Paul Dutton | The Plastic Typewriter

Paul Dutton

The Plastic Typewriter

Toronto, Canada: Writer's Forum, 1993

[22] pp., 27 x 21 x .5 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

Best known as a sound poet (in collaboration with Michael Snow and Jon Oswald in CCMC, and previously as a member of the Four Horsemen, alongside bp Nichol), Paul Dutton was an accomplished writer and poet, who produced many books, as both author and publisher of Underwhich Editions. He died on the 27th of May, 2025, at the age of 81.

Completed in 1977, this collection of typewriter poems was made with a disassembled plastic typewriter, an intact typewriter, carbon ribbons, carbon paper, a metal file and white bond paper. 

Excerpts are included in Barrie Tullett’s Typewriter Art: A Modern Anthology [below].

"Before I met bp, I had had a few poems published in litmags, as we called them in those days. But once Beep’s major artistic influence and personal friendship came into my life, from that point on the whole of my arts practice became focused on incorporating the concept of “borderblur,” a term coined by British typewriter artist and visual poet Dom Sylvester Houédard (or just dsh, as he signed his works). My whole practice revolved around the conviction that poetry and writing could incorporate visual and sound elements, which I still like to refer to as arising from an expanded view of language. But of course those are elements of language anyway. The sonic and visual components of language are inherent at a certain point in history. First, from day one, the sonic in everyday speech, and the visual once writing came into play. 

So my work and the work of many of my colleagues and peers in those areas just amplified those elements, while not abandoning the more conventional forms of literary expression, however unconventionally practised. At the same time, there are plenty of poets who work exclusively within the spheres of sound poetry and/or visual poetry.”

- Paul Dutton