obscure poets: barrie phillip nichol

by Kristen McHenry

Canadian Barrie Phillip Nichol (or bpNichol, as he was commonly known) was a prolific experimental poet whose major body of work was written during the 1960s and 1970s. He was widely known for his hand-drawn and concrete poetry, although he described his art as “borderblur” and worked in a number of mediums, including cartooning, sound poetry and computer texts. He was an avid collaborator and worked with his contemporaries on an wide range of projects, sometimes even inviting readers to send him their own reinterpretation of his texts. In 1970, Nichol received Canada’s highest literary honor, the Governor General’s Award. He was beloved among his friends and colleagues, and his sudden death at age 44 left many distraught. His friend and fellow poet Lionel Kearns recalls:

We all loved him. When he died, suddenly, in his 44th year, on the surgeon’s table, by accident, it was terrible. Barrie had hundreds, perhaps thousands, of close friends in the literary community and in the world. He was a very special human being. Everyone who knew him will tell you that. It was always a privilege and pleasure to be with him … Barrie worked hard. He was a model poet, always committed to his craft, always inventing, experimenting, turning the language into forms and figures that were as unique as they were elegant, and full of evocative power and insight. Not that his work is difficult or obscure — he appreciated simplicity and directness. He was playful but sincere, honest but delicate. I can think of no one else who was like him at all.*

In his series “Translating Translating Apollinaire,” Nichols repeatedly reworks a single poem with multiple interpretations. Each poem stands alone as a strong piece, but to read them together in a sequence provides a fascinating glimpse into Nichol’s sense of the plasticity of language, and his expansive creativity. The original version of the poem is rewritten using variations such as replacing words with antonyms from Roget’s Thesaurus, placing each word in the poem in alphabetical order, and replacing words with their meanings taken directly from the dictionary.

Here’s an example: **

TTA 4 (original version)

Icharrus          winging up
Simon the Magician     from Judea     high in a tree,
everyone     reaching for the sun

great towers of stone
built by the Aztecs, tearing their hearts out
to offer them, wet and beating

mountains,
cold wind, Macchu Piccu hiding in the sun
unfound for centuries

cars whizzing by, sun
thru trees passing, a dozen
new wave films, flickering
on drivers’ glasses

flat on their backs in the grass
a dozen bodies slowly turning brown

sun glares off the pages, “soleil
cou coupé,” rolls in my window
flat on my back on the floor
becoming aware of it
for an instant

TTA 5 (rearranging words in poem in alphabetical order)

a   a a,
an and aware   Aztecs back   backs beating becoming bodies,
brown   built   by   by   cars

centuries cold cou coupé
dozen dozen drivers’ everyone, films flat flat flickering
floor for for, for from glares

glasses,
grass great, hearts hiding high Icharrus in in
in in instant

it Judea Macchu, Magician
mountains my my, new of
of off offer, on
on on on

TTA 19 (replacing words with their meanings using
Webster’s Dictionary for Everyday Use)

Icharrus furnished with wings, enabling him to fly or hasten (wounded
in the wing, arm or shoulder) to or toward a higher place or degree;
Simon the one skilled in magic (a conjurer), out of Judea, elevated far
up indicating a present relation to time, space, condition, the
indefinite article, meaning one perennial plant having trunk, bole, or
woody stem with branches; all possible people stretching out their
hands, straining after a conception, or to denote a particular person
or luminous body round which earth and the other planets revolve.

There are about 50 different interpretations of this poem in Nichol’s collection, a number of which include references to a separate body of work called Probable Systems. The weaving of his poems into another over decades creates a kind of epic poetic “novel” that reflects his sense of interconnection and his reluctance to overemphasize one single poem or body of work.

In the early ’80s, Nichols took concrete poetry a step further and began experimenting with computer-generated text. His first collection of animated digital poetry came together as “First Screening,” made up of poems that he composed using the earliest Apple Basic programming language. Ironically, “First Screening” can no longer be seen in its original format since the technology used to create it quickly became obsolete, but a few of Nichol’s dedicated colleagues preserved the work by translating it into several different forms that can be downloaded or viewed online.

7 by bpNichol is a set of later digital poems that can be viewed online. The poem “Historical Implications of Turnips” playfully explores a single word. The first line of the poem is, “turnips are,” after which the word “turnip” is flashed on the screen in numerous variations: urnspit, stunrip, ritpuns, spurtin, tinspur, rustpin and so on. The seven short poems in this collection highlight Nichol’s strong sense of visual composition and sound, but they are more than just simple word play. Friend and contemporary Dan Waber describes Nichol’s digital work as an extension of his traditional poetics, as it uses “a set of techniques that weave through so many of his other explorations: repetition, permutation, self-reflexivity, self-referentiality, the visual page as a compositional space, and the word and the letter as manipulatable aspects of the language.”

In spite of his early demise, most of Nichol’s extensive body of work has been preserved online by his colleagues and family. Several links are included below. I hope you’ll take some time to explore his fascinating work!

View or download First Screening. Read Translating Translating Apollinaire. Read more about Nichol’s life and work.

* From On bpNichol by Lionel Kearns.

** The original version is shown in its complete form; the translations are abridged. For the complete versions in sequence, see the links above.

Kristen McHenry works on poetry by night and health outreach by day. She created and facilitates the Poet’s Cafe, a weekly poetry workshop for homeless teens. She shares poetry and her thoughts on writing at The Good Typist.