Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Holiday Recommendation Guest Post #14: derek beaulieu






Rachel Simkover [ed]
An Anthology of Concrete Poetry (in braille)
Berlin, Germany: Motto Books, 2013
[unpaginated], 26.5 x 26 cm., paperback, spiral-bound
Edition size unknown

Available here, for  €30.00.

Rachel Simkover’s An Anthology of Concrete Poetry (in braille) is a brilliant conceptual translation of Emmett William’s indispensible – and rare – 1967 anthology of the same name. Simkover’s translation of the classic poems from Williams’ collection extends the logic of concrete poetry – the treating of the written particles of language as physical, manipulate-able objects – in a brilliant, tactile edition. Every page renders the already emotionally cool and distant poems in to smooth fields of snow-white pages punctuated by linguistic burrs for your fingertips. The light casts miniscule shadows from these Lilliputian towers, each beautifully articulating the rubble of a once-magnificent experiment in literary universality. Beautiful, vital, and majestic.

And, as an added bonus, Emmett Williams’ An Anthology of Concrete Poetry has recently been republished in a facsimile edition by primary information.

- derek beaulieu


derek beaulieu is the author of seven books of poetry (most recently Please, no more poetry: the poetry of derek beaulieu), four volumes of conceptual fiction (most recently the short fiction collection Local Colour: ghosts, variations) and over 150 chapbooks. His first volume of criticism, Seen of the Crime, was published Fall 2011 by Snare Books and is available on UBUWeb. In 2012 Bookthug published his critical edition (co-edited with Gregory Betts) of bill bissett’s seminal 1972 volume of experimental commentary RUSH: what fuckan theory and in 2013 Wilfrid Laurier University Press published Writing Surfaces: Selected Fiction of John Riddell (co-edited with Lori Emerson). beaulieu teaches Creative Writing, Theory and Contemporary Canadian Literature at the Alberta College of Art + Design.

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