News Articles
Award-Winning Poet Is Writer-in-Residence
His is a life with all the drama and comedy any poet could ever want to provide inspiration
BY TERESA PITMAN
whos life isint sum successyun uv
doomd dramas n slapstick
poignant n tragik comedeez
That's a quote from bill bissett's most recently published collection of poetry, ths is erth, thees ar peopul, with all the playful phonetic spelling of the original. Although it describes life in general, it may apply most aptly to bissett's own; his is a life with all the drama and comedy any poet could ever want to provide inspiration.
This fall, the twists and turns of his adventures have led him to a semester as U of G's writer-in-residence, a role that has him meeting with members of the University community to discuss their writing projects and to offer feedback.
It's not something bissett might have predicted — he last worked as a writer-in-residence a decade ago — but then this artist's life has rarely been predictable. As a boy, he found he wasn't much good at school subjects (other than gymnastics), but he did like making books, at first for school and then as a creative outlet.
“If I experience something that's important to me, my first idea is to make a book out of it,” he says.
By the time bissett was 16, his poetry was beginning to evolve.
“I like writing very visually, using the space on the page like a brush on canvas. Lots of space around the words gives them the greatest tactility.”
He spells the way he does, he told a writer for Toronto's Wavelength, because he wants the words to look the way they sound. The non-standard orthography also has the effect of slowing the reader down and focusing on individual words.
Don't think you need to be a writer of concrete poetry or a performance artist to have bissett help you with your writing, however. Although most of the 30 or so people he's met with so far have been poets, he's also reading manuscripts of novels and at least one non-fiction book.
One form of expression doesn't seem to be sufficient for the amount of creativity in bissett. He is also an artist who frequently illustrates his books and sells paintings, and a musician who previously performed with the Luddites, a band based in London, Ont.
As a poet, though, he's prolific, with 73 published books and another one currently “at the printer's.”
ium a
canadian tire wheedling
n wheeling west wher can it go
That quote from another bissett poem could describe his life over the past 25 years. He's been “on the road” much of that time, he says, giving readings and performances across Canada and in parts of the United States.
“I was never anywhere for more than three months. I was in the wonderful world of ‘sublet-ee-ism.' It seems dreamlike now when I think about it, but I met so many great people. Hilarious things happen, deeply tragic things happen, and then afterwards you get on the next bus and go somewhere else.”
This year, however, bissett describes as his “medical year. Everyone has a medical year.” He had surgery recently for a detached retina and is being treated for liver disease with a series of injections and pills, a regimen that requires him to stay close to Toronto. That means the former traveller is, for now, spending much of his time at home and commuting to U of G by bus twice a week.
He's finding that he rather likes it. “Now I see friends, and I'm not thinking about how soon I have to get to the airport or when my next reading is. I think that the writer-in-residence job is good for me, too, because it takes my mind off my medical things and lets me focus on what other people are doing.”
Although bissett has found a positive side to this “medical year” (he says he was born with the optimism gene, so finding the positive side is easy) he has also commented that life is “a lot like the Book of Job — if something goes wrong, a lot goes wrong.” He was referring to a time in the late 1970s when a number of politicians and members of the media made him the centre of some controversy — claiming his work was pornographic and that he should therefore not be receiving Canada Council grants. (As bissett told Quill and Quire at the time: “If I was actually writing pornography, I wouldn't need grants.”)
“I wasn't doing porn, but I wouldn't cave,” he says. “It was scary. I lost a lot of work, and my lawyer's office was firebombed. I was living in a secret hiding place.” He pauses, remembering, and adds: “My life is so calm now!”
As the controversy died down, bissett's work achieved more recognition. He won the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award for 1990/91 and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 1993 and again in 2003. To see samples of his work, visit www.billbissett.com.
If students or others who would like to discuss their work with bissett can drop off a copy of their manuscript a week or so in advance, “then I'll really have something to say when we meet,” he says. He's on campus Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and appointments can be arranged through (and manuscripts left with) Michael Boterman in Room 102 of Massey Hall.