bill bissett

sublingual is perhaps the most highly structured yet of bissett's "textual visions." Its first seven poems construct a Genesis, beginning with a poem of birth--our pre- or sub-lingual first breath, a phenomenological gesture of recognition, of both being and belonging, in and of the world. Following this short creation story, the book continues to unfold in luminous and lucid delight.

a novel uv pomes threding thru each othr th main charaktrs langwage n all uv us hedding off in all direksyuns ths book asks is langwage lost wev had creativ langwage almost 7 thousand yeers we still dont undr stand each othr veree well dew we want 2 thru th mysteree loves n rapturs speek

A pioneer of sound, visual, and performance poetry, bill bissett composes his poems as scripts for pure performance and has consistently since the 1960s worked to extend the boundaries of language and visual image, honing a synthesis of the two in the medium of concrete poetry. bissett's latest collection since the monumental breth (Talonbooks, 2019), its th sailors life / still in treatment is, using the poet's own words, "an epik poetik novel uv langwage n speech" confronting "thos controlling effekts on us" and about "acceptans uv loss greef separaysyuns charaktrs in serch uv self liberaysyun n societal equalitee n all th forces against that path." Eschewing the artificial hierarchies of meaning and the privileging of things ("proper" nouns) over actions imposed on language by capital letters; the metric limitations imposed on the possibilities of expression by punctuation; and the illusion of formal transparency imposed on the written word by standard (rather than phonetic) spelling, bissett's expressive assemblages in this collection are "like walking thru sum fne lines." The poems in this collection are coupled with stunning illustrations by the author.

Bill bissett and Milton Acorn are two of Canada's most significant, and most controversial, literary figures. In the 1960s, bissett's renown as an experimental poet was growing as his social and political concerns were stirred by the voice of the counterculture. Acorn, inspired by socialist theory and imagism, was building his reputation as a poet on the margin who ran against the grain of the literary establishment. Both were rising towards cultural prominence—one, a true beatnik and the other, a certifiably rugged lyric poet. In 1965 they came together in a remarkable collaboration, a challenge to the established literary tradition and a call for a better world.Published for the very first time, I Want to Tell You Love is the combination of bissett and Acorn's seemingly incongruous poetics to confront the turbulent and swiftly changing world of the 1960s. A collection of poems and illustrations, it is a window into the lives and motivations of two soon-to-be-canonized cultural figures. I Want to Tell You Love is a work of friendship, a shared vision of resistance, and a mutual longing for a better world.This critical edition offers the manuscript in its intended form alongside contextualizing scholarship in a significant contribution to literary history. I Want to Tell You Love offers an opportunity to reevaluate the nature and scope of Canadian poetry during a critical time of national cultural awakening.

New poems from Canada's shaman of sound and performance poetry, bill bissett. bissett's innovations in sound poetry shaped poetry, music, painting, and publishing and have stimulated, provoked, influenced, shocked, and delighted audiences for half a century. In this new collection of concrete poems, bissett writes "poemes uv greef transisyun n sumtimes joy byond binaree constraints if evreething goez what is aneething accepting nihilism lettr texting as an approach 2 heeling sorrow denial."

Written in his unique phonetic language, bill bissett's second novel-poem, hungree throat, recounts the relationship of two men--one bold and unafraid, the other burdened by terrible memories and unable to trust. We witness ten years of a shared life marked by hunger "4 breething being singing eeting digesting speeking saying food kissing watr love." bill bissett's charged readings, which never fail to amaze his audiences, incorporate sound poetry, chanting, and singing, the verve of which is only matched by his prolific writing career--over seventy books of bissett's cutting-edge poetry and fiction have been published to date.

This is the first appearance of fictional characters in the work of legendary poet bill bissett, "a one man civilization."

bill bissett, who recently celebrated his seventieth birthday, remains even in his "biblical years" Canada's most exciting, innovative pioneer in the field of the written, spoken, performed, illustrated and sculpted word. No one over the past half century comes close to what bissett has accomplished in pushing the boundaries of language beyond what was imagined in the mid-twentieth century as their furthest possible horizon, and what is most astonishing is that he is still the vanguard of that movement in the "language arts", not just in Canada, but around the world today. As a way of introducing new readers to the non-hierarchical orthography, syntax and breath-determined metric and cadence so essential to the construction of meaning in the performance scores of his narrative poetry, Talon asked bissett to tell his readers in his own inimitable and "raging" way what his latest book is "about": time is reelee abt how evreething is fleeting n how we deel with that n how deeplee we undrstand that awareness th jewels shine as our undrstandings th layrs n openings apertures n iris lens in or not n how manee narrativs reveel our paradoxikul n continualee shifting minds ...a storee is what time is it ...4 ourselvs n our specees n how timeless th breth uv th galaxee n oftn ourselvs tho agen fleeting lyrik song chant philosophikal theologikul prsonal propheseez vizual n tanguld tangos ...with th invisibul dansrs ...n th 4tune tellrs shuffuling theyr decks how we yern 4 n letting go uv our games finding love n th chancs 4 savin th environment n our selvs -- bill bissett

