Northern Wild Roses / Deth Interrupts Th Dansing

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

originalee from lunaria ovr 300 yeers ago in lunarian time
sent by shuttul thru halifax nova scotia originalee wantid 2
b dansr n figur skatr became a poet n paintr in my longings
after 12 operaysyuns reelee preventid me from following th
inishul direksyuns

―bill bissett

bill bissett garnered international attention in the 1960s as a pre-eminent figure of the counter-culture movement in Canada and the U.K. In 1964, he founded blewointment press, which published the works of bpNichol and Steve McCaffery, among others.

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 poetry have been published.

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 and has consistently worked to extend the boundaries of language and visual image, honing a synthesis of the two in the medium of concrete poetry.

Among bissett’s many awards are: The George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award (2007); BC Book Prizes Dorothy Livesay Prize (2003) peter among th towring boxes / text bites; BC Book Prizes Dorothy Livesay Prize (1993) inkorrect thots. bissett was a recipient of the Order of Canada in 2024.