How is a lyric poem like a polygraph machine? A personal, poetic examination of the technology of truth-telling.Eric Schmaltz’s I Confess delves into the complexities of truth-telling in poetry, and the history of technologies designed to produce truth from willing and unwilling subjects, considering what it means to use a device – poetry or polygraph – to draw out one’s most profound feelings and emotions.Exploring the intersection of power, technology, and language, I Confess meditates on lie detection and its history, including trials by ordeal and pseudoscientific technologies. The poet then turns to his own personal experiences working with a lie detector and polygraph analyst. Taking himself as the central subject of the book, Schmaltz puts his subjectivity and positionality under scrutiny.The answers to questions such as What does family mean to you? and Can you describe a time when you felt your best? inspire a range of forms from conventional lyrical verse to list poems to palindromes to visual poems. With an afterword by Orchid Tierney, I Confess is a personal, poetic document of truth’s performance under duress.

From Toronto based-writer Gerry Shikatani, who has worked across the textual, visual, and aural domains, from performance to experimental film, comes We Have Seasonal Bodies: The Poetry of Gerry Shikatani. Selected and introduced by poet and scholar Eric Schmaltz, this volume brings together poetry and visual texts from across Shikatani’s multifaceted and dynamic oeuvre and concludes with a compelling dialogue between Shikatani and poet and critic Deanna Fong. Schmaltz has drawn selections from across Shikatani’s career, including some of his earliest ephemeral works from the early 1970s with the little-known publisher missing link press. Some of these poems are reproduced in this collection for the very first time since their original publication date. This volume also includes standalone lyrical and formally experimental poems from Shikatani’s first full-length books, along with excerpts from his signature serial travel poems, a form he notably explored in Aqueduct-a 400-plus-page book of long-form poetry documenting his travels across Europe, particularly France and Spain. We Have Seasonal Bodies is not a definitive selection; rather, it is a long-overdue reintroduction to Shikatani’s poetry-his standalone poems and excerpts from longer projects-presenting the inimitable perspective and adventurous spirit of his writing, which brings extraordinary beauty into this world.

Bill bissett and Milton Acorn are two of Canada's most significant, and most controversial, literary figures. In the 1960s, bissett's renown as an experimental poet was growing as his social and political concerns were stirred by the voice of the counterculture. Acorn, inspired by socialist theory and imagism, was building his reputation as a poet on the margin who ran against the grain of the literary establishment. Both were rising towards cultural prominence—one, a true beatnik and the other, a certifiably rugged lyric poet. In 1965 they came together in a remarkable collaboration, a challenge to the established literary tradition and a call for a better world.Published for the very first time, I Want to Tell You Love is the combination of bissett and Acorn's seemingly incongruous poetics to confront the turbulent and swiftly changing world of the 1960s. A collection of poems and illustrations, it is a window into the lives and motivations of two soon-to-be-canonized cultural figures. I Want to Tell You Love is a work of friendship, a shared vision of resistance, and a mutual longing for a better world.This critical edition offers the manuscript in its intended form alongside contextualizing scholarship in a significant contribution to literary history. I Want to Tell You Love offers an opportunity to reevaluate the nature and scope of Canadian poetry during a critical time of national cultural awakening.

Beginning in 1963 and continuing through the late 1980s, a loose coterie of like-minded Canadian poets challenged the conventions of writing and poetic meaning by fusing their practice with strategies from visual art, sound art, sculpture, instillation, and performance. They called it “borderblur”Borderblur Poetics traces the emergence and proliferation of this node of poetic activity, an avant-garde movement comprising concrete poetry, sound poetry, and kinetic poetry, practiced by poets and artists like bpNichol, bill bissett, Judith Copithorne, Steve McCaffery, Penn Kemp, Ann Rosenberg, Gerry Shikatani, Shaunt Basmajian, among others.Author Eric Schmaltz demonstrates how these poets formed an alternative tradition, one that embraced intermediality to challenge the hegemony of Canadian literature established during the heydays of cultural nationalism. He shows the importance of intermediality as a driving cultural force and how its proliferation significantly altered Canadian cultural expression. Drawing on a combination of archival research, historical analysis, and literary criticism, Borderblur Poetics adds significant nuance to theories and criticisms of Canadian literature.

