“each poem playfully dares the individual reader to discover different associations, different textual memories from within the jumble of non-semantic, alphabetic elements which constitute these pages” … Pank Magazine‘s Klara du Plessis takes an interest in KERN
August 4, 2015
CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE with CALGARY’S POET LAUREATE AT ALBERTA COLLEGE OF ART + DESIGN THIS FALL
This Fall, Calgary’s Poet Laureate, and Alberta College of Art + Design Instructor, Derek Beaulieu will be asking students to tell stories by playing games.
Last year Beaulieu offered a course in Creative Writing using manual typewriters, this year students will study and build games and books.
The entire course will focus on “Choose Your Own Adventure” books with classic 1980s volumes as well as contemporary literary examples (from Canada and around the globe) of novels and poems which are made in the style of games and choose-your-own-adventures. Students will examine tabletop games, narrative dice, shuffle books and card games and more.
These texts and games help students explore written stories that take the form of video games and websites; a form of writing where the story is made – and the adventure had – by combining the efforts of the author and reader. A dynamic way of exploring what it means to write today.
Like many other ACAD courses, this course is fully transferable for credit at other Albertan universities and colleges.
In order to make this course a success, he is seeking the donation of “choose your adventure” paperbacks, basic role-playing games and narrative card games. Donations will be offered to students as a means of focussing on student experience and hands-on learning.
ABOUT DEREK BEAULIEU:
Derek Beaulieu is Calgary’s 2014-2016 Poet Laureate and a multiple award-winning sessional instructor of Creative Writing and Literature. He has taught at ACAD for 5 years and holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Roehampton University (London, UK).
Beaulieu received the 2014 National CCWWP ROBERT KROETSCH TEACHING AWARD for teaching classes that are “intimate and focus on making. Studio courses are balanced with lectures and seminars, enabling students to apply theoretical stances within a creative, hands-on environment.”
He is the author of 8 books of poetry (most recently a volume of his visual poetry entitled KERN), 4 volumes of fiction and a book of essays. Beaulieu’s work is consistently praised as some of the most radical and challenging in contemporary Canadian writing.
Semester: Fall 2015
Department: School of Critical and Creative Studies
Instructor: Derek Beaulieu
Course: English 217B – Introduction to Narrative
Dates / Times / Location: Thursdays from 9:00-11:50, ACAD Room 532, stating Sept 9, 2015.
For more information, or to discuss this unusual course, contact Derek Beaulieu: derek@housepress.ca
TOTAL RECALL 1 August — 3 October, 2015
BURY ART MUSEUM
Moss St, Bury, Lancashire BL9 0DR, United Kingdom
How do you remember the people who are important to you? How do you conjure your shared past? Is it in an image, a sound, a smell, a touch? Or do you use words?
We invited world-leading poets and text-artists to make a language-memory for Tony Trehy, who has directed the internationally renowned Text Festival at Bury Art Museum since 2005. This exhibition celebrates a 10-year anniversary of the Festival and a 20-year anniversary of Tony’s time at Bury. Writing on a wall, an Internet search, a diary entry, a flurry of thoughts … what is remembering and who is it for?
Tony Trehy has been the ring-leader of decade-long conversations, new opportunities, challenges and heated debates. Each of his four Text Festivals has added to a continuing dialogue between language and art. Every Text Festival has asked the audience a simple-but-complex question: How do I read?
Into the historic space of Bury Art Museum, Trehy has injected text that is a new ‘language art’ for the 21st Century. Bury was once the centre of paper-making in Britain, now it is a pioneer of language-making, with its Text Archive welcoming readers from all over the world.
TOTAL RECALL is a guerrilla makeover, an A4 invasion of reading into the larger narrative of looking. Unlike the street signs outside, these are not corporate instructions or sales pitches; they are antidotes. Walls, vitrine, archival box—nary a “book” to be found, but a heap of language left in memory.
TOTAL RECALL includes work by local, national and international text-based artists and poets: angela rawlings, Alan Halsey, Barrie Tullett, Carolyn Thompson, Cecilie Bjørgås Jordheim, Darren Marsh, derek beaulieu, Emma Cocker, Eric Zboya, Erica Baum, Jaap Blonk, James Davies, Jayne Dyer, Jesse Glass, Karri Kokko, Kristen Mueller, Lawrence Weiner, Leanne Bridgewater, Liz Collini, Lucy Harvest Clarke, Marco Giovenale, Márton Koppány, Matt Dalby, Mike Chavez-Dawson, Paula Claire, Penny Anderson, Peter Jaeger, Philip Davenport, Rachel Defay-Liautard, Robert Grenier, Ron Silliman, Satu Kaikkonen, Sarah Sanders, Seekers of Lice, Stephen Emmerson, Steve Giasson, Steve Miller, Tom Jenks, and Tony Lopez.
