Pauline Butling

Susan Rudy

Process poetics is about radical poetry — poetry that challenges dominant world views, values, and aesthetic practices with its use of unconventional punctuation, interrupted syntax, variable subject positions, repetition, fragmentation, and disjunction. To trace the aesthetically and politically radical poetries in English Canada since the 1960s, Pauline Butling and Susan Rudy begin with the “upstart” poets published in Vancouver’s TISH: A Poetry Newsletter, and follow the trajectory of process poetics in its national and international manifestations through the 1980s and ’90s. The poetics explored include the works of Nicole Brossard, Daphne Martlatt, bpNichol, George Bowering, Roy Kiyooka, and Frank Davey in the 1960s and ’70s. For the 1980-2000 period, the authors include essays on Jeff Derksen, Clare Harris, Erin Mour, and Lisa Robertson. They also look at books by older authors published after 1979, including Robin Blaser, Robert Kroetsch, and Fred Wah. A historiography of the radical poets, and a roster of the little magazines, small press publishers, literary festivals, and other such sites that have sustained poetic experimentation, provide context.

Canada’s Radical Poetries in English (1957-2003)

Writing in Our Time

Poet Phyllis Webb initiated new ways of seeing into the cultural “dark” of Western thought. By blurring the axis between “light” and “dark,” she redefined in positive terms women’s subjectivity and sexuality, which are traditionally assigned “dark” negative values. Seeing in the Dark includes perceptive discussions on a number of Webb’s collections, specifically Naked Poems, Wilson’s Bowl, Water and Light and Hanging Fire. Butling shows how Webb uses strategies of subversion, reversal and re-vision of prevailing traditions and tropes to facilitate “seeing in the dark.” She also provides a fascinating analysis of Webb criticism — tracing it over the past thirty years and revealing a shift in critical paradigms. A chapter on biography includes intriguing archival material. Pauline Butling offers important new ways of reading one of Canada’s finest poets. Seeing in the Dark is essential introductory material for the general reader and provides provocative penetrating analysis for literary scholars.

The Poetry of Phyllis Webb

Seeing in the Dark

Poet Phyllis Webb initiated new ways of seeing into the cultural 'dark' of Western thought. By blurring the axis between 'light' and 'dark', she redefined in positive terms women's subjectivity and sexuality, which are traditionally assigned 'dark' negative values. Pauline Butling offers important new ways of reading one of Canada's finest poets. Seeing in the Dark is essential introductory material for the general reader and provides provocative penetrating analysis for literary scholars.

Pauline Butling

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