LCT JOURNAL 2020
Spoken World Poetry: bpNichol and Eco-criticism Katrina Vogan
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t is a common trope in nature poetry that language seems to have a limit when describing the non-human. We might cite E.J. Pratt, who wrote in “Sea-Gulls” that “The language had no simile” (2); or Duncan Campbell Scott, who in “The Height of Land” speaks of an “inarticulate part” (53), and asserts that “no man may tell/the secrecy of that spell/golden and inappellable”(57-59); or Robert Bringhurst in “The Anecdote of the Squid” who describes an “unspoken/word, whose muscular/non-pronunciation the squid/ alone is known to have mastered” (29-32). In this context, there is something distinctly refreshing about the philosophies of Canadian poet bpNichol. A researcher and lover of language, bpNichol’s theories encourage a redefinition of what counts as poetry and an expansion of how poets use language. In his hands, language ceases to be a restriction and becomes an apparatus for discovery. Barrie Phillip Nichol, commonly stylized as bpNichol, was a Canadian poet who became famous for his works in the genres of visual, sound, and concrete poetry. Born in Vancouver in 1944, he would publish “30 chapbooks, books and pamphlets” (Poetry Foundation) before his death at 44 in 1988. He was a “great believer in the power and reach of collaboration” (Barbour), as evidenced by the number of his works dedicated to other figures of the Canadian art scene. He was a member of the editorial board of Coach House Press and a founder of grOnk literary magazine and Ganglia Press. He was also a member of the sound poetry collective “The Four Horsemen”. He won the Governor General’s Award for poetry in 1970. Nichol’s poetry is notable for its experimental forms. His visual poetry often incorporates cartooning, comic strips, and other forms of illustration. Nichol called this technique “borderblur”, borrowing the term from Dom Sylvester Houédard. Borderblur is “poetry which arises from the interface, from the point between things, the point in which poetry and painting and prose are all coming together” (“Interview: Nicette Jukelevics” 134). A key feature of his aesthetic is a formalized curiosity. In an interview with Nicette Jukelevics, he said “In a way, what I am into is research. I know that, I am into research writing...there is an element of research in most of what I do.” (137) The area that Nichol researched most rigorously was language. Nichol was deeply fascinated with the structures and systems of language: he “constantly explored the dualism of language as both container and content” (“Visual Poetry”). His poetry reflects an ethos of experimentation. Nichol isolated variables and repeated procedures in the same way that a scientist Page 33
