Description:
For bpNichol, who called himself a writer who writes about the act of writing," criticism was not only a means to address his own poetics and the textual practices of his generation; it was just as essential to his imagination as were his poems themselves.
Finally, after years of readers struggling to find or access many of Nichol's innovative critical writings, this much needed and anticipated volume makes it possible to follow Nichol through his thirty-year-long thoughtful engagement with the process of creation. With essays, reviews, talks on poetics, letters, notes, photographs, and excerpts from interviews, editor Roy Miki has put together a provocative record of bpNichol's always explorative approaches to the material conditions of textual production. Representing a substantial collection of Nichol's critical writing from the mid-1960s up to the year of his death in 1988, Meanwhile: The Critical Writings of bpNichol puts him, rightfully, on the vanguard of Canadian literature and critical theory. This collection is essential to our sense of Nichol not only as a writer, but also as a person of exemplary generosity, imagination, and intellectual range.Brief description:
Roy Miki is an award-winning writer, poet, and critic who taught for many years at Simon Fraser University. He has written extensively on the work of bpNichol and edited Pacific Windows: Collected Poems of Roy K. Kiyooka, which won the 1997 Poetry Award from the Association of Asian American Studies. His major bibliographic study, A Record of Writing: An Annotated and Illustrated Bibliography of George Bowering, won the Gabrielle Roy Prize from the Association for Canadian and Québec Literatures as the best book on Canadian Literature of 1991. He was awarded the Governor General's Award for Poetry for Surrender (2001). He is also the editor of Muriel Kitagawa's This Is My Own: Letters to Wes and Other Writings on Japanese Canadians(1985); Tracing the Paths: Reading Writing The Martyrology (1988); and Meanwhile: The Critical Writings of bpNichol; and co-editor with Cassandra Kobayashi of Justice In Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement. Miki lives in Vancouver.
Review Quotes:
Almost 15 years after his untimely death, Nichol is being recognized as a major Canadian literary figure.
National Post