Avant Canada presents a rich collection of original essays and creative works on a representative array of avant-garde literary movements in Canada from the past fifty years. From the work of Leonard Cohen and bpNichol to that of Jordan Abel and Liz Howard, Avant Canada features twenty-eight of the best writers and critics in the field.

The book proposes four dominant modes of avant-garde production: ""Concrete Poetics,"" which accentuates the visual and material aspects of language; ""Language Writing,"" which challenges the interconnection between words and things; ""Identity Writing,"" which interrogates the self and its sociopolitical position; and ""Copyleft Poetics,"" which undermines our habitual assumptions about the ownership of expression. A fifth section commemorates the importance of the Centennial in the 1960s at a time when avant-garde cultures in Canada began to emerge.

Readers of this book will become familiar with some of the most challenging works of literature - and their creators - that this country has ever produced. From Concrete Poetry in the 1960s through to Indigenous Literature in the 2010s, Avant Canada offers the most sweeping study of the literary avant-garde in Canada to date.

About the Author
Gregory Betts is the Chancellor's Chair for Research Excellence at Brock University and the director of the Centre for Canadian Studies. He is the author of Avant-Garde Canadian Literature: The Early Manifestations (2013) as well as six books of experimental poetry. He is currently the artistic director of the Festival of Readers in St. Catharines.

Christian Boek won the Griffin Poetry Prize for his book Eunoia. He is currently working on The Xenotext, a project that requires him to encode a poem into the genome of a microbe capable of thriving in any inhospitable environment. Boek is a Fellow in the Royal Society of Canada, and he teaches at Charles Darwin University.

Reviews
This collection of academic essays and creative pieces takes an enthusiastic, engaged attitude to the unrolling of Canadian literature, starting with an intelligent introduction by editors Gregory Betts and Christian Boek [...] -- Derek Webster -- Canadian Notes and Queries, 2018



Book Information
ISBN 9781771123525
Author Gregory Betts
Format Paperback
Page Count 350
Imprint Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Publisher Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Weight(grams) 540g