Avant Canada: Poets, Prophets, Revolutionaries

Avant Canada presents a rich collection of original essays and creative works on a representative array of avant-garde literary movements in Canada from the past fifty years. From the work of Leonard Cohen and bpNichol to that of Jordan Abel and Liz Howard, Avant Canada features twenty-eight of the best writers and critics in the field.The book proposes four dominant modes of avant-garde production: ""Concrete Poetics,"" which accentuates the visual and material aspects of language; ""Language Writing,"" which challenges the interconnection between words and things; ""Identity Writing,"" which interrogates the self and its sociopolitical position; and ""Copyleft Poetics,"" which undermines our habitual assumptions about the ownership of expression. A fifth section commemorates the importance of the Centennial in the 1960s at a time when avant-garde cultures in Canada began to emerge. Readers of this book will become familiar with some of the most challenging works of literature - and their creators - that this country has ever produced. From Concrete Poetry in the 1960s through to Indigenous Literature in the 2010s, Avant Canada offers the most sweeping study of the literary avant-garde in Canada to date.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures I INTRODUCTION 1 Gregory Betts and Christian Bök—Time for the Avant-Garde in Canada II PROLOGUE 2 Lisa Robertson—The Collective 3 Liz Howard—Against Assimilation I Rose into Poetry III THE CENTENNIAL 4 Kristine Smitka—The Sublation of Obduracy: Nationalism and the Avant-Garde Marketing of Beautiful Losers 5 Stephen Cain—""A Vision in the UofT Stacks"": bpNichol in the Library IV CONCRETE POLITICS 6 Julia Polyck-O'Neill—Words With(out) Syntax: Reconsidering Concrete Poetry: An Exhibition in Four Parts 7 Mike Borkent—Post/Avant Comics: bpNichol's Material Poetics and Comics Art Manifestos 8 Eric Schmaltz—A Field Guide to North Concrete: Identification Chart 9 Kelly Mark—National and Time 10 Kaie Kellough—Continents V LANGUAGE WRITING 11 Michael Roberson—Transformation or Resistance: The Kootenay School of Writing in Context 12 Kit Dobson—A Poetics of Neoliberalism 13 Dorothy Trujillo Lusk—Sleek Vinyl Drill 14 Erín Moure—Pillage 12 (""Anaximenes"") 15 Donato Mancini—If Violence (Hey You) VI IDENTITY WRITING 16 Myra Bloom—Messy Confessions: Sheila Heti's How Should a Person Be? 17 Sonnet L'Abbé—Erasures from the Territories Called Canada: Sharpening the Gaze at White Backgrounds 18 Leanne Betasamosake Simpson—caribou ghosts & untold stories 19 Lee Maracle—Bobbi Lee, Indian Rebel 20 Annharte—cum cum how cum dat cums around even from behind VII COPYLEFT POLITICS 21 Katie L. Price—A ≠ A: The Potential for a Pataphysical Poetics in Dan Farrell's The Inkblot Record 22 Darren Wershler—Everyday Practice Before and After Conceptual Writing 23 Derek Beaulieu—Prose of the TransCanada 24 Moez Surani—1988 25 Dani Spinosa—Anxious Influence: Reading John Cage Theoretically VIII EPILOGUE 26 André Alexis—On Amanda PL's Cancelled Exhibit 27 An Interview with Jordan Abel—A Line Can Be Drawn IX AFTER MATTER Notes and Acknowledgements Bibliography About the Authors Index

About the Author :
Gregory Betts is the Chancellor's Chair for Research Excellence at Brock University and the director of the Centre for Canadian Studies. He is the author of Avant-Garde Canadian Literature: The Early Manifestations (2013) as well as six books of experimental poetry. He is currently the artistic director of the Festival of Readers in St. Catharines. Christian Bök won the Griffin Poetry Prize for his book Eunoia. He is currently working on The Xenotext, a project that requires him to encode a poem into the genome of a microbe capable of thriving in any inhospitable environment. Bök is a Fellow in the Royal Society of Canada, and he teaches at Charles Darwin University.

Review :
This collection of academic essays and creative pieces takes an enthusiastic, engaged attitude to the unrolling of Canadian literature, starting with an intelligent introduction by editors Gregory Betts and Christian Bök [...] -- Derek Webster -- Canadian Notes and Queries, 2018