by BP Nichol (Author), Lori Emerson (Editor), Darren Wershler-Henry (Editor)
A member of the sound-poetry collective, The Four Horsemen, winner of a Governor General's Award for Poetry and writer of Fraggle Rock, bpNichol was one of Canada's most important poets.
All of Nichol's writing is distinguished by his desire to create texts that are engaging in themselves as well as in context, and to use indirect structural and textual devices to carry meaning. The astounding range of Nichol's practice included musical theatre, children's books, comic book art and collage/assemblage. Broadly spanning the history of Nichol's work, The Alphabet Game: A bpNichol Reader includes both classics and esoteric treasures. From the early typewriter poetry of Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer and Nichol's life-long work of poetry The Martyrology, to the heartbreaking prose of Journal and the whimsical autobiography of Selected Organs, this collection maps the literary career of this enigmatic poet.
For first-time readers of Nichol, this comprehensive collection is a perfect introduction to his groundbreaking work; for loyal Nichol fans, this reader is the the long-awaited compilation of his less readily available work.
Author Biography
bpNichol (1944-88) is the author of countless publications in a variety of forms, including poery (lyric, concrete, visual, sound), fiction, and children's stories, and a winner of the Governor General's Award for Poetry. He also wrote drama for the stage and television scripts, including "Fraggle Rock." Nichol was a member of the Toronto Research Group and the Four Horsemen, a sound-poetry performance group. His major work is the nine-volume "The Martyrology," widely taught and considered a seminal work in Canadian letters. Smaro Kamboureli is the Canada Research Chair in Critical Studies in Canadian Literature at the University of Guelph. She is the editor of the Writer as Critic series and of "Making a Difference: Canadian Multicultural Literatures in English," and the author of "Scandalous Bodies: Diasporic Literature in English Canada." Darren Wershler-Henry is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. His most recent books are "apostrophe," with Bill Kennedy, and "The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting."