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 counter-culture movement in Canada and the U.K. 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—over 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.

Without a single nostalgic bone in his body, bissett has remained at the cutting edge of poetics and performance works for almost forty years. He now writes and paints out of studios in Vancouver and Toronto.

bill bissett was recently a featured poet on the Heart of a Poet series, produced in conjunction with Bravo! TV. Produced by Maureen Judge and Tina Hahn, directed by Maureen Judge in association with Bravo!, and hosted by Angela Rawlings, Heart of a Poet is a hip half-hour show that takes viewers inside the poetry community, in all its various forms, alternate incarnations and unfettered diversity. For more information, please visit their Web site http://heartofapoet.ca.

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.