The quest in this latest fusion of song, sound, performance and visual poetry from bill bissett is for a human condition outside the perpetual terror of the twenty-first century--a terror based in an irrational fear that the loss of our ideologies, our homemade gods and bombs will leave us impoverished and vulnerable to the ambitions of others. "I call you again over a vast linguistic valley," offers the poet. "The brain is a soft flower, tremulous in its aspecting, and wanting to trust, we lose what we seek and find what finds us. This is earth. These are people." This tireless quest to find the delight of discovery, wonder and truth in what at first sight seems foreign, mysterious and apparently "incorrect," defines both bissett's latest book and his singular poetic genius.The joy of discovery and recognition in our encounter with the poet's unpunctuated, uncapitalized phonetic spelling and visual presentation offers us a reward in direct proportion to our willingness to engage the work by abandoning all of the baggage of the learned expectations we bring to the act of reading--allowing the words and their new echoes to cross the "vast linguistic valley" that is redolent with the imaginative possibility of entrances to others as they actually appear, and not as we expect them to be. As always, bissett pushes his linguistic palette here into realms that ideographically lend access to his intellectual discoveries. His introduction of an occasionally determined capital A in the middle of a word or phrase, representing "a tent on a mountain," echoes the profound spirituality of this book, and its suggestion that "The mind is a kaleidoscope--discouragement--satisfaction--and finding the way again. There are no happy endings. Happy moments, yes. The drama and all the poetic approaches continue to be."

A pioneer of sound, visual and performance poetry--eschewing the artificial hierarchies of meaning and the privileging of things ("proper" nouns) over actions imposed on language by capital letters; the metric limitations imposed on the possibilities of expression by punctuation; and the illusion of formal transparency imposed on the written word by standard (rather than phonetic) spelling--bissett composes his poems as scripts for pure performance. His primal rejection of all the limiting conventions of written language has allowed him to both maintain and foreground the appearance of any linguistic event as a living performance rather than backgrounding it(s breath [spirit]) as a "dead letter" in all of his work. Here, bissett reminds us (based on the latest neurological research) that: langwage centrs ar all ovr th brain northern wild roses dansing can stall deth postal parts uv speech arts uv each sylabul a liter sentens thn thot wud happn

th text below is an abbreeveatid transliterasyun uv bill bissetts own descripsyun uv his latest book. "narrativ enigma / rumours uv hurricane is about the fragility and incompletion of all narratives, really. Stories, of course, can be condensed and are more portable, more understandable, and in so doing lose much of their efficacy and real accuracy--are often platforms of propaganda and spin, mostly--and what we settle for in order to experience stability, even some of the time. If there is any completion, that dynamic map, cartography, is with our makers, if we are created ...Is a story longer than a synapse? Is a story mostly an incomplete construct, and is constructed by ourselves? Every story has a loophole--pieces missing from the puzzle. The frailty within the neurological story is our frailty--our fragility--our aberrantly and very elaborately framed world of mythology--the other, silence, and very chattering explanations--all part of our attempts to create civil society with human rites.Yet seeded within these benign edifices of the minds and protocols and seeming accountabilities are the gaps and shorts and over or under imbalances, needed to create, and enough to undermine and topple everything. These are the 'rumours of hurricane,' and why controlling psychotics can become world leaders. These problematics are also inevitably parts of all our magic. Hurricanes and rumours have high degrees of very zany unpredictabilities, and often come from the enigma of our narratives. The narrative, non-narrative, sound, song, meditation, metaphysical, spiritual, asking, political, visual poems discuss all the issues that are raised in the title."

bissett's latest book marks some significant boundaries, draws some sharp, clear lines for this veteran of the evolving phonetic alphabet, and of sound, concrete and performance poetry. While the work remains overwhelmingly playful, subtly layered, and full of the astonishment and sheer delight at seeing and hearing things one has never quite thought of the way the poet/performer imagines them before, there is a new edginess to this work that will shake up both old fans and new readers of what can only be called the unique bill bissett experience in language. These new sharper edges come, quite generously, from the poet's own re-assesment of where the self ends, and the other begins, and a growing recognition that those boundaries often need to be imposed, and defended, if destructive relationships of co-dependency are to be avoided. bissett's usual biting, acute, often deliciously comic interrogation of the socio-political events towering around us like so many boxes we need constantly to think, feel and imagine our way out of, is counterposed in this collection by a recurring dream of a future wherein 20 billion people are locked in a global war on the poisoned surface of the planet while a small minority of peace-loving libertarians have garrisoned themselves into a scanner-protected, completely virtualized underground.While the Bill Gates compound reference of this recurring nightmare is inescapable, the text remains profoundly ambivalent about where one might be better off. There's just a touch of scariness here in bissett's latest exuberant rage through the urban wilderness of our time.

