Talking Poetics #25 : Derek Beaulieu

From Black & White to Colour, from isolation to collaboration: 1 poem in five iterations

Process and surprise. Much of my writing is based on process (the act of working through what I means to write, the act of creating with specific media) and surprise (working without expectation of the final creation, allowing for the media itself to swerve me away from any goals I may have designed). I want writing to be in a conversation with my expectations, limitations or constraints I may have, the restrictions of media and, eventually, with a community or readers and writers. As dry-transfer lettering ages, it cracks and ripples, becoming less pliable. Letters no longer adhere to surfaces faithfully; they flake and crumble, crack and crumble. These poems reflect that lack of cohesion; the letters crumble away from meaning, leaving rough traces of what could have been meant.

In 2018 I created a sequence of visual poems which were made solely from the parts of letters, the tattered remains of what was still on mostly-used sheets of Letraset; an exploration of how much could I say, how captivated could I be with only the suggestions: the curves, ascenders and bowls of letters long since used or flaked away. The resultant pieces were published in Simulacrum Press’s Fragmentum which remains in print, a small print run of 55 copies.

“Letraset on Paper”

In many different essays I have suggested that Concrete poetry should shine and shimmer like the street-signs and broken neon of Las Vegas’s Neon Museum or like the famous signs of Toyko’s nightlife … and yet, mine didn’t. They were black vinyl lettering on white pages.

With Aperture (Penteract press, 2018) I entered into a conversation with Anthony Etherin and Clara Daneri who listened to my desire to have the poems be re-published in day-glo, high-contrast colours, driving the conversation more and more towards my daydream streetscapes. The resulting book, published on glossy paper, began to push my thinking on poetry further into graphic design, seeing the compositional field (page) as a place for colour, foreground/background play which surprised and enticed me.

“The same piece recoloured by Daneri and Etherin for Aperture”

With Aperture’s publication – both in print and as a free downloadable PDF I released these poems into a larger conversation; the conversation of readers and writers. Shortly after the publication of Aperture, UK-based visual poet CDN Warren did just that. He visually sifted and remixed a suite of poems from that book  into “Vent (8 Abominations for Derek Beaulieu)” re-presenting my own writing back to me in ways which surprised and inspired – I had become a new reader of my own writing. 

“The same piece, remixed by CDN Warren in Vent (8 Abominations for Derek Beaulieu)”

Michael Orr then remixed Warren’s creation and posted his response to the internet as well – the piece was moving further and further away from any intention I may have had into a multi-authored conversation suggesting shimmering stained glass windows. This is precisely why I post all my work online as PDFs: to enable conversation and let artwork thrive in a space of collaboration, permissiveness and surprise.

“The same piece, then remixed and overlaid, by Michael Orr”

Lastly (for now?), Lens Flare, as forthcoming from UK’s Guillemot Press, is a page-by-page reply to Aperture, wherein Calgary-based visual artist Rhys Farrell has digitally responded to the disintegrating logos and letterforms, the crumbling vocabulary of suggestion and memory. Farrell is known for his panels of throbbing colour, his huge murals (which fill suburban malls and coat entire city blocks) and for his internationally acclaimed exhibitions. I invited Rhys to transform the pages of Aperture in any way he wished. What resulted was 1970’s inflected landscapes of urban murals and playful geometrics. The poems have transformed from still-lives of disintegrated neon into obscured logos in an op-art scene awash in graffiti, immersed in a day-glo discotheque.

“The same piece, in collaboration with Rhys Farrell, from Lens Flare”

I draw a lot of inspiration from Margaret Avison’s dictum that “the best response to a poem is another poem” and welcome writers and readers to write back, to remix, recreate and respond to my writing – I can’t imagine a better feeling than knowing that my writing has inspired someone else to create and explore as well, to feel welcome to be a writer themselves.

Derek Beaulieu is the author/editor of over twenty collections of poetry, prose, and criticism, including two volumes of his selected work, Please, No More Poetry (2013) and Konzeptuelle Arbeiten (2017). His most recent volume of fiction, a, A Novel was published by Paris’s Jean Boîte Editions, and he recently published CABARET with above/ground press. Beaulieu has exhibited his visual work across Canada, the United States, and Europe and has won multiple local and national awards for his teaching and dedication to students. Derek Beaulieu holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Roehampton University and is the Director of Literary Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. He can be found online at https://derekbeaulieu.wordpress.com/

Recent reads: "The Calgary Renaissance"

The Calgary Renaissance

Edited by derek beaulieu & rob mclennan

Published by Chaudiere Books, 2016.

