In an effort to have quality poetry inbreak on the daily consciousness of those who would welcome it, I have finally followed through on delivering poems to people via SMS, using twitter. If you want short poems delivered to your mobile phone, please subscribe here.

Twitter is a free service and most mobile phone companies do not charge you to receive text messages. I might not need to shout “FREE POEMS!” but I might as well. Also, if you start twittering poems, please let me know, so I can follow you.

Using SMS text messages to convey poetry, or poetic lines, has inherent constraints (140 characters, no line breaks, ect.). Particularly because I love the long poem, I am not suggesting that SMS poems will replace poetry. Instead, this form offers people a chance to have tiny pieces of art engage them unexpectedly in their day. Like all art, sometime my poems will be read, sometimes not; sometimes they will resonate, sometimes they won’t. Regardless, they exists as potential and possibility.

Since twitter is more than 5 minutes old, I know I am not the first person to imagine this application of the technology. However, I have yet to find any community formed around the idea of poets sharing lines of their work with one another. For myself, I would welcome having a few high quality writers inviting me to pause from the daily routine by sending beautiful words to my phone.

I respect some of the reservations that some people, like Robert Peake, have about technology and poetry. However, I am not looking to replace poetry with Poetry 2.0. Said again, this experiment is simply an augmentation of poetry and an invitation to pause. The power of SMS poems does not lie in the fact that they become instant or commodified, but rather that people encounter poems within their pattern of their day. This idea is not much different from putting poetry on buses or beautiful graffiti art on someone’s walk to work. The difference SMS poems offer is choice to read or not read.

So, here are my self-imposed guidelines for using twitter for poetry:

• Each SMS poem will be treated as a self contained unit. Preceding poems are not required for context.
• I will offer myself up in language. I will strive for beautiful words and for reflective utterances, not simply inconsistent ephemera
• I will offer an sms poem about once a day
• I may include lines from larger works in sms poems. I may also incorporate sms lines in larger works.

Look forward to my lines. I look forward to yours.
L

On March 16th, 2008, Ian Robinson published an article in the Calgary Sun entitled Poet Proposal Lacks Rhyme or Reason, which argues that Calgary should spend tax dollars on practical improvements and maintenance of the city, rather than on a civic poet.

Robinson’s article gives me some degree of amusement, simply because he plays into (and plays up!) stereotypes of the Calgarian male: straight, virile, opinionated, proud, simple, and recalcitrant. I suspect he’s sipping a beer, pleased to know his work has irritated anyone left of far-right! However, he might need something stiffer. His article uncovers a personal desperation for a civic poet who will inspire his imagination.

(more…)

I have included an audio file of my poem The Late Teacher for your enjoyment. I’ll be reading again at South Country Fair and I am very much looking forward to it (after missing last year for very understandable reasons).

The Alphabet Game: A bp Nichol Reader (editted by Darren Wershler-Henry and Lori Emerson
Coach House Books, 334 pp)

bpNichol inducts his reader into the play and challenge of language, but where should a reader begin Nichol?

Although Nichol is best know for his concrete poetry, he produced an extraordinary amount of writing during his career—including scripts for Fraggle Rock. The Alphabet Game is a collection that offers readers who are new to Nichol an ideal first encounter. Those who are already familiar with Nichol will be attracted to the text because it includes excerpts from some more difficult to find publications.

Having not read Nichol at length, I approached the book with quiet cynicism, expecting that the humanity which draws me to art would suffer, as it sometimes does, under the impulse of literary experimentation. However, Nichol’s work is both beautiful and intellectual; the warmth in his words crowns his innovative endeavours.

The Alphabet Game displays Nichol’s stylistic diversity, offering excerpts from not only his groundbreaking concrete poetry but also from later works, including his unfinished lifelong poem The Martyrology. This collection gives the reader a perspective on nearly three decades of Nichol’s writerly development and experimentation. Editors Wershler-Henry and Emerson include both witty and serious selections from Nichol, displaying a breadth of emotions he is capable of evoking. The Alphabet Game foregrounds the envious power and challenge of strong writing.

In selections from Translating Translating Apollinaire, Nichol applies numerous creative permutations and arrangements of a single poem to place side-by-side multiple and untethered interpretations. With simple modifications to single words, Nichol imbues them with additional meaning in Still Water.

Inclusions from the nine books of The Martyrology are the highlight of this reader. The editors found the selection process from these books “particularly and excruciatingly difficult,” however they manage to present a consistent and strong poem. Although this process of selection essentially creates a poem unintended by Nichol (if that is possible), the assemblage ultimately prompts readers to seek out The Martyrology in its original form.

The Alphabet Game succeeds in showing Nichol’s lifelong concern with interrogating linguistic assumptions and habits, however it also seems to disclose much about the poet himself. A haunting question of Nichol’s writing concerns the disarming authenticity that permeates his work; to what extent does the writer avail himself to the reader? I do not yet have an answer to this question. The hallmark of good art, Nichol’s writing invites and withstands rereading and critical investigations.

The Alphabet Game is an excellent place to wade into Nichol. Those who do will likely be swept forward into one of the many publications included in this marvelous collection.

For those interested in hearing Nichol’s work, particularly his sound poetry, the Penn Sound offers mp3 recordings of his performances.

Other Reviews of The Alphabet Game:
The Edmonton Journal had a particularly well-written review.
The Torontoist has a strong, short review as well.
I also found an interview with Lori Emerson here.

Here’s what Mike says about bp:

His wit, along with the seriousness, was there to keep the language free and untethered, to keep the poem aware of its roots, like a tuxedo worn with bare feet in a muddy river … No other writer of our time and place was so diverse, attempted so much, and never lost sight of his intent. – Michael Ondaatje

Last poetry reading for awhile—need to focus on “making a masterpiece of myself” and writing.