve McCaffery, “a poetry of blood.” Text-Sound Texts, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1980), 275.
67. 67 McCaffery, 275.
68. 68 Nichol, “Statement,” n.p.
69. 69 Nichol, n.p.
70. 70 Steve McCaffery, “Lyric’s Larynx,” in North of Intention: Critical Writings, 1973–1986 (New York: Roof, 2000), 178.
71. 71 Steve McCaffery, “Diminished Reference and the Model Reader,” in North of Intention, 13. Emphasis in original.
72. 72 Steve McCaffery, “Writing as General Economy,” in North of Intention, 214–15.
73. 73 Paul Dutton, “Preface to Right Hemisphere, Left Ear,” in McCaffery and Nichol, eds., Sound Poetry, 44.
74. 74 Owen Sound, “From Correspondences: A Pun on Baudelaire,” in McCaffery and Nichol, eds., Sound Poetry, 50.
75. 75 Owen Sound, 50.
76. 76 Owen Sound, 50.
77. 77 Patricia Keeney Smith, “Creating the World She Inhabits,” Cross-Canada Writers’ Quarterly 9, no. 2 (1987): 8.
78. 78 Smith, 8.
79. 79 Lydia Fensom, “Dark Galaxies: The Poetry of Susan McMaster,” Quarry, December 1987, 80.
80. 80 McMaster, The Gargoyle’s Left Ear, 26.
81. 81 Dorothy Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 19.
82. 82 Nichol, introduction to The Prose Tattoo, n.p.
83. 83 Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, “Introduction,” in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 1.
84. 84 Adriana Cavarero, For More than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression, trans. Paul A. Kottman (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 12.
85. 85 Gregg and Seigworth, “Introduction,” 1.
86. 86 Stephen Voyce, Poetic Community: Avant-Garde Activism and Cold War Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 234.
87. 87 James Sanders and Mark Prejsnar, “The Four Horsemen Burn through Atlanta,” Open Letter 13, no. 8 (2009): 56.
88. 88 Marq de Villiers, “You, Too, Can Become a Great Canadian Poet,” Globe and Mail, 20 October 1973.
89. 89 Gregg and Seigworth, “Introduction,” 1.
90. 90 De Villiers, “You, Too, Can Become a Great Canadian Poet.”
91. 91 Steve Goodman, Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 82.
92. 92 Owen Sound, “Biography,” in Meaford Tank Range (Toronto: Wild Press, 1977), n.p.
93. 93 Owen Sound, “Kesawagas,” side 2, track 1 on Meaford Tank Range, Wild Productions, 1977, 33⅓ rpm.
94. 94 Rothenberg, Technicians of the Sacred, 598.
95. 95 Owen Sound, “Kesawagas.”
96. 96 Owen Sound, “A Spiral of Forgotten Intimacies,” side 1, track 6 on Sleepwalkers, Underwhich, 1987, audiocassette.
97. 97 Owen Sound, “A Spiral of Forgotten Intimacies.”
98. 98 Owen Sound, “A Spiral of Forgotten Intimacies.”
99. 99 McMaster, Gargoyle’s Left Ear, 26.
100. 100 McMaster, 26.
101. 101 First Draft, “ABCD,” side 2, track 11 on Wordmusic, self-released, 1986, audiocassette.
102. 102 bpNichol, “A Love Song for Gertrude Stein,” side 1, track 1 on bp Nichol, High Barnet Company, 1971, audiocassette.
103. 103 bpNichol, “Incest Song,” side 1, track 1 on Motherlove, Allied Record Corporation, 1968, phonodisc.
104. 104 bpNichol, “Son of Sonnet,” side 1, track 3, bp Nichol.
105. 105 “Bill Bissett and BP Nichol - 2 - Interviewed by Phyllis Webb” [Extension: Here, Now, and Then; first aired 2 July 1967], YouTube, uploaded up bill bissett, 11 April 2009, 9:59, https://youtu.be/Vv8BN2NA6nk.
106. 106 Unfortunately, I have been unable to track down any public recordings of bissett’s early experiments with tape machines or multi-sensory environments.
107. 107 Richard Kostelanetz, “Text-Sound Art: A Survey (Concluded),” Performing Arts Journal 2, no. 3 (Winter 1978): 80.
