These annotations to Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons underline her eccentric use of the sounds and rhythms rather than the sense of words. Peters illuminates the long prose-poem's departures from conventional meaning and grammar and brings understanding to syntax noted for its defiance of conventional norms. The analysis is sensitive to themes of emerging modernism and cubism, but also early feminism.

Carl Peters
Carl Peters wrote his master's thesis on bp Nichol and the Kabbalah and his doctoral thesis on Nichol and the practice of the sacred. His critical study of bill bissett was published by Talonbooks in the spring of 2011. Dr. Peters teaches poetics and avant-garde art at the University of the Fraser Valley.

bill bissett

originalee from lunaria ovr 300 yeers ago in lunarian time
sent by shuttul thru halifax nova scotia originalee wantid 2
b dansr n figur skatr became a poet n paintr in my longings
after 12 operaysyuns reelee preventid me from following th
inishul direksyuns
?bill bissett

bill bissett garnered international attention in the 1960s as a pre-eminent figure of the counterculture movement in Canada and the United Kingdom. In 1964, he founded blewointment press, which published the works of bpNichol and Steve McCaffery, among others.

bissett’s charged readings, which never fail to amaze his audiences, incorporate sound poetry, chanting and singing, the verve of which is only matched by his prolific writing career?more than seventy books of bissett’s poetry have been published.

A pioneer of sound, visual and performance poetry?eschewing the artificial hierarchies of meaning and the privileging of things (?proper” nouns) over actions imposed on language by capital letters; the metric limitations imposed on the possibilities of expression by punctuation; and the illusion of formal transparency imposed on the written word by standard (rather than phonetic) spelling?bissett composes his poems as scripts for pure performance and has consistently worked to extend the boundaries of language and visual image, honing a synthesis of the two in the medium of concrete poetry.

Whether paying tribute to his hometown lunaria or exercising his native tongue dissent, bissett continues to dance upon upon the cutting edge of poetics and performance works.

bill bissett was recently a featured poet on the Heart of a Poet series, produced in conjunction with Bravo! TV.

Among bissett’s many awards are The George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award (2007); BC Book Prizes Dorothy Livesay Prize (2003) peter among th towring boxes / text bites; BC Book Prizes Dorothy Livesay Prize (1993) inkorrect thots.

Carl Peters' profile page

Reviews for Previous Work – textual vishyuns
"A much-needed study, by turns polemical and proselytizing. Peters’ book signifies a crucial starting point for investigation of bissett’s important contributions to Canadian literature." – Canadian Literature
"an astonishing book on how bill bissett thinks within his art. Here is a discovery of poetic space and time coming together, where we glean time and space entering into empathy with the object. Peters’ learned awareness of the image’s relationship to bissett’s surreal vulnerability to surface and depth reveals the graphic touch of the voice and hand, whether on paper or canvas ... textual vishyuns is not only a book on bill bissett, but also a way of bringing modernist thought and vision together without taking either apart." – Jerry Zaslove

"Carl Peters has pulled off a terrific critical irony for our neomodal time, the first scholarly study of bill bissett’s poems and pictures. His referentiality is wide and his blade is sharp. He is both argumentative and blissful. I’d say that bill is fortunate to have this knowledgeable attentiveness, and I’d guess that he would agree." DIV style="MARGIN: 0cm" align=right>– George Bowering