Aug. 9, 2016 — The nostalgic tippity tap of typewriters could be heard downtown on Tuesday as some of the city’s leading wordsmiths came together for an afternoon of on-the-spot poetry.

Described as “Pop-Up Poetry,” the event featured Micheline Maylor, Richard Harrison, Cassy Welburn and I — producing custom poems at a breakneck pace, using vintage typewriters.

The on-site experiment was inspired by a group of typewriter poets from Texas. It was intended to create awareness around the Poet Laureate, the city’s rich literary scene and the people behind the words. Mount Royal presented the event, with support from Downtown Calgary and Calgary Arts Development.

Emiko Muraki, Director of Community Investment and Impact for Calgary Arts Development, highlighted the Poet Laureate’s role in spreading the word — both literally and figuratively. “The Calgary Poet Laureate is an artistic ambassador for Calgary, presenting at civic events and producing literary works that reflect our city and its citizens,” Muraki said. “Over a two-year term, the Calgary Poet Laureate makes over 100 public appearances in Calgary and beyond, at readings, literary or civic events, workshops and conferences, interacting with colleagues, aspiring writers, media and audiences.”

more information:

The Mount Royal University press release

Pop-up poetry permeates perfunctory prose in Calgary (Metro Calgary)

Taking poetry to the streets of Calgary, typewriter in hand (Calgary Herald)

Taking poetry to the streets of Calgary (Calgary Sun)

CBC Homestretch Calgary Radio

Poets hit Stephen Ave during the lunch hour

Pop-up Poetry rises downtown

CBC News

University of Calgary Press tours Calgary’s Little Free Libraries & my passport-stamp  concrete poem series -thanks!

I’m proud to announce my latest volume of concrete poetry:

“Ascender / Descender”

Achill Island, Ireland: redfoxpress press, 2016.

40 visual poems.
A6 format (10.5×15 cm / 4 ” x 6″) – 44 pages
hardcover, thread and quarter cloth binding
laser printing on ivory paper.
price: 15 euro / 20 US $ / 13 UK Sterling

to order copies, head to redfoxpress website

I’m proud to announce that my a a novel is forthcoming from Paris’ Jean Boîte Editions, Spring 2017.

 
Published in the autumn of 1968, Andy Warhol’s a a novel consists solely of the transcribed conversations of factory denizen “Ondine” (Robert Olivo). Ondine’s amphetamine-addled conversations were captured on audio tape as he haunted the factory, hailed cabs to late-night parties and traded gossip with Warhol and his coterie. The tapes were quickly transcribed by a quartet of stenography students (including The Velvet Underground’s Moe Tucker); rife with typographic errors, censored sections—and a chorus of voices—the 451 pages of transcriptions became, unedited, “a new kind of pop artefact.”

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.

Building upon my previous novels flatland: a romance of many dimensions (2005) and Local Colour (2008), I have just completed my a a novel, an erasure-based translative response to Warhol’s controversial masterpiece. On each page of Warhol’s original, I erase all of the text leaving only the punctuation marks and onomatopoeic words. Theodor Adorno, in his essay “Punctuation Marks” argues that punctuation marks are the “traffic signals” of literature and that there is “no element in which language resembles music more than in the punctuation marks.”

The resultant text is a novelistic ballet mécanique; an orchestration of the traffic signals and street noise of the 1960’s New York City, an eruption of traffic and tires, overheard music and construction noise. 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.

Since December 2015, I have posted daily progress on a a novel on twitter at @erasingwarhol … the entire novel is now online as a series of JPG files.

Alberta College of Art + Design, where I am a sessional, contract instructor, has just posted a video of my teaching philosophy (click the photo…)

Ken Hunt has reviewed KERN in the latest issue of FreeFall Magazine

For the recent “Christian Bok Unbound” event, celebrating his work and noting his departure from Calgary, No press produced (or distributed) a number of celebratory small press editions —  including editions from Bart Beaty, Gregory Betts, Peter Jaeger, Craig Dworkin, Jaap Blonk, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Nikki Sheppy, Kit Dobson, derek beaulieu, Ken Hunt, Adam Westman, Daniel Levin Becker, Beata Berggren, Anthony Etherin and Christian Bok.