{"id":33677,"date":"2012-03-05T17:17:06","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T17:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/03\/05\/asuddenline-all-this-week-im-going-to-be\/"},"modified":"2017-07-01T19:50:33","modified_gmt":"2017-07-01T19:50:33","slug":"asuddenline-all-this-week-im-going-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/03\/05\/asuddenline-all-this-week-im-going-to-be\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-33677 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/03\/05\/asuddenline-all-this-week-im-going-to-be\/attachment\/33678\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/tumblr_m0e1lxiI5S1qj6psvo1_1280-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/tumblr_m0e1lxiI5S1qj6psvo1_1280-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/tumblr_m0e1lxiI5S1qj6psvo1_1280-100x100.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, 100vw\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/03\/05\/asuddenline-all-this-week-im-going-to-be\/attachment\/33679\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/tumblr_m0e1lxiI5S1qj6psvo2_400-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/tumblr_m0e1lxiI5S1qj6psvo2_400-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/tumblr_m0e1lxiI5S1qj6psvo2_400-100x100.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, 100vw\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/03\/05\/asuddenline-all-this-week-im-going-to-be\/basho-translation\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/tumblr_m0e1lxiI5S1qj6psvo3_250-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-33680\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/tumblr_m0e1lxiI5S1qj6psvo3_250-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/tumblr_m0e1lxiI5S1qj6psvo3_250-100x100.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, 100vw\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<figcaption class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-33680'>\n\t\t\t\tBasho translation\n\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/asuddenline.tumblr.com\/post\/18786521714\/all-this-week-im-going-to-be-posting-about\">asuddenline<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(All this week I\u2019m going to be posting about bpNichol, because I love bpNichol)<\/p>\n<p>From the biography of bpNichol at the <a href=\"http:\/\/bpnichol.ca\/about\">Online bpNichol Archive<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>bpNichol <\/strong>(Barrie Phillip Nichol) was born September 30, 1944 in Vancouver, British Columbia. His writing is, by definition, engaged with what he called \u201cborderblur\u201d: in his lifetime he wrote (somewhere between) poetry, novels, short fiction, children\u2019s books, musical scores, comic book art, collage\/assemblage, and computer texts. Nichol was also an inveterate collaborator, working with the sound poetry ensemble The Four Horsemen (whose members were Nichol, Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton, and Steve McCaffery); Steve McCaffery as part of the Toronto Research Group (TRG); the visual artist Barbara Caruso; and countless other writers.<\/p>\n<p>In the mid 1980s bpNichol became a successful writer for the children\u2019s television show\u00a0<em>Fraggle Rock<\/em>, produced by Jim Henson. His early work in sound was documented in Michael Ondaatje\u2019s film\u00a0<em>Sons of Captain Poetry<\/em>. A second film has been made on Nichol,\u00a0<em>bp: pushing the boundaries<\/em>, directed by Brian Nash; he also appears in Ron Mann\u2019s film\u00a0<em>Poetry in Motion<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>bpNichol died in Toronto, Ontario on September 25, 1988.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>bpNichol\u2019s poetry could be said to be obsessed with language, or more than that, communication beyond language. This might be best summed up by his poem Landscape I:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>alongthehorizongrewanunbrokenlineoftrees<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>We create meaning by making distinctions: I know that this poem reads \u2018along the horizon grew an unbroken line of trees\u2019 because I know how to separate the sounds that way. But why should the characters signify those sounds? Am I able to see any other ways of interpreting the line? The word \u2018unbroken\u2019 is very significant here\u2014we (must) break this line to create civilisation, and the poem questions this process of creation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For bpNichol (as it was for cummings) the visual appearance of a poem was\u00a0inextricable\u00a0from it\u2019s tone, meaning; reading.<\/p>\n<p>Nichol was obsessed with the possibilities of language but also possibilities in general (see his endless variations of poems and other art), and what exactly we lose and gain by making various choices. This can lead his work to heady grounds (Nichol was a \u2018pataphysicist, something which I barely understand the wiki summary of) but at the same time his childlike joy in letters and language makes his poetry very human and accessible, like the \u201ctranslation\u201d of Basho\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bopsecrets.org\/gateway\/passages\/basho-frog.htm\">frog haiku<\/a>\u201d at the top of the post. His \u201cmagnum opus\u201d, <a href=\"http:\/\/archives.chbooks.com\/online_books\/martyrology\/index.html\">The Martyrology<\/a>\u00a0is an epic 9-book, \u201cunending, never beginning\u201d stream-of-consciousness ride through Nichol\u2019s life, something which sounds off-putting but Nichol\u2019s self-conscious, self-deprecating\u2014and more importantly, kindness and humourous\u2014persona means it can survive the occasional obscurities. When Nichol writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>it will make sense yet<br \/>this blue &amp; green<br \/>these fragmentary lives &amp; conversations<br \/>&amp; the white world, saints\u2019 homes, in between\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>we know that it refers not just to his own life, but also an admission that his efforts to understand it might not actually help <em>us<\/em>\u00a0to understand it; Nichol repeatedly plays on the issues of reading, writing and textuality: The Martyrology itself was being \u201cconstantly written.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The photo at the top of the post is a poem of bpNichol\u2019s engraved into <em>bpNichol lane<\/em>, a road running alongside Coach House Press in Toronto, a publishing house that bpNichol was deeply connected with. (A Coach House employee re-waters the word LAKE every day).<\/p>\n<p>(I will probably not cover Nichol\u2019s sound work, so here is a link to some of it:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.writing.upenn.edu\/pennsound\/x\/Nichol.php\">http:\/\/www.writing.upenn.edu\/pennsound\/x\/Nichol.php<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>asuddenline: (All this week I\u2019m going to be posting about bpNichol, because I love bpNichol) From the biography of bpNichol at the Online bpNichol Archive bpNichol (Barrie Phillip Nichol) was born September 30, 1944 in Vancouver, British Columbia. His writing is, by definition, engaged with what he called \u201cborderblur\u201d: in his lifetime he wrote (somewhere &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/03\/05\/asuddenline-all-this-week-im-going-to-be\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-uncategorized","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33681,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33677\/revisions\/33681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}