On a recent trip to Toronto, Wave Books editor Joshua Beckman visited some of Toronto’s vintage bookstores to scoop up long out-of-print books and chapbooks by the renowned Canadian poet bill bissett. Joshua obtained a number of early works, many published by bissett’s own ointment press. In speaking with Joshua, I was reminded of a tribute anthology, radiant danse uv being: a poetic portrait of bill bissett (2006), and of other encounters with his writing over the years.

I looked up bill after Joshua’s visit, resulting in a lunch date in Kensington Market. We met at The Secret Handshake, Canada’s first peer-to-peer support for people with schizophrenia. The Secret Handshake provides space for art and performance, and several of bill’s visual works were on display. Over lunch we talked about his connection to the Vancouver poetry scene in the 1960s, particularly to Warren and Ellen Tallman, both of whom taught at UBC. There, they organized the Vancouver Poetry Conference in 1963, putting American and Canadian poets into direct conversation. Talking with bill reminded me of the immense pleasures of poetry as a life adventure. The art, certainly, requires alert focus to complex densities of language. But it also gathers force in the daily enactments of one’s living arrangements.

bill’s work particularly and sympathetically acknowledges the ecstasy and pain of life.
He eschews traditional English orthography to accommodate the speech and vocal rhythms of North America, and in his cadences readers encounter a spiritually alert and tenderly perceptive mind. As such, his writing radiantly acceses the joys and challenges of the every day. Family, friends, lovers, and visitors move through bissett’s work, and pulses of sensuous energy extend an immensity of spirit in all of his poems.

Raised in Halifax, bissett spent many years in Vancouver as the editor of ointment press. Some of his many publications include The Book (2016), northern wild roses (2005), narrativ enigma (2004), b leev abul char ak trs (2000), and Loving without being vulnrabul (1997). As a musician, he has composed songs and lyrics for the band the Luddites. His awards include the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. We are honored at White Wall Review to feature bill bissett’s recent work in the following pages, and continue to learn from his upbeat, downhome presence in poetry as one of Canada’s most attuned and creative minds.

Originally published in White Wall Review 41 (2017)