Written by one of his friends and confidants, a close reading of bpNichol’s poetry

aka bpNichol is the biography of the major Canadian poet bpNichol, who was a practising lay psychoanalyst and vice-president of one of the largest and longest-lasting communes in North America for more than a decade. Though he died at the young age of 44, Barrie Nichol was internationally influential as a visual poet and sound poet. Nichol authored the multi-volume The Martyrology, one of the most substantial long poems of the 20th century; four novels; two musical comedies; six children’s books; hundreds of hand-drawn visual poems; and 10 episodes of Fraggle Rock.

Written by Frank Davey, one of Barrie’s numerous literary collaborators, aka bpNichol reveals the close connections among Nichol’s various activities, and includes a close reading of Nichol’s poetry. Davey examines how the autobiographical inquiries and Freudian dream analyses linked with the young Nichol’s biographical self-awareness, ultimately producing a writer whose main psychoanalytic client had become his own writing, and who could explore its slips, accidental puns, “unintended” meanings, and implications for the communal future of the human species both in high literature and the comic forms of prime-time television.

Born in Vancouver, Frank Davey was Carl F. Klinck Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Western Ontario. Upon his retirement in 2005, the conference “Poetics and Public Culture in Canada” was held in his honour. Davey attended the University of British Columbia where he was a co-founder of the avant-garde poetry magazine TISH. Since 1963, he has been the editor-publisher of the poetics journal Open Letter. With fellow TISH poet Fred Wah, Davey founded the world’s first on-line literary magazine, SwiftCurrent in 1984.

A prolific and highly-esteemed author of numerous books and scholarly articles on Canadian literary criticism and poetry, Davey writes with a unique panache as he examines with humour and irony the ambiguous play of signs in contemporary culture, the popular stories that lie behind it, and the struggles between different identity-based groups in our globalizing society—racial, regional, gender-based, ethnic, economic—that drive this play.

Frank Davey's profile page

“[Davey] acquaints the reader with the many facets of Nichol’s work and personality without eviscerating them academically.” — Dragnet Magazine

“Less a full biography of Nichol’s life than Davey’s detailed study of the autobiographical dimensions of his poetry, aka bpNichol . . . is an important reference work for present and future generations.” — Globe and Mail