bpNichol | Three Drafts

bpNichol

Three Drafts

Toronto, Canada: The Music Gallery, 1982

74.2 x 57 cm.

Edition of 53 [+2 PP] signed and numbered copies

An Ivory Arches 88 broadside printed with brick red, silver and gold silkscreen with a blind-embossed printer's mark lower right under signature. Originally created for a portfolio edited by Nobuo Kubota & Michael Snow.

The work is housed in the collections of the Burnaby Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada. 

 

Typewriters

After thirty entries I’m going to put the typewriter posts to bed, not because I’ve exhausted them, but them me. 

bpNichol | birds emerging from alphabet

 

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

bp Nichol | 8 Lines on/of/as + 2 Alpha pairings

bp Nichol

8 Lines on/of/as + 2 Alpha pairings

Toronto, Canada: Letters, 1986

16 pp. 13.5 x 10.5 cm., staple-bound

Edition of 100 

A xeroxed booklet printed for 2 Bit Poetry No. 9. The work was later reprinted in an edition of 43 "at the sign of the press" in April of 1994.

The original is available here for $50 CDN. 

Jiri Valoch | Unlucky Number

Jiří Valoch 

Gronk: Unlucky Number: 13 Minipamphs. No.7 

Toronto, Canada: Ganglia Press, 1970

26 pp., 30 x 23 cm., loose leaves

Edition of 400

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

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.

Dutton died late last month, when I was traveling. I’m a little dismayed at the lack of obituaries, given the breadth of his work. He was in two very significant performing collectives: CCMC (alongside Michael Snow, Jon Oswald and others) and The Four Horsemen (with bp Nichol, Steve McCaffery and Rafael Barreto-Rivera). He fronted the former (an avant-garde free jazz band) and was one of four vocalists in the latter, a sound poetry group. Dutton was also an accomplished writer and poet, and has produced many books, as both author and publisher.

I met Paul at Toronto’s City Hall, when CCMC were performing. Afterwards we went to dinner on Yonge Street with Michael Snow, Christian Bok and an actor from Les Miserable or some other big blockbuster theatre work from the time. We stayed in touch and subsequently I volunteered to help collate some of the publications he produced under his imprint Underwhich Editions (which co-produced The Plastic Typewriter). 

I later worked with him professionally when I helped produce a concert of CCMC and Christian Marclay, and later a compact disk recording of the event. 

I was too young to witness the Four Horsemen live, but I saw CCMC perform many times. Perhaps most notably when they opened up for Sonic Youth at the Warehouse, in 1998. I was worried that indie rock audiences would have little patience for the improvised jazz noodlings and Dutton’s odd vocalizations, but before the show Thurston Moore walked to the mic and announced that they were hand-picked to perform and that he hoped the audience would give them their full attention. Such was the sway of Moore at the time that the audience stood and watched silently and respectfully. 

Jiří Valoch | Poem for bpNichol

Jiří Valoch

Poem for bpNichol

Toronto, Canada: GrOnk, 1988

print on yellow paper

5.4 x 15 cm 

Edition of 89

bp Nichol | Lament

bpNichol

Lament : a sound poem to the memory of D. A. Levy who took his own life, November 1968

Toronto, Canada: Ganglia Press, 1969

[24] pp., 3.6 x 5”, staple-bound

Edition size unknown

d.a. levy was an American poet, artist, and publisher based in Cleveland, Ohio. Like bpNichol, he used lower case letters in his name and published mimeographed editions of his own work, and the work of poets he admired. 

He died at the age of 26, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on November 24, 1968, following a long legal battle over distributing “obscene poetry”. 

Published May 3rd, 1959, Nichol’s tribute Lament was previously performed as part of a reading in conjunction with the opening of an exhibition of concrete poetry at the UBC gallery the previous month. 

A second edition was released by the Writers Forum in London, in late ’69. A copy is available here, for $75.00. 

Ian Hamilton Finlay | The Boy's Alphabet Book

Ian Hamilton Finlay

The Boy's Alphabet Book

Toronto, Canada: Coach House Press, 1976

60 pp., 19.7 x 20.3 cm,, softcover

Edition of 1000 copies

According to materials in the archives at the University of Iowa, this title took over five years to produce. Ian Hamilton Finlay sent three letters in 1971, seeking help in publishing the book. He wrote to Michael Harvey, Udo Breger, and bp Nichol. 

Nichol replies in June 1973 that Coach House Press may be interested in publishing the book, and follows up a month later indicating that things are moving forward. He acknowledges receipt of the manuscript and photographs (Dave Paterson) in November 1974. It would be another two years before the slim volume was produced. 

The title was advertised as "one of the lengthiest works to date by the internationally renowned poet Ian Hamilton Finlay. The extended form of the traditional primer allows full range for the demonstration of Finlay's abilities as craftsman, toymaker and word-shaper.”