108. 108 The vocalization of a lyric poem, for example, follows the action and emotion implied by its content (if the reader even goes so far to do so).
109. 109 Penn is credited as “Penn(y) Kemp” on the cassette, rather than her now more common spelling, Penn Kemp.
110. 110 Penn Kemp, “Re Solution,” side 1, track 1 on Ear Rings, Underwhich, 1987, audiocassette.
111. 111 Kemp, “All the Men Tall,” side 1, track 2 on Ear Rings.
112. 112 Kemp, “Her Mind Set,” side 1, track 5 on Ear Rings.
113. 113 Kemp, “Matter Matters,” side 1, track 6 on Ear Rings.
114. 114 Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic, 19.

Notes to chapter 4

1. 1 Caroline Bayard and Jack David, “Interview with bp Nichol, February 10, 1976,” in Outposts/Avant-Poste, ed. Jack David and Caroline Bayard (Erin, ON: Press Procépic, 1978), 27.
2. 2 bpNichol, “‘Syntax Equals the Body Structure’: bpNichol in Conversation with Daphne Marlatt and George Bowering,” in Meanwhile: The Critical Writings of bpNichol, ed. Roy Miki (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2002), 276.
3. 3 Nichol, 276.
4. 4 Bayard and David, “Interview with bp Nichol,” 27.
5. 5 bpNichol, “Statement,” Journeying & the returns (Toronto: Coach House, 1967), n.p.
6. 6 bpNichol, “Pome Poem,” side 1, track 2 on Ear Rational: Sound Poems, 1966–1980, Membrane Press/New Fire Tapes, 1982, audiocassette.
7. 7 Merriam-Webster Online, s.v. “kinetic,” accessed 10 February 2023, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kinetic.
8. 8 Suzanne Zelazo, “Sport as Living Language: bpNichol and the Bodily Poetics of the Elite Triathlete,” Canadian Literature, no. 202 (Autumn 2009): 33.
9. 9 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (New York: Signet, 1964), 105.
10. 10 Sara Ahmed, Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-coloniality (New York: Routledge, 2000), 45.
11. 11 Ahmed, 45.
12. 12 Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2015), 28.
13. 13 Ahmed, Cultural Politics of Emotion, 28.
14. 14 Massumi, Parables of the Virtual, 58.
15. 15 Massumi, 179.
16. 16 Charles Olson, “Projective Verse,” Poetry Foundation, 13 October 2009, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69406/projective-verse.
17. 17 Olson.
18. 18 Olson.
19. 19 Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa,” trans. Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, Signs 1, no. 4 (Summer 1976): 875.
20. 20 Barbara Godard, “Excentriques, Ex-centric, Avant-Garde: Women and Modernism in the Literatures of Canada,” A Room of One’s Own 8, no. 4 (Fall 1984): 64.
21. 21 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 105.
22. 22 Warren Tallman, “Wonder Merchants: Modernist Poetry in Vancouver during the 1960’s,” boundary 2 3, no. 1 (Autumn 1974): 60–1.
23. 23 Tallman, 61–2.
24. 24 Charles Olson, “Proprioception,” in Collected Prose, ed. Donald Allen and Benjamin Friedland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 181.
25. 25 Olson, “Projective Verse.”
26. 26 Oslon.
27. 27 Olson.
28. 28 Olson, “Proprioception,” 181.
29. 29 Frank Davey (quoting Robert Duncan), “Introduction,” in TISH No. 1–19, ed. Frank Davey (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1975), 9.
30. 30 George Bowering, Poet as Projector,” in Davey, ed., TISH No. 1–19, 18.
31. 31 bpNichol, “Interview: Nicette Jukelevics,” in Miki, ed., Meanwhile, 133–4.
32. 32 Steve McCaffery, “Sound Poetry: A Survey,” in Sound Poetry: A Catalogue, ed. Steve McCaffery and bpNichol (Toronto: Underwhich Editions), 10.
33. 33 Frank Davey, From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature since 1960 (Erin, ON: Press Procépic), 14.
34. 34 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 113.
35. 35 Marshall McLuhan, The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1951; London: Duckworth Overlook, 2011), 33.
36. 36 McLuhan, 34.
37. 37 Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (New York: Bantam Books, 1967), 31–2.
38. 38 McLuhan and Fiore, 38–9.
39. 39 McLuhan and Fiore, 40.