Ten "translationed" fragments from bill bissett's new book: 1. Another near-life experience. 2. "'Help, help,'" such a classical utterance...3. Can we connect? Is there time for that? 4. Obsession is a replacement for interaction. 5. they showed a cluster of, circle of, people getting back up to standing position after, perhaps, kneeling. It looked like some of them, quite older (it was mid-winter, how their bones must have hurt in the chill!) and the voice-over said "'Cannibalism has now entered the war in Bosnia.'" Through the gloomy coats and legs of the now standing people we could dimly see wrecked bodies in the snow. And then, much later in the day, the same pictures / different voice-over said: "'The grieving in Bosnia continues as the war carries on its grim parade.'" So they're just getting up from snacking? Or mourning? (The line of meaning, often so distinct, blurs with what they think we can handle). 6. If despair is a mask for self-pity, what is self-pity a mask for? 7. Fear. Of farming. Why do we fear farming? The disappointment of the agricultural revolution. 8. Someone says "'God is dead'" to them, and they hear "'God is Ed.'"And then you introduce someone to them-say: "'This is Ed.'" And they go, "'Please forgive me!'" or, "'How's your son?'" 9. The interesting texture of the bathwater sustains me. 10. "'Get thee to a nouneree.'" Ophelia had been experiencing noun slippage, (and haven't we all?) And where is the nouneree? Do you know the way? With heightened and more sophisticated noun awareness, do we come closer to happiness, starring ourselves? Ophelia unfortunately didn't find the nouneree and perhaps thought it was the name of the river. Can you walk into the same nouneree twice? She jumped in. Lost lovesickness, now called co-dependency. As always, it's much better complete, and in the original.

scars on th seehors is bill bissett's latest report from and to the image nation, in which his metric performs a kind of absence of narrative intent that lets everyone and everything speak for itself: eye dont have 2 invent th world ium / alredee in it There is much evidence of wounding here, of things gone completely raging: whats th mattr / why yuv hardlee touched yr dinnr / at all / n its yr favorit saus / is it th tektonic plates but also a hope of healing, of patching up, of scarring: i see th salmon talks will / resume on monday / well thank god at leest th / salmon ar talking along with, of course, the usual "difficult choices": it usd 2 be / (4 konrad white n ken / thomsod) / yu cud get sum toilet papr / nd a newspapr both 4 / a dollr fiftee / now yu cant yu gotta / make a chois Definitely not Conrad Black's National Post. Ain't it great?

accepting th radiant dances uv being 4 kleerances uv ko dependenseez n help th selvs being plural storeez sound vizual politikul non narrativ fuseyn linguisteek mewsik letting go uv th rashyunalizasyuns irrashyunalizaysyuns blaming games they made me putting th focus on wuns selvs irridescent tinkshurs simultaneous shiftings th langwages 4 aims chill n th needs 4 health edukay syun sochul programs n civil human rites guaranteez 2 lift us n loving th reelee nameless being within each diffrent n same prson th lines defining n dissolving th jade n gold fevr on th edg reseed in th disapeering air mixes n arous th senses th prfume hints n th tall buildings tottr seegulls encirculing th see fadid turquois wood frame hous sew stung by salt spray th soul rocks loving th nameless isnesses within each prson being

What is logic? Isn't it a sickness we create? Useful for certain things, but not paramount in helping us be & share & change. Angels are rising in spirit places, helping us through & set against a back-drop of deaths, tortures, imprisonments, AIDS, big religious right-wing power control grabs, unroyal families, increasing poverty & the growing under class. Hierarchical constructs, elected or not, try to dislodge, shifting icons are dissolving & there is a nostalgia for what never was. But we are not collapsing under others' controlling: Our selves are infinitely dispersing. There is no palace and we are already inside it. There is much to celebrate. We board, fly & land & through the miracles of being, loving, needing & the wonders of language, though even the pilot is missing.

WARNING each wun uv thees pomes may contain inkorrect thots these pomes have not bin kleerd by th ministree uv korrect thots Ths book contains reel storees that have reelee happend th mysteree uv pain has not bin adequatelee xplaind 2 us why memorees can cum crashing down on us robbing us uv our present or why we lifting grasp hold of a suddn laffing idea baloons us up n what we lern from memorees I cum skraping across a glacier bringing yu ths burnd flowr see its petals bleed as it opns all ovr our plans our mesurd safetees see its tabula filling with such wondrous snow these pomes have not bin bleerd by th ministree uv korrect thots we have no control ovr what is not being xpressd heer eithr byond ths sign yr on yr own

This volume represents the most definitive and comprehensive selection of bissett's writing from the 1960s and 1970s, in voices "erotik, politikul, humorous, lyrikul, sound-vizual, narrative, meditative, konkreet, collage, nd song-chants."

The publication of bill bissett's Rush: what fuckan theory; a study uv language in 1972 firmly ushered Canadian poetics into the postmodern era. Out of print for 40 years - and reissued here complete with an interview with bissett about the book's creation and a critical afterword by derek beaulieu and Gregory Betts - Rush embodies a collagist, multi-conscious approach to art that recognizes no division between the work and the world, the author and his sexuality, his breath, his influences; the theory and the practice. Arguing that "a new line has startid," Rush captures the urgency of a new model of production that resists the closure and mastery of any one mind. It is an elegant rejection of aesthetic ego and all presumptions of authority. Rush: what fuckan theory; a study uv language is a vital, vocal protest against business as usual and the exploitation of the individual from one of Canada's most important avant-garde poets.