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Literary Criticism 20th Century

Borderblur Poetics

Intermedia and Avant-Gardism in Canada, 1963-1988

by (author) Eric Schmaltz

Publisher
University of Calgary Press
Initial publish date
Aug 2023
Category
20th Century, Poetry, Canadian

  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781773854564
    Publish Date
    Aug 2023
    List Price
    $74.99

  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781773854571
    Publish Date
    Aug 2023
    List Price
    $39.99

  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781773854601
    Publish Date
    Aug 2023
    List Price
    $39.99

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Description

Beginning in 1963 and continuing through the late 1980s, a loose coterie of like-minded Canadian poets challenged the conventions of writing and poetic meaning by fusing their practice with strategies from visual art, sound art, sculpture, installation, and performance. They called it “borderblur.”

 

Borderblur Poetics traces the emergence and proliferation of this node of poetic activity, an avant-garde movement comprising concrete poetry, sound poetry, and kinetic poetry, practiced by poets and artists like bpNichol, bill bissett, Judith Copithorne, Steve McCaffery, Penn Kemp, Ann Rosenberg, Gerry Shikatani, Shaunt Basmajian, among others.

 

Author Eric Schmaltz demonstrates how these poets formed an alternative tradition, one that embraced intermediality to challenge the hegemony of Canadian literature established during the heydays of cultural nationalism. He shows the importance of intermediality as a driving cultural force and how its proliferation significantly altered Canadian cultural expression. Drawing on a combination of archival research, historical analysis, and literary criticism, Borderblur Poetics adds significant nuance to theories and criticisms of Canadian literature.

About the author

Eric Schmaltz is Writer-on-the-Grounds in the Department of English at York University’s Glendon College, where he teaches and coordinates the certificate in Creative Writing across Contexts. He holds a Ph.D. in English from York University and was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Borderblur Poetics: Multimodality and Avant-Gardism in Canada, 1963–1988 (University of Calgary Press) and co-editor (with Christopher Doody) of I Want to Tell You Love by bill bissett and Milton Acorn (University of Calgary Press). He is also the author of the poetry book Surfaces (Invisible Publishing) and numerous shorter works. His critical and creative work has been published in periodicals and anthologies, including Jacket2, Bomb, Canadian Literature, the Berkeley Poetry Review, the Capilano Review, and BAX 2020: Best American Experimental Writing (Wesleyan University Press). He lives in Tkaronto (Toronto).

Eric Schmaltz's profile page