40. 40 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 105.
41. 41 McLuhan, 105.
42. 42 McLuhan, 105.
43. 43 Michael Turner, “Expanded Literary Practices,” Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixties, ed. Lorna Brown, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and Grunt Gallery, 1 March 2011, http://expandedliterarypractices.vancouverartinthesixties.com/.
44. 44 Keith Wallace, bill bissett, Al Neil, and Vancouver Art Gallery, Rezoning: Collage and Assemblage: Bill Bissett, George Herms, Jess, Al Neil: Vancouver Art Gallery, October 19, 1989 to January 1, 1990 (Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1989), 15.
45. 45 Wallace et al., 21.
46. 46 “The Intermedia Catalogue,” Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixties, ed. Lorna Brown, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and Grunt Gallery, 1 June 2009, http://intermedia.vancouverartinthesixties.com/introduction/default.
47. 47 “The Intermedia Catalogue.”
48. 48 “The Intermedia Catalogue.”
49. 49 “The Dome Show—Intermedia Builds Geodesic Domes, Vancouver Art Gallery, 1970,” OunoDesign (blog), 5 October 2009, http://ounodesign.com/2009/10/25/the-dome-show-intermedia-geodesic-domes-vancouver-art-gallery-1970.
50. 50 Ed Varney, “Performance au/in Canada 1970–1990: Chronologie-chronology,” in Performance au/in Canada, 1970–1990, ed. Alain-Martin Richard and Clive Robertson (Quebec: Éditions Intervention, 1991), 95.
51. 51 Pauline Butling and Susan Rudy, “Chronology 1 (1957–1979): From the Canada Council to Writing in Our Time,” in Writing in Our Time: Canada’s Radical Poetries in English (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2005), 5.
52. 52 Dennis Reid quoted in Rudy and Butling, 5.
53. 53 jwcurry, “5th Galumph: Underwhich Editions,” 17 March 2017, rich text file.
54. 54 Nichol, “Statement,” n.p.
55. 55 Nichol, “Cold Mountain,” in Journeying & the returns, n.p.
56. 56 Nichol, n.p.
57. 57 Nichol, n.p.
58. 58 Nichol, n.p.
59. 59 jwcurry (jwc 3o2), “COLD MOUNTAIN, by bpNichol. Toronto, Ganglia Press, 1966,” Flickr, 28 October 2015, https://www.flickr.com/photos/48593922@N04/22530764462/in/album-72157628170195319/.
60. 60 Later editions of the booklet, like damian lopes’s reissue, published by Fingerprinting Inkoperated in 1992, burned quite differently because the design was slightly altered: “doesn’t quite reproduce it correctly,” remarks curry; “Lopes having made the center sheet a french-fold that won’t tuck in properly. i tried to get it to poof out a bit to form a tube but this is as far as i could get it to stay open &, when i dropped a match down it—having held it a bit to get it going good—it promptly went out & i had to carefully use a lighter to get it going from the bottom of that central loop.” curry, “COLD MOUNTAIN.”
61. 61 Earle Birney, pnomes jukollages and other stunzas (Toronto: Ganglia Press, 1969), n.p.
62. 62 Sherril Grace, “Inner Necessity,” review of The Scream by First Draft, Canadian Literature, no. 108 (Spring 1986): 153.
63. 63 First Draft, The Scream: First Draft, the Third Annual Group Show (Ottawa: Ouroboros, 1984), n.p. The quotes cited here and in the next note come from the book’s back cover.
64. 64 First Draft, n.p.
65. 65 First Draft, 72.
66. 66 First Draft, 84.
67. 67 First Draft, n.p.
68. 68 Lori Emerson and Derek Beaulieu, “Introduction: Media Studies and Writing Surfaces,” in Writing Surfaces: Selected Fiction of John Riddell, ed. Lori Emerson and Derek Beaulieu (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013), 4.
69. 69 John Riddell. WAR, vol. 1 (Toronto: Underwhich Editions, 1981), n.p.
70. 70 Riddell, n.p.
71. 71 Riddell, n.p.
72. 72 Riddell, n.p.
73. 73 Riddell, n.p.
74. 74 Riddell, n.p.
75. 75 Riddell, n.p.
76. 76 Riddell, n.p.
77. 77 Riddell, n.p.
