Delighted to share this Call for Papers: “the leafless page”: bpNichol and the (true, eventual) Digital Archive. Please consider sharing this CFP to all who might be interested. It would be wonderful to see you at the launch of the new digital archive and to think through its future together.

The whole play is a video chat

Save the date! I will be hosting a one-day bpNichol symposium at Toronto Metropolitan University on Thursday 9 April 2026. Details to follow!! Possible, tentative name for the event: "the leafless book": A One-day Symposium Celebrating the Re-launch of bpNichol.ca

David Aylward. "Crossword." Seripress, 1975.

This was the group cheering on the Canadian truckers sounding their blast horns ripping through Ottawa for over three weeks straight, right?

There's NewPoetry today from Gregory Betts. newpoetry.ca/2026/01/26/t...

Sean Monahan (8Ball) suggests that, maybe, the Mayan prophecy that the world would end in 2012 actually did come true: that the breakthrough adoption of smartphones and social media in 2012 definitively cut us off from the real world, and we are now moored outside of it.

Which kind of creative writing will be replaced by generative AI? Poet Greg Betts answers this, and reveals how his writing has evolved and why community is so important. https://www.oncreativewriting.com/post/poet-gregory-betts-on-literary-community-collaboration-and-the-changing-face-of-writing

Hem Press' editor has been doing an infrequent podcast interviewing leading poets such as @derekbeaulieu.bsky.social, Penn Kemp and @whatisapoem.bsky.social among others. Check it out! m.youtube.com/channel/UCVj...

AND here and here and here - Phyllis Webb, Naked Poems, 1965

"The avant-garde is a storehouse of available and cumulative techniques deemed viable and adaptable to the urgencies of the present." -- Steve McCaffery

When you read your reviews...

@bettinaforget.bsky.social @setiinstitute.bsky.social

"Moire Typeface" designed by Jack Gilbe (2009). Jack wanted to put a positive spin on this printers’ nightmare. The solution requires Moire to succeed – a typeface in which each character comprises two linear blocks. When overprinted, the letterforms appear as Moire interference.

"Gone is the word as word, though the word may still be used as sound or shape. Poetry now resides in other elements." --Bob Cobbing, "The Shape and Sound of Poetry"

"Faring thee well, now, let your life proceed by its own design. Nothing to tell now, let the words be yours, I am done with mine." RIP to Bobby Weir, a true psychedelic cowboy. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp18...

Early Glitch: my poem "When She is With I" with artist Toke Nygaard, published in Born Magazine (1999). Looks like the animated version has been lost to cyberspace.

Many thanks to Peripety and/or Tronies and @robmclennan.bsky.social for this profile :-) The photo is of me immediately after finishing my marking, hence the glazed I-can't-see-my-hand look.

What the hell, Horace?!

2026, let the games begin

HNY!!

Ray Ellenwood reflects on the 100th anniversary of Claude Gauvreau's birth, including a moving procession along Rue Sainte-Catherine with oversized puppets and a brass band to tribute the Automatist poet and playwright. publicreverie.com/celebrating-...

"No other writer of our time & place was so diverse, attempted so much, & never lost sight of his intent." – Michael Ondaatje. Purchase SOME LINES OF POETRY FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF BPNICHOL, lovingly edited by @whatisapoem.bsky.social & I, from @coachhousebooks.bsky.social: chbooks.com/Books/S/Some...

Susan Connolly, "Christmas Eve" (2019). Merry merry, to all who celebrate!

the page is just a metaphor for all that can’t be put on it —Mark Yakich

Check out these lovely asemic works by Pouran Jinchi, "Untitled (Poetry #96-1 & 2)" and "Ruba’iyat Series #34" (1996).

A blank list. This is modern art.

VERY grateful for this amazing review by Amanda Earl in The Temz Review: "playful, sexual, animalistic, fun, kinda kooky, uninhibited"

Wondering what to read over the holidays? Look no further. @henryghenrik.bsky.social @garybarwin.bsky.social @whatisapoem.bsky.social @ghostlyverse.bsky.social #poetry #bookreviews

awkwawrd

"Art is all use." —bill bissett A beautiful rejoinder to "art for art's sake".

I maintain that Tanya Tagaq's 2019 Ted Talk is amongst the best sound poetry created in the 21st century: youtu.be/dumvYzfuT0w?...

It's #blackfriday here at the ILT: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (2nd Dublin edn.) Two single-sided black pages face each other at pp. 56-57. "The ‘blackness’ is printed on both sides of the leaf with what appears to be a solid woodblock." The Laurence Sterne Trust

Syllable Haiku One two three four five six seven nine ten elev- en fourteen sixteen

My life is a series of people saying to me, "I can't believe you don't know this!" and a series of people saying to me, "I can't believe you know this!" Latest example: Kristof Lauwers' "After bpNichol" (2009). www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4P2...

Paul Dutton, "Texture" (1979).

Stained-glass version of my Penteract Press book BardCode. I have been encouraged to make one of these for every one of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets. The labour!

Five Formative Texts from the Canadian Avant-Garde: stridemagazine.blogspot.com/2025/11/five...

Write a poem

A simile is like an I in smile.

Probably my favourite book from 1624: Giovanni Battista Bracelli's "Bizzarie di Varie Figure" (1624).

What's that, Christmas? Friends, Penteract Press is sadly winding down operations. They have launched a major sale of some of their incredible books (including BardCode): Customers get 40% off all books and chapbooks using the code PENULTIMATE at checkout. penteractpress.com/store/bardcode

I have found the definition of Beauty--of my Beauty. It is something ardent and sad, something a little vague, allowing for conjecture... finally (so as to admit courageously how modern I feel in matters of aesthetics), a sense of unhappiness. —Charles Baudelaire, Fusées

Georg Nees "Schlotter" (1965-68) remade by Christina Pletsch. I have measured out my artlife in sugar cubes...

"Narsinh XVIII"

Cassils, "Undersight" (2025). On Oct. 4, the artist will project the 199 words banished by the Trump administration, encrypted as dots and dashes of searing light, into the night sky over 12 hours, from sunset to sunrise. "It's a distress signal," says Cassils.

14 Hours until the first rocket is launched in Canada from the new Atlantic Spaceport (near St. Lawrence, Newfoundland). www.nordspace.com/info

I'm so excited to annouce that Do It Wrong: How to Be a Poet In the Twenty-First Century is now available for preorder from @pressassembly.bsky.social assemblypress.ca/shop/do-it-w...

"A History of Poetry Comics" by JB attn: @derekbeaulieu.bsky.social