Recalling the trip we took to Limerick, and the poem we spun en route.

Fixed Trump's sick genocidal rant. The only possible positive outcome of the day.

Happening this Thursday (April 9): a one-day symposium on the bpNichol.ca Digital Archive!

You are invited and welcome to "The Leafless Page", a one-day symposium at TMU on Thursday 9 April. We will be launching the new bpNichol.ca Digital Archive and collectively beginning to imagine its future use to readers, teachers, students, and poets. Register here: bit.ly/4lO65y6

You are invited and welcome to "The Leafless Page", a one-day symposium at TMU on Thursday 9 April. We will be launching the new bpNichol.ca Digital Archive and collectively beginning to imagine its future use to readers, teachers, students, and poets. Register here: bit.ly/4lO65y6

It is my great pleasure to open the search for the Cosmic Consciousness Literary Residency at The SETI Institute. This 18-month remote residency comes with a $10,000 US stipend and is open to all writers and poets. Consider sharing with those who might be interested. www.seti.org/news/cosmic-...

It is my great pleasure to open the search for the Cosmic Consciousness Literary Residency at The SETI Institute. This 18-month remote residency comes with a $10,000 US stipend and is open to all writers and poets. Consider sharing with those who might be interested. www.seti.org/news/cosmic-...

The Reader, an iron sculpture. I couldn't find the name of the artist, but had some fun dialing the saturation up to 11.

50 years ago, Steve McCaffery published Carnival, The Second Panel, an explosion of words and letters produced by typewriter and stamp. "the message being that we are all poets one and all as long as we have lungs"

Dear Michael Morris, Love Gary Lee Nova, sent 2 June 1970; a colourful letter on purloined letterhead.

Sarah Tsiang's poem "Dick Picks". Her friend Josephine has been banned by the Calgary Catholic School Board from reciting this poem for the Poetry In Voice / Les voix de la poésie recitation contest. www.youtube.com/shorts/LNY3Y...

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.

Still yelling with Johanna Calle's "abecé" from her stunning alphabet book (2012).

Exoplanetary poetry: an update on SETI Live from the current Artists-in-Residence of the Cosmic Consciousness Residency (I show up towards the end lol). www.youtube.com/live/z3SWPwh...

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

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...