2022 was, yet again, an incredibly difficult year filled with loss, cancellations, illness, tension and heartache—it’s been so long and so on-going, but there is a feeling of potential change, growth, and emerging.
As Banff Centre’s Director of Literary Arts, I developed a slate of residencies—both online (in response to the Omicron wave of Covid-19) and in person (slowly building an on-campus presence again). Literary Arts residencies—all of which were fully-scholarshipped relieving artists involved of all tuition costs—enabled international writers to work online with exceptional faculty: January’s Winter Writers Online with Souvankham Thammavongsa and Mónica de la Torre, March’s Spring Writers Online with Madhur Anand and Susan Holbrook, April’s Computational Writing Residency with Nick Montfort, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, and publishing guest Ryan Thompson (Anteism Books); June’s Literary Journalism Residency with Charlotte Gill, Carol Shaben and Michael Harris; August’s Summer Writers Residency with The Writers’ Trust, with Lawrence Hill, Sue Goyette, and Amanda Hopkins (TWUC); and October’s Emerging Writers Residency: Young Adult and Children’s Books with Katherena Vermette, Tanya Boteju, and Lynne Missen (Penguin Random House). Banff Centre is bringing people back to campus for 2023 and I have planned residencies which continue to respond to the needs of international writers; lots of great news on the Banff Centre website.
In 2022 Toronto’s Coach House Books published my Surface Tension and I am thrilled to have returned to that press. Coach House published my first book, with wax, in 2003—and my edited collection of bpNichol’s fiction, Nights on Prose Mountain, in 2018—and it’s an honour to be back in the fold.
On December 7th I was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal stating “Derek Beaulieu not only constitutes one of the most innovative of all authors in Canada, but he has committed himself to service on behalf of others, providing leadership in the arts throughout his career and promoting the poetic merits of Canada to audiences around the world.”
In addition to being Banff’s Poet Laureate, I served on several community juries and committees to help bring artists and projects together in the Bow Valley, Alberta, and nationally. I spoke to students at OCADU, and at events in Banff, Calgary, Toronto, St. Catharines, and Leiria, Portugal. It was so lovely to host Calgary’s Giller Prize Between The Pages event at Studio Bell.
Canadian retailer Simons included one of my visual poems on their website and in their newsletter.
In addition to writing afterwords for books by Pater Jaeger, Jaap Blonk, and Joe Devlin, I was published in 11 different online and print journals over the year; thank you to the editors of those spaces. Invisible Books invited me to edit Cameron Anstee’s exceptional book of poetry Sheets.
There were also 8 different small press editions of my work published in 2022: Circuit (Shropshire’s Enneract Editions), The blank white page contains the finest song (Scotland’s Essence Press), The Story of the Door, Thunder and Carve or Melt meets Scratch and Tint (all from Portugal’s Paper View Books), and I cannot sleep unless surrounded by books, Reinforced Steel, Silence, Surface Stress and Hot Metal Slug (all from my own No press). I continue to place free PDFs of all of my work online—help yourself. There are a number of very exciting small press editions cooking for 2023.
Often special note is Catalogue Saisonée. Sal Nunchakov of Paper View Books has created a beautiful overview of my work to date in an edition which incorporates small press aesthetics, a variety of paper types, printing techniques and ways of presenting text. It’s a labour of love.
Through No Press I published 18 different editions of poetry and prose – including 3 issues of the The Minute Review – with contributions by 28 different international, national and local emerging and established writers. You can support No Press through Patreon. Each edition was meant to help spread the word of risk-taking international writing. Thank you for trusting me with your work.
None of this would have been possible without my incredible partner, Kristen, and our amazing daughter Maddie. My parents and mother-in-law have also been a steady voice of support and love; thank you.
In so many ways I only excel because of the strength and support of my community of friends and colleagues, especially Gary Barwin, Greg and Lisa Betts, Christian Bok, Kit Dobson, Helen Hajnoczky, Aubrey Hanson, Nasser Hussain, rob mclennan, all of my colleagues at Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity, and so many others. Thank you.
Here’s to 2023.
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