One of the first things I noticed about The Calgary Renaissance, a collection of experimental fiction and poetry, is that Alberta’s biggest city – the connective tissue that binds these authors – is rarely relevant thematically. As an Ontario reader living on the outskirts of Toronto’s cultural vacuum, I don’t gain much of an impression about the region’s pulse or how authors interact with their shared environment. But that isn’t the book’s mission. Instead, The Calgary Renaissance earns its bold title by forgoing geographical appraisals in favour of juxtaposing many of its radiant and diverse voices in a direct bid for national recognition.

It’s long overdue. And in recognizing more of the thirty-two authors than expected, I suspect The Calgary Renaissance doubles as a consolidation of co-editor rob mclennan’s efforts to showcase westward writers through his above/ground press (from which I credit much of my exposure). For co-editor derek beaulieu, this book serves as an extension of the role he has played as Calgary’s Poet Laureate from 2014 to 2016 and, unofficially, before and since.

It’s an impressive roster eclipsed by the quality of its content. Unfamiliar authors make strong bids for my attention while familiar ones posit new sides of their writing. Starting with the former camp, I enjoyed Susan Holbrook’s “What Is Poetry” and “What Is Prose”, twin pillars of tongue-in-cheek onomatopoeia that break open form for effect, not dissection. Here, the latter piece:

What Is Prose

Prose has wit,

war, hot spies,

pirate shows.

It has powers.

A swisher top,

wiser pathos,

towers, a ship,

parishes. Two

IHOPs. Waters

whose traps I

sap, so whiter

whites. Spa or

showier taps

spew hot airs:

“Poet wash, Sir?”

Posh waiters

tow Sharpies,

shower pitas,

pestos awhir,

pastries, how!

How it spears

trophies, was

tops, was heir

to Sears. “Whip

Thor, asswipe!

Swap heros!” it

whispers to a

hipster. Aw. So

worship a set.

Another late discovery for me is Braydon Beauleau, whose “In The Aurora” suite coaxes a mercurial identity from an expanse of rich, natural imagery. The sense of momentum and discovery in this poem is masterful, evolving at such a pace that its cryptic meaning gets outshone by the chaos of its transformation. (Although I do wonder: what happened to sections iii and v?) 

Eschewing Beauleau’s densely figurative constructions, Natalee Caple’s trio of poems entice with their casual, shorn immediacy. “Packing for the Weekend (For Natalie Walschots)” is literally a list of things to pack, but the items – some commonplace and tangible (“my boxing gloves”), others absurd and impossible (“my piano-limbed internet trolls”) – accumulate in ways that beg of the reader: what kind of weekend is this, and what do we all carry around as metaphorical baggage? Alternately, her poem “For Nicole Markotic” achieves a curious tension, her language primitive in its directness but unencumbered by emotion or punctuation.

For Nicole Markotic

In August it rains and rains

I slosh more wine into my brains

until I breathe wine

You lick the back of my knees

I touch your fingers

propose we build a bridge

be minotaurs in alphabets

sew triangles over scars

knit hymens for all kinds of birds

I will write you a slim letter

Someday

The poem itself functions as that slim letter, simultaneously heavy and floating, intimate but noncommittal.

Aside from the surprise of reading new talents, the fun thing about literary collections (whether they tackle a single author’s output or an entire scene’s) is the freedom to browse the Table of Contents and choose your own launch-point. In the case of The Calgary Renaissance, I started with Jason Christie’s incendiary “This Poem Is a Ski Mask”, a thoughtful dismantling of privilege and hypocrisy. Next up was Emily Ursuliak’s “Removing the Shoe” which, despite its disjointed lines, retains the absorbing narrative details of her prose. Afterwards I flipped to Sandy Pool’s “On Anatomical Procedures”, a witty summary of clinical trials conducted on her acquaintances that judge whether Pool is a good person, with variables like social events and alcohol factored in. A skillful but lightweight palate cleanser after the gutting Undark: An Oratorio (Nightwood Editions). Such maneuvers felt akin to grazing from a delectable hors d’oeuvres table.

For the sake of brevity, I’ve omitted mention of many contributions here. But I’ve omitted several more because, frankly, I didn’t respond to them – and that isn’t a bad thing. Such an anthology welcomes us into Calgary’s talent pool but it also allows fair-weather experimental poetry readers like myself to gauge and advance our comfort zones. Most of the authors I’ve discussed take moderate leaps without (in my eyes) abandoning form or narrative altogether. But as I revisit this collection from time to time, it stands to reason The Calgary Renaissance will further reward my interest in the experimental spectrum.