The work consists of an A-Z of pictures of Finlay's model boats, airplanes, weapons and kites, accompanied by texts by the legendary artist and poet. The texts range from the poetic to the merely descriptive. 

The book features photographs from Dave Paterson and was edited for the press by bp Nichol. This copy was initially owned by artist Greg Curnoe and is now in the collection of Bill Clarke. 

bp Nichol | Love Affair

bp Nichol

Love Affair

Toronto, Canada: Seripress, 1979

[7] pp., 13 x 17 cm., loose leaves

Signed and numbered edition of 100

7 unbound sheets printed on one side only and interspersed with tissue paper, housed in folded blue paper portfolio. The last sheet is the colophon, numbered and signed by Nichol. 

The scarce title is available from Attic Books, here, for $200 CDN. 

The Pipe: Recent Czech Concrete Poetry

bpNichol and Jiri Valoch [editors]

The Pipe: Recent Czech Concrete Poetry

Toronto, Canada: Ganglia Press, 1973

[26] pp., 32.5 x 23.5 cm., loose leaves

Edition of 750

bpNichol began grOnk with David UU (David W. Harris) in 1967, as an offshoot of Ganglia Press. The imprint was mostly devoted mostly to visual poetry. A series of sporadic pamphlets and booklets continued under the imprint until Nichol's death in 1988. More than a hundred grOnk items were published, with The Pipe one of the most ambitious (most others were cheaply produced mimeographed and stapled booklets). 

Published as gRoNK series 6, numbers 6&7, and printed at Coach House Press, this collection of Czech poets was edited by Nichol and the poet/artist Jiri Valoch. The collection featured concrete poetry (presented both typographically and photographically) by artists living in Czechoslovakia, with the exception of Ludwig Feller, a resident of West Germany.

Twenty six loose cards of different sizes (one folded) were housed in a cardboard box. The contents include: 

Karel Trinkewitz: "poem-object", "text", "poem-object", "poem-object"

Jiri Valock: "hommage to stockhausen" (1967), "textfragment" (1970), "poem score (random text 1970)", "typewriter poem (1965), "found concrete poem (1970)

Jan Wojnar: "processual poem" (1970), "processual poem" (1970), "processual poem" (1970)

Karel Milota & Jaroslav Koch: "a question and its romantic parasits"

Ladislav Nebesky: "number poem", "number poem"

Ludvik Feller: Untitled, Untitled

 J. H. Kocman: "All written on this page is a poem by J H Kocman" (pictured above)

Karel Adamus:"four variations of poem" (1970)

Jaroslav Malina: "three photopoems"

Jiri Valoch: "air (landpoem - 1970)"

Josef Honys: "poem", "knight-text"

Ladislav Nebesky: Untitled

Produced in an edition of 750 copies, the box is now rare and valued at a few hundred dollars, depending on condition.

This copy was recently added to Micah Lexier's collection, purchased from Monkey's Paw in Toronto. 

 

Bob Cobbing | Sonic Icons

Bob Cobbing

Sonic Icons

London, UK: Writers Forum Press, 1970

62 pp., 20.5 x 25.5 cm., staple-bound

Edition size unknown

Sonic Icons is the 9th publication from Writers Forum Press, a group that began meeting in 1952 and continues today, long after the death of Bob Cobbing, its founder. Concerned with the "limits of poetry", the group began publishing in the early sixties. Initially it self-published members writing and later would also publish work by John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, P.J. O'Rourke, Maggie O'Sullivan, Brion Gysin and many others. 

Sonic Icons is a hand-made collection of Cobbing’s typewriter poems, printed on a variety of coloured papers, with a rubber-stamped cover. The book is considered a landmark in Cobbing's work, but also in visual poetry in general - a moment when concrete poetry gestured towards the performative sound poetry. 

The yellow-page poem Beethoven Today, above, is reprinted in the 2015 book BOOOOOK: The Life and Work of Bob Cobbing. 

Already scarce, the provenance of this copy makes it particularly noteworthy - it is signed and dedicated by Cobbing to bpNichol, whose name he misspells:  “For Barry, greetings from Bob, 2 Nov 1970”. 

"Bob Cobbing is a senior and major exponent of the international concrete poetry movement in Great Britain. What is immediately impressive about his large body of work, in comparison with that of other poets in the field, is its range, and the published texts, which are freestanding visual poems, are also scores for vocal performance as sound poems. One of Cobbing's titles, Sonic Icons, stresses the interdependence of the two sides of his work through its appropriate anagram. His division of labor between self-publishing and performance ensures the unity of a creative project of great importance, yet his quest for new materials, techniques, and processes remains undiminished in energy and innovation."

- Robert Sheppard

"The publication of Sonic Icons in 1970 signalled a level of sophistication that was to become a trademark of Cobbing􏰂's visual and sound poetry from that point onwards. It was another pivotal moment for Cobbing􏰂's art."

