THIS YEAR BANFF CENTRE CELEBRATES 50 YEARS OF LITERARY ARTS PROGRAMMING. Since its foundation, Literary Arts at Banff Centre has become a globally renowned creative catalyst for established and emerging writers.

Initiated in 1974 by W.O. Mitchell, Literary Arts programs at Banff Centre are known to push the boundaries of Canadian and international conventions and foster growth among alumni.

This 50th anniversary milestone represents an opportunity to look back on five decades of exceptional Canadian and international writing, and to look ahead with post-secondary educational programs that are responsive to the needs of artists of today and tomorrow.

Many of the country’s award-winning writers have been residents or faculty at the Centre. Banff Centre alumni are consistently published nationally and internationally and recognized by literary awards – including the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Governor-General’s Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and more.

Banff Centre continues to widen its reach to new artists. We welcome audiences to witness the act of creation and experimentation in literature: to be surprised by the high-wire act of contemporary writing and to think “Wow, I didn’t know that writing could do that!”

Recent writing residencies have included science fiction and fantasy, young adult fiction, children’s books, graphic novels, and form-based writing. Literary programs have also explored computational writing, where authors use code, computer programming, and AI to imagine new ways of considering creativity and authorship.

Dialogue and collaboration upholds both individual artistic practices and writing as a community-driven, communitarian act. It is an act of creative conversation, of inspired collaboration that reaches across demographics, languages, identities, nations, and histories.

Banff Centre creates educational opportunities for writers looking for new ways to write, new positions to take, and new perspectives on the world’s literature, responsive to the current needs of literary artists to work in an evolving field.

With the support from a vibrant writing community, Banff Centre encourages artists to take risks, learn and share, and participate in a broader, deeper artistic conversation.

“Banff Centre is a writer’s paradise – offering a safe and inspirational environment for literary artists to push boundaries and explore their full potential with the support of exceptional mentors and peers.”

— Dr. Derek Beaulieu, Director of Literary Arts, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity

Click here to Donate in support of Banff Centre’s Literary Arts Residencies…

Since the late 1990s I have been publishing steadily in the UK, trying to develop conversations and collaborations with UK-based presses and authors. Complementing my work in Canada, I have found UK-based presses to support risk-taking work, have a culture of chapbook (what they call “pamphlet”) publishing, be open to perfect-bound editions of visual poetry, experimentation, and often have an open mind to the use of colour. In the last 30 years I have published with If P then Q, Information as Material, Guillemot, Pamenar, Dostoyevsky Wannabe, Future text, The Other Room, Essence, Reaktion, the Centre for Print Research, the University of Plymouth, Poem Atlas, Hesterglock, Uniformbooks, Penteract, Ma Bibliotheque, Zimzalla, yt communications, the Laurence Sterne Trust, and Writers Forum … and each press has brought new opportunities and discussions. I am so grateful for my UK-based colleagues who have published my work — and to those who have included my work in exhibitions, readings, collaborative performances (and to colleagues at Roehampton University where I defended my PhD).

Last weekend I was able to build upon those decades of conversations by attending the London Small Publishers Fair in order to launch SILENCE: LECTURES AND WRITINGS. It was like coming home — so many great conversations and ideas over pints, coffee and laughter…

Of course I came home with a small stack of new material to read — including books from Guillemot Press, JR Carpenter, Uniformbooks, Atlas Press, Ma Bibliotheque, and Henningham Family Press… (and more!)

and walking the streets of London brought other editions to the fore as well — especially after visits to Gosh!, the Tate Modern, the London Review Bookshop, Freedom Press Anarchist Bookshop, and the Royal Academy of Art…

and now to conquer the jetlag and catch up on some sleep.

Toronto’s Anstruther Press has just published a new chapbook of mine entitled 🙂 . This volume explores the strange and sinister history of the Smiley Face, from its involvement in Nixon’s trip to China, through to the space race and serial killers. The Smiley Face has been ever-present in the weird and destructive corner’s of western culture. Produced in a limited edition of 50 copies, order your copy today!

I’m thrilled to announce that Astra Papachristodoulou’s Poem Atlas – a small, London-based press focusing on poetic objects – has just published my FUTURE POEMS! Designed to mimic the format of scratch-off lottery cards, each edition of FUTURE POEMS has a grey scratch-off panel which reveals a provocation about the future of poetry. Produced in a very limited edition, FUTURE POEMS won’t be around for long, order today!

As Banff’s Poet Laureate, I invite musicians and performers to create digital sound performances (song, composition, collage, digital, etc.) of my punctuation-only book, SILENCE: LECTURES AND WRITINGS.

SILENCE: LECTURES AND WRITINGS erases the entirety of John Cage’s book of the same name, leaving only the fields of punctuation: the silence of breath, pause and atmospheric noise (more info here)

I invite you to create a sonic interpretation of any section in the book, save it online and tweet out your results with the hashtag #beaulieusilence. This is a community-based generative project and everyone is welcome, let’s see where your creativity takes you!

Initial responses / performances are here:

• Gary Barwin performs a reading of a selection from Silence: Lectures and Writings
• Gary Barwin transforms his initial reading into “Silence Drone” a 4’33” soundscape
• Eduardo Abrantes performs a reading, in Portuguese (as filmed by Elee Kraljii Gardiner in Helsinki, Finland), of a selection from Silence: Lectures and Writings

Copies of SILENCE: LECTURES AND WRITINGS can be ordered here …

OUT NOW! A brand new edition of my 2014 Les Figues title “Kern.” Punctum Press has returned the title to print as part of their Special Collections initiative. “Kern presents moments of poetic nostalgia for the signposts of a past that never fully existed.” Supporting open source publishing, Punctum titles are available as printed editions or free PDFs.

