bpNichol
Barrie Phillip Nichol (September 30, 1944 - September 25, 1988), was a
Canadian poet. He was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and became widely
known for his concrete poetry while living there in the 1960s. He received his
elementary teaching certificate from the University of British Columbia in 1963,
but he only worked a brief stint as a teacher. He had audited creative writing
courses while in university, and his life moved in that direction after about a
year of teaching. It is safe to say that Nichol was at least partly responsible
for changing the way subsequent Canadian poets deal with text and even meaning
itself.
His most famous published work is probably The Martyrology, a long poem
encompassing 9 books in 6 volumes.
Nichol also worked in a wide variety of other genres, including musical theatre,
children's books, collage/assemblage, pamphlets, spoken word, computer texts,
fiction, and television. For having such a brief lifespan, Nichol produced a
highly prolific volume of work. However, it was often ephemeral, such as
performance.
Fortunately for those interested in Nichol's less publishable work, his early
work in sound poetry was documented in Michael Ondaatje's film Sons of Captain
Poetry (1970); in Borders, a small phonodisc included with his poetic work
Journeying & the returns (1967); and in the long-playing record Motherlove
(1968). Also, the 1998 film bp/pushing the boundaries was made on Nichol and his
contributions to art by Brian Nash (director) and Elizabeth Yake (producer).
Although Nichol had been writing since 1961, he first attracted public notice in
the mid-1960s with his hand-drawn or "concrete" poems, and received
international acclaim. The "visual book" Still water, together with the booklets
The true eventual story of Billy the Kid and Beach Head as well as the anthology
of concrete poetry, The cosmic chef, won the Governor General's Award for
poetry.