Tracing the Paths Reading Writing the Martyrology (Line, A Journal. No. 10)

bpNichol’s The Martyrology is one of the most outrageous, challenging, intriguing and accomplished long poems written in Canada. No other poem of its length has raised the major concerns of our time with such urgency and brilliance. Initially recognized by only a few, this luminous continuing work has attracted more and more readers with the appearance of each successive volume―Book 6 the most recent, with more books in process.

Tracing the Paths gathers contributions by a wide spectrum of readers who approach The Martyrology from both diverse and complementary critical paths. Interleaving the collection are comments by bpNichol, and the collection ends with a rich sampling of the next three books of this amazing unfolding work. There is also an introduction by editor Roy Miki, a bibliography of The Martyrology, reproductions of some manuscripts and text by bpNichol, and a chronology of personal and compositional events relevant to The Martyrology.

Tracing the Paths brings together the poet bpNichol and his readers in a collaborate form that is rare―if not unique―in Canadian criticism.

Roy Miki is an award-winning writer, poet, and critic who taught for many years at Simon Fraser University. He has written extensively on the work of bpNichol and edited Pacific Windows: Collected Poems of Roy K. Kiyooka, which won the 1997 Poetry Award from the Association of Asian American Studies. His major bibliographic study, A Record of Writing: An Annotated and Illustrated Bibliography of George Bowering, won the Gabrielle Roy Prize from the Association for Canadian and Québec Literatures as the best book on Canadian Literature of 1991. He was awarded the Governor General’s Award for Poetry for Surrender (2001). He is also the editor of Muriel Kitagawa’s This Is My Own: Letters to Wes and Other Writings on Japanese Canadians(1985); Tracing the Paths: Reading ≠ Writing The Martyrology (1988); and Meanwhile: The Critical Writings of bpNichol; and co-editor with Cassandra Kobayashi of Justice In Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement. Miki lives in Vancouver.