I will be delivering the Learning Sciences Brown Bag Lecture at the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary on November 4th (12:00-1:00, room EDC386 NEW ROOM). Thank you very much Pratim Sengupta, Research Chair of STEM Education for the invitation…

Reading/Writing as an Artistic Practice

Building upon his novels flatland: a romance of many dimensions (2005) and Local Colour (2008), Derek Beaulieu has completed a a novel, an erasure-based translative response to Andy Warhol’s controversial masterpiece. Warhol’s a a novel favours faithful transcription over plot, chance over predicted composition, and a consideration of a novel’s precepts over its actual content. a a novel mines writing for an inter-disciplinary musicality which reflect the urban environment, which foregrounds a complex of non-narrative sounds embedded within our conversations. Giving every page—and his entire oeuvre—online for free, Beaulieu’s translation is a playground for generative response. In this talk, Beaulieu will illustrate the work of art, and through this painting, argue how reading and writing can be (and perhaps more provocatively, should be) re-imagined as artistic practice.

Derek Beaulieu is the author of 8 collections of poetry, 4 collections of fiction and 2 collections of essays. Beaulieu co-edited bill bissett’s RUSH: what fuckan theory (with Gregory Betts), Writing Surfaces: fiction of John Riddell (with Lori Emerson) and The Calgary Renaissance (with rob mclennan). Beaulieu has received 5 teaching awards, including the Robert Kroetsch Teaching Award from the Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs (ccwwp) and was Calgary’s 2014-16 Poet Laureate. Beaulieu has exhibited his artwork across Canada, the United States and Europe. He was recently named the first recipient of the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Arts Celebrated Alumni Award in recognition of his community service, teaching and artistic practice.