This September 30th would have been the 80th birthday of iconic Canadian multiform poet bpNichol, who passed away far too soon at the age of 43 in 1988. PennSound's bpNichol author page — edited by media archeologist Lori Emerson — is testament to Nichol's diverse talents and affinities, and it's telling that it would take a media archeologist to construct a proper archive, given that it collects work originally released on flexi-disc, LP, cassette, and even floppy disc, in addition to traditional formats.
That last piece, 1984's "First Screening: Computer Poems" — initially written in Apple's BASIC programming language and converted into a Quicktime emulation in 2007 by a team of poets and media specialists — is a clear highlight of the collection. Another is a series of lengthy recordings (totaling nearly six hours) from Nichol's unfinished magnum opus, The Martyrology, made in 1983 and 1987. Our most recent addition, from the spring of 2023, is Nichol and bill bissett's 1967 interview with Phyllis Webb on the CBC television program Extension (read the PennSound Daily write-up here) You'll find these and many more recordings from the late 1960s through to posthumously-released work by clicking here.
Listeners will also want to check out our author pages for The Four Horsemen and Owen Sound — collaborative projects in which Nichol participated — as well as the 1979 Six Fillious reading at the Ear Inn (which features Paul Dutton reading Nichol's contributions to the book). Finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't point you in the direction of the official bpNichol archive, which is a truly marvelous resource.