78. 78 John Riddell, “Object D’art,” in How to Grow Your Own Lightbulbs (Toronto: Mercury Press, 1997), n.p.
79. 79 Riddell, n.p.
80. 80 Four Horsemen, “Andoas,” Only Paper Today 6, nos. 4–5 (May–June 1979): 29.
81. 81 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 105.
82. 82 Four Horsemen, “Andoas,” 28.
83. 83 Four Horsemen, 29.
84. 84 Michael Dean, “An Approach to Linguistic Onto-Genetics,” Open Letter 4, nos. 6–7 (Winter 1980–1): 83.
85. 85 Michael Dean, “An Introduction from the Chair,” in Papers Delivered at the Symposium of the Institute of Linguistic Onto-Genetics, ed. bpNichol (Toronto: grOnk, 1985), 6.
86. 86 Steve McCaffery, “The Perseus Project: Paleogorganization and the Sexual Life of Fossils,” in Nichol, ed., Papers Delivered at the Symposium of the Institute of Linguistic Onto-Genetics, 69.
87. 87 Janine Mather, “The Alphabet Speaks,” Papers Delivered at the Symposium of the Institute of Linguistic Onto-Genetics, 81.
88. 88 Michael Dean, “The Imagination of Aldo Breun,” in Nichol, ed., Papers Delivered at the Symposium of the Institute of Linguistic Onto-Genetics, 18.
89. 89 Dean, 17.
90. 90 Dean, 16.
91. 91 Dean, 19.
92. 92 jwcurry, “defying linear deification,” Cross Canada Writers’ Quarterly 9, nos. 3–4 (1987): 7.
93. 93 curry, 7.
94. 94 curry, 7.
95. 95 curry, 7.
96. 96 curry, 7.
97. 97 Bayard and David, “Interview with bp Nichol,” 27.
98. 98 Nichol, “‘Syntax Equals the Body Structure’: bpNichol in Conversation with Daphne Marlatt and George Bowering,” in Miki, ed., Meanwhile, 276.
99. 99 Alain-Martin Richard and Clive Robertson, eds., Performance au/in Canada, 1970–1990 (Quebec: Éditions Intervention, 1991), 210.
100. 100 Gerry Shikatani, email message to author, 14 August 2017.
101. 101 Shikatani, email message.
102. 102 Gerry Shikatani, “Introduction,” in Paper Doors: An Anthology of Japanese-Canadian Poetry, ed. Gerry Shikatani and David Aylward (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1981), 7.
103. 103 Shikatani, 8.
104. 104 Gerry Shikatani, email message to author, 14 August 2017.
105. 105 Rachel Zolf, “Travailing Gerry Shikatani’s Protean Poetics,” West Coast Line 41, no. 4 (Winter 2008): 8, 9.
106. 106 Shikatani, “Introduction,” 10–11.
107. 107 Shikatani, 11.
108. 108 Shikatani, 13.

Notes to CODA

1. 1 Marshall McLuhan, “Canada: The Borderline Case,” in The Canadian Imagination, ed. Dave Staines (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 241.
2. 2 McLuhan, 226.
3. 3 Lillian Allen, “poem for bp,” in Psychic Unrest (Toronto: Insomniac Press, 1999), 69.
4. 4 Wayne Keon, “an opun ltur tu bill bissett,” in Native Poetry in Canada: A Contemporary Anthology, ed. Jeannette Armstrong and Lally Grauer (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2001), 86–7.
5. 5 Gregory Betts, “Becoming Clinamen: McCaffery and the (new) York School of Writing,” Open Letter 14, no. 7 (Fall 2011): 44.
6. 6 Betts, 44.
7. 7 damian lopes, “requiem for the avant-garde,” Sensory Deprivation/Dream Poetics (Toronto: Coach House Books, 2000), 23.
8. 8 See Eric Schmaltz, “The Politics of Memory: Digital Repositories, Settler-Colonialism, and Jordan Abel’s Un/inhabited,” English Studies in Canada 45, no. 4 (2019): 123–42.
9. 9 Dani Spinosa, “Introduction,” in OO: Typewriter Poems (Picton, ON: Invisible Books, 2020), 1–2.
10. 10 Spinosa, 2.
11. 11 Spinosa and Kate Siklosi, “Afterword,” in OO: Typewriter Poems, 70.