bill bissett | Image Being

bill bissett 

Image Being 

Vancouver, Canada: blewointment press, 1975

[32] pp., 15 x 15 cm., staple-bound

Edition of 300

Called “the greatest living poet today” by no less an authority than Jack Kerouac, bill bissett is the author of over seventy books. This early title is still available for around twenty-five dollars, despite being limited to three hundred copies and over fifty years old. 

The handmade book (with the cover and verso text hand scrawled) consists of typed poems, typewriter poems and simple marker drawings. 

My copy is signed to me and also contains the name of its previous owner: poet Earle Birney. 

bp Nichol | Motherlove

bp Nichol

Motherlove

Vancouver, Canada: Allied 03, 1968

12” vinyl record

Edition size unknown

This exceedingly rare recording is the poet's only full-length solo vinyl LP and features short tracks with titles like "Dada Lama”, "The Incest Song”, "A Hum for Stevie Winwood”, "Historical Implications of Turnips” and "Bill Bissett’s Lullaby.” Most are available to listen to on Youtube. 

A somehow still sealed copy is available for purchase here, for $1000. 

The price would seem to be inflated (you could amass a pretty substantial collection of bp Nichol books for this amount), but Discogs lists a thousand dollars as the lowest price this record has sold for. The highest is $2,759.99. 

"bpnichol was an accomplished and eccentric artist who recorded this break-through album of sound poetry in 1968 on Allied Records. Produced by Jack Boswell, the highly prized recording, entitled "Motherlove", was his first and only solo LP recording. Amongst collectors, it is considered to be the holy grail of experimental concrete sound poetry. The whimsical illustrations utilized "developer or translation poems', another bpnichol innovation. He also released two albums with The Four Horsemen, with Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton and Steve McCaffery. bpnichol died in 1988 at the age of 44.” 

- Robert Williston

bill bissett | Image Being

bill bissett 

Image Being 

Vancouver, Canada: blewointment press, 1975

[unpaginated], 32 pp., staple-bound

Edition of 300

Forthcoming

With the month-long focus on Edition Hundertmark wrapped up, I will be rushing to catch up on some 

recently acquired, recently unearthed, recently thrown-into-a-frame items, including works by Kay Rosen, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Dara Birnbaum, Kerri Reid, Robert Filliou, Michael Asher, Jonathan Monk, bill bissett, Jake Kennedy, George Bowering and others. 

Future publisher focuses will include Harry Ruhe, Siglio Press, Vice-Versand , Nero, and others.

12 Hour Reading of bpNichol's The Martyrology

bpNichol's best known work, the life-long poem The Martyrology is a work that encompasses 9 books in 6 volumes. As an unofficial part of Nuit Blanche tonight, a twelve hour reading of the work will take place at the Church of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields from 6pm to 6am.

In an introduction to the work in in Michael Ondaatje's 1979 Long Poem Anthology, Nichol suggests that "an ideal reading would be one which begins with 1) The Martyrology, but then dips into Journeying & The Returns, Scrapture and The Captain Poetry Poems along the way, much as one might read earlier history to gain a better appreciation of a particular period. This is a notion only, a tentative map". AvantGarden use this as a jumping-off point for their reading and rewriting of the work, featuring dozens of readers, including a few open mic sections between 11pm and 2am.

Also on site, a pop-up bookstore featuring works by many of the readers and a selection of titles from the Coach House Press and BookThug. Readers include bill bissett, Margaret Christakos, Jay MillAr, Charlie Huisken, Maggie Helwig, Jenny Sampirisi, Shannon Maguire and many more.

For more information, see the Facebook page, here.