How is a lyric poem like a polygraph machine? A personal, poetic examination of the technology of truth-telling.Eric Schmaltz’s I Confess delves into the complexities of truth-telling in poetry, and the history of technologies designed to produce truth from willing and unwilling subjects, considering what it means to use a device – poetry or polygraph – to draw out one’s most profound feelings and emotions.Exploring the intersection of power, technology, and language, I Confess meditates on lie detection and its history, including trials by ordeal and pseudoscientific technologies. The poet then turns to his own personal experiences working with a lie detector and polygraph analyst. Taking himself as the central subject of the book, Schmaltz puts his subjectivity and positionality under scrutiny.The answers to questions such as What does family mean to you? and Can you describe a time when you felt your best? inspire a range of forms from conventional lyrical verse to list poems to palindromes to visual poems. With an afterword by Orchid Tierney, I Confess is a personal, poetic document of truth’s performance under duress.

From Toronto based-writer Gerry Shikatani, who has worked across the textual, visual, and aural domains, from performance to experimental film, comes We Have Seasonal Bodies: The Poetry of Gerry Shikatani. Selected and introduced by poet and scholar Eric Schmaltz, this volume brings together poetry and visual texts from across Shikatani’s multifaceted and dynamic oeuvre and concludes with a compelling dialogue between Shikatani and poet and critic Deanna Fong. Schmaltz has drawn selections from across Shikatani’s career, including some of his earliest ephemeral works from the early 1970s with the little-known publisher missing link press. Some of these poems are reproduced in this collection for the very first time since their original publication date. This volume also includes standalone lyrical and formally experimental poems from Shikatani’s first full-length books, along with excerpts from his signature serial travel poems, a form he notably explored in Aqueduct-a 400-plus-page book of long-form poetry documenting his travels across Europe, particularly France and Spain. We Have Seasonal Bodies is not a definitive selection; rather, it is a long-overdue reintroduction to Shikatani’s poetry-his standalone poems and excerpts from longer projects-presenting the inimitable perspective and adventurous spirit of his writing, which brings extraordinary beauty into this world.

Bill bissett and Milton Acorn are two of Canada's most significant, and most controversial, literary figures. In the 1960s, bissett's renown as an experimental poet was growing as his social and political concerns were stirred by the voice of the counterculture. Acorn, inspired by socialist theory and imagism, was building his reputation as a poet on the margin who ran against the grain of the literary establishment. Both were rising towards cultural prominence—one, a true beatnik and the other, a certifiably rugged lyric poet. In 1965 they came together in a remarkable collaboration, a challenge to the established literary tradition and a call for a better world.Published for the very first time, I Want to Tell You Love is the combination of bissett and Acorn's seemingly incongruous poetics to confront the turbulent and swiftly changing world of the 1960s. A collection of poems and illustrations, it is a window into the lives and motivations of two soon-to-be-canonized cultural figures. I Want to Tell You Love is a work of friendship, a shared vision of resistance, and a mutual longing for a better world.This critical edition offers the manuscript in its intended form alongside contextualizing scholarship in a significant contribution to literary history. I Want to Tell You Love offers an opportunity to reevaluate the nature and scope of Canadian poetry during a critical time of national cultural awakening.

Beginning in 1963 and continuing through the late 1980s, a loose coterie of like-minded Canadian poets challenged the conventions of writing and poetic meaning by fusing their practice with strategies from visual art, sound art, sculpture, instillation, and performance. They called it “borderblur”Borderblur Poetics traces the emergence and proliferation of this node of poetic activity, an avant-garde movement comprising concrete poetry, sound poetry, and kinetic poetry, practiced by poets and artists like bpNichol, bill bissett, Judith Copithorne, Steve McCaffery, Penn Kemp, Ann Rosenberg, Gerry Shikatani, Shaunt Basmajian, among others.Author Eric Schmaltz demonstrates how these poets formed an alternative tradition, one that embraced intermediality to challenge the hegemony of Canadian literature established during the heydays of cultural nationalism. He shows the importance of intermediality as a driving cultural force and how its proliferation significantly altered Canadian cultural expression. Drawing on a combination of archival research, historical analysis, and literary criticism, Borderblur Poetics adds significant nuance to theories and criticisms of Canadian literature.