- Mark Anthony Jackson

"I centre that in Sonic Icons, but one could place it in several other titles—in this case we have the intermediate stages resulting from new properties that Cobbing’s work accreted—for example, the idea of the graphical being readable into utterance; the idea of text on the page as being a landscape."

- Lawrence Upton

"Owning the means of production (the office duplicator, the photocopier) meant that Cobbing could conflate the processes of writing, design and printing. Performing regularly meant that he could heal the split in concrete poetry between those who presented silent icons, most famously Ian Hamilton Finlay, and those who developed the art of pure sound, such as Henri Chopin. Cobbing's anagrammatic title Sonic Icons was emblematic.

[...]

Between 1963 and 2002 Writers' Forum published more than 1,000 pamphlets and books, many of them his own work, but he was also generous as a publisher to younger writers, such as Lee Harwood and Maggie O'Sullivan. He issued texts by John Cage and Allen Ginsberg, and by fellow concrete poets, such Frenchman Pierre Garnier and Italian Arrigo Lora-Totino, both of whom were guests at the workshop in the 1990s."

- The Guardian

Four Horsemen | Nada Canadada

Four Horsemen

Nada Canadada

Milan, Italy: Holidays Records, 2018

12" vinyl LP

Edition of 250 

Originally released in 1972 by Griffin House,  this reissue of the acclaimed collection of sound poetry by Toronto's Four Horsemen (bpNichol, Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton, and Steve McCaffery) includes a sixteen-page booklet and a printed inner sleeve with original artwork. 

"The number of words we still use in our poetry comes as somewhat of a surprise to us, especially in the light of this album. Strictly speaking we cannot call what we do sound poetry if by it is meant that poetry which has its basis in non-verbal, vocal, and sub-vocal elements of sound. Nor are we into the electronic ramifications of sound in any sense beyond doing a record. We are in fact reluctant to pin the aesthetic continuum on which we operate to the first wall available. Still, perhaps the best name for what we do is what it always has been: poetry". 

- Rafael Barreto-Rivera. 

The Pipe: Recent Czech Concrete Poetry

bpNichol and Jiri Valoch [editors]
The Pipe: Recent Czech Concrete Poetry
Toronto, Canada: Ganglia Press, 1973
[26] pp., 32.5 x 23.5 cm., loose leaves
Edition of 750

bpNichol began grOnk with David UU (David W. Harris) in 1967, as an offshoot of Ganglia Press. The imprint was mostly devoted mostly to visual poetry. A series of sporadic pamphlets and booklets continued under the imprint until Nichol's death in 1988. More than a hundred grOnk items were published, with The Pipe one of the most ambitious (most others were cheaply produced mimeographed and stapled booklets).

Published as gRoNK series 6, numbers 6&7, and printed at Coach House Press this collection of Czech poets was edited by Nichol and the poet/artist Jiri Valoch. The collection featured concrete poetry (presented both typographically and photographically) by artists living in Czechoslovakia, with the exception of Ludwig Feller, a resident of West Germany.

Twenty six loose cards of different sizes (one folded) were housed in a cardboard box. The contents include: 

Karel Trinkewitz: "poem-object", "text", "poem-object", "poem-object"

Jiri Valock: "hommage to stockhausen" (1967), "textfragment" (1970), "poem score (random text 1970)", "typewriter poem (1965), "found concrete poem (1970)

Jan Wojnar: "processual poem" (1970), "processual poem" (1970), "processual poem" (1970)

Karel Milota & Jaroslav Koch: "a question and its romantic parasits"

Ladislav Nebesky: "number poem", "number poem"

Ludvik Feller: Untitled, Untitled

 J. H. Kocman: "All written on this page is a poem by J H Kocman" (pictured above)

Karel Adamus:"four variations of poem" (1970)

Jaroslav Malina: "three photopoems"

Jiri Valoch: "air (landpoem - 1970)"

Josef Honys: "poem", "knight-text"

Ladislav Nebesky: Untitled


Produced in an edition of 750 copies, the box is now rare and valued at a few hundred dollars, depending on condition.

Jiri Valoch | 8 SONNETS

Jiri Valoch

8 SONNETS

Toronto, Canada: Ganglia Press, 1969

[unpaginated], 14 x 11 cm., staple-bound

Edition of 200

Ganglia Press was founded in 1965 by bpNichol and Dave Aylward, while they were both working at the University of Toronto library. In addition to a magazine, the pair published their own works under the imprint, and works by friends and colleagues, such as bill bissett, Michael Ondaatje, Steve McCaffery, Victor Coleman, Nelson Ball and others. 

Ganglia Press also published An Interrupted Poem by Valoch, and included him in an anthology of concrete poetry from Czechoslovakia.