— derek beaulieu and Phil Davenport, Curators
**
I will be posting installation photographs in the coming weeks (and other exciting announcements), but here are a few excerpts from the exhibition:
a.rawlings – “Nutrition Facts”
Alan Halsey – “Notation” #1
Cecilie Bjørgås Jordheim – excerpt from “The Great Treatise”
Eric Zboya – “Barney ‘A Portrait'”
Jaap Blonk – “Wind for Tony”
Steve Emmerson – “Paul Written”
Erica Baum “Total Recall” #1
Barrie Tullett – “Our Memories are Constructed” #2
Saturday July 25th at 3:00pm at The Whitechapel Gallery (London):
The New Concrete is a major new anthology charting the explosion of visual poetry in the 21st century. Having just been released by Hayward Publishing, the launch of this book promises to be a landmark event in visual poetry.
Join us for an afternoon of film and live performance showcasing some of the most exciting work in this field. The event brings together some of the most celebrated poets and artists working at the intersection of visual art and literature.
Building on the celebrated concrete movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the event reveals how this legacy has been refreshed through digital text and image manipulation, modern print techniques and the rise of self-publishing.
With film screenings by Simon Barraclough, Victoria Bean, Caroline Bergvall, Derek Beaulieu, David Bellingham, Cecilie Bjørgås Jordheim, Augusto de Campos, Francesca Capone, Antonio Claudio Carvalho, Kenneth Goldsmith, Sophie Herxheimer, Liliane Lijn, nick-e melville, Rick Myers, W. Mark Sutherland, André Vallias and Nico Vassilakis.
The event features live performances from: Simon Barraclough, Victoria Bean, Derek Beaulieu, David Bellingham, Cecilie Bjørgås Jordheim, Paula Claire, S.J. Fowler, Daniel Lehan, Henningham Family Press, Sophie Herxheimer, Sarah Kelly, Liliane Lijn, Tony Lopez, Chris McCabe, Barrie Tullet and audio from Tom Comitta. You will also be able to purchase a copy of The New Concrete at the event.
Curated by Victoria Bean and Chris McCabe
On July 23rd, I’ll be reading at Jeff Hilson’s XING THE LINE Reading Series at The Apple Tree in Clerkenwell (45 Mount Pleasant, WC1X 0AE London). I’ll be sharing the bill with Sarah Crewe, Luna Montenegro and Adrian Fisher (Facebook event page) … thanks to Jeff for organizing this great event!
I’m pleased as punch to share the news of a beautiful edition of an excerpt from FLATLAND as published by JS Makkos: a hand-crafted edition of #1-20 of Derek Beaulieu’s visual translation of Edwin Abbott Abbott’s Flatland. For all you paper fetishists out there, this is how the colophon reads: “the covers were hand printed on a 19th century 9”x13” Kelsey Excelsior letterpress on vintage Strathmore laid paper, while the front and end sheets are salvaged ecru felt-finish stock, and the interior pages were pigment printed on 50% cotton Stenocraft English Bond and hand-stitched in a limited edition of ~40.” Due credit goes to Jessica Smith for brokering the project, Gideon Finck for aiding with the design, and Rachel Howard for assisting with production.”
Since 1997, No press (and its predecessor housepress) has published 550 different editions. In celebration, I am proud to announce the publication of
THE VIRELAY OF THE AMINO ACIDS
by Christian Bök
Published in a limited edition of 30 copies (15 of which are Hors De Commerce and not for sale), THE VIRELAY OF THE AMINO ACIDS is available for $15.00 including domestic postage (+$5 for US and international orders). To order please email derek beaulieu.
THE VIRELAY OF THE AMINO ACIDS is excepted by Bök’s forthcoming The Xenotext (Book 1), forthcoming from Coach House Books. 44 pages, hand-bound.
A longtime freind of the the press, Bök has had 4 publications from the 2 presses: String Variables (housepress / CrO2, 2000), NOYTA CCCP (housepress, 2002), Bazaar of the Bizarre (No press, 2006) and Two Dots over a Vowel (No press, 2008) and has contributed to a number of small press anthologies and magazines. Those editions are long out of print; THE VIRELAY OF THE AMINO ACIDS testifies to No press’s ongoing investment in Bök’s risk-taking writing.
550 editions – leaflets, pamphlets, chapbooks, poetic ephemera, perfect-bound editions – over 18 years. And no plans to stop. 
WRITING THE CITY AUG 24-28 at Alberta College of Art and Design: explore Calgary’s authors & locations through creative writing prompts, discussions and exercises; click here to register! (and there’s a discount for members of the CCWWP!)
derek beaulieu's blog 