NEW FROM TIMGASET EDITIONS:

SILENCE: LECTURES AND WRITINGS by DEREK BEAULIEU

In 1961 John Cage published his seminal book of essays, SILENCE: LECTURES AND WRITINGS. In that collection of essays, Cage expounds his theoretical framework and compositional style, and builds upon 4′33″. 4′33″—frequently disparaged as a farce played upon a devoted audience—is a composition which, focusses the musical potential of the ambient sounds of performance halls and shuffling audiences. While the audience is visually captivated by the (non)movements of the pianist, the auditory experience—the performance itself—takes place with the creaking of chairs, the clicking of HVAC systems, the coughing and jittering of uncomfortable audience members; 4′33″ is as much about the structures of performativity as it is about critical and close listening; the allowing of small ambient noises to be considered with as much import as musical notes on an orchestral score.

With his edition of SILENCE: LECTURES AND WRITINGS, Derek Beaulieu has created a visual response to Cage’s SILENCE, or more accurately, to a poorly-scanned PDF version found online found on monoskop.org (which coincidently also hosts a PDF edition of his a, A Novel). On each page Beaulieu has deleted all the text except the punctuation marks—which visually represents breath, pauses and breaks—and the grime and digital “noise” on the poorly-scanned page, the creaking digital performance space, of Cage’s lectures.

SILENCE: LECTURES AND WRITINGS is published in a form which mimics the size and shape of Cage’s Wesleyan UP edition, with the addition of a critical, explanatory afterword by noted scholar Peter Jaeger, grounding the edition in ambient sound, erasure, Buddhism, and conceptual writing.

Digitally printed in an edition of 200 copies, 304 pages, size 170×200 mm, with a full colour matte laminated cover.

Officially launched at the London Small Publishers’ Fair 2023, October 27-28, 2023.

Order your copy today.

Small presses, imprints, and reading series hold an incredibly important role in the development of artistic communities, movements, and aesthetic values. I strongly recommend AMONG THE NEIGHBORS, a magazine series — effectively a monograph series — edited by Edric Mesmer under his auspices as Poetry Cataloguer at SUNY Buffalo. Mesmer is also a poet (check out his BlazeVox title Poems: now and then), and brings a passion for poetry to his editing, each volume highlights a historic or contemporary poetic community. Each issue is vital, providing bibliographical information, personal narratives, interviews and historic overviews of ephemeral publishing venues which have transformed the scene.

A special note should also be made of rob mclennan’s blog post on Among The Neighbors, perhaps the only piece of criticism in response to the series to date. (I’ve swiped the photograph for this post from rob’s blog…)

There have been 23 issues to date. The first 10 issues are available as free downloadable PDFs but physical copies of every issue are also available for free. Email Edric Mesmer at esmesmer@buffalo.edu for more information…

AMONG THE NEIGHBORS #1-23:

23 – Published at the Poetry Project: a bibliography of the little magazines and small press books published at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church In-The Bowery / Nick Sturm

22 – “Kindred Spirits Spark”: An Exploration of the Origins and Evolution of The Sisters of Color Writers Collective and its Literary Journal SEEDS / Esperanza Cintrón and Lori Anderson Moseman

21 – A Bibliography of Belladonna* Collaborative Chaplets 2000–2020 / Krystal Languell

20 – An Imaginary Cartography of Constellations & Cloud Forms / The Neighbors, collated by series editor Edric Mesmer

19.2 – About Telephone: An Interview with Maureen Owen / M.C. Kinniburgh

19.1 – About Telephone: An Introduction & Bibliography / M.C. Kinniburgh

18 – Silver in My Mines: Peter Hay’s Work for Two Rivers Press, 1994-2003 / Geoff Sawers

17 – “some nights I stay there, some nights I don’t”: Top Stories, Fiction Diction, and the Work of Donna Wyszomierski / Edric Mesmer

16 – Talking of Curtains / Paul Buck

15 – Umbra magazine (1963-1974): An Introduction and Bibliography / David Grundy

14 – On The Doris / Tamas Panitz & Billie Chernicoff, editors

13 – To Breathe Poetry Among the Neighbors: Two Essays on Anerca, a Journal of Experimental Writing (1985-1990) / Adeena Karasick & Kedrick James

12 – Reading Piglets: Westerly Magazine, metadata, and the play of digital access to literary publication / Catherine Noske

11 – Washington, DC Poetry: Mass Transit and Folio Books Reading Series / Tina Darragh, with an appendix by Edric Mesmer

10 – Teaching the Little Magazine / Michael Leong

9 – Cultural Shape-shifters: cartonera publishers / Ksenija Bilbija

8 – Editing O.ARS: 1981–1993 / Donald Wellman

7 – Migrating Ears: Kris Hemensley’s The Merri Creek, Or Nero and H/EAR: with some brief comments on the earlier publications Our Glass, Earth Ship, and The Ear in a Wheatfield / Tim Wright

6 – A Bibliography of John Bennett’s Vagabond Press, 1966–2005 / Christopher Harter

5 – Remembering El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn / Sergio Mondragón, translated with additional commentary by Margaret Randall

4 – Skanky Possum Press: A (Personal) Genealogy / Dale Smith

3 – TISH: Another “Sense of Things” / Derek Beaulieu

2 – In Search of Blew: An Eventual Index of Blewointment Magazine, 1963–1977 / Gregory Betts

1 – Poetry in the Making: A Bibliography of Publications by Graduate Students in the Poetics Program, University at Buffalo, 1991-2016 / James Maynard