[Wgcp-whc] WG/CP--this Friday's session postponed one week

richard.deming at yale.edu richard.deming at yale.edu
Sun Oct 14 10:49:14 EDT 2007


Dear All,


sadly, there's been a delay in the copies of Christian Bök's Eunoia arriving at
our doorstep. Hopefully within a day or two the copies will have all arrived. 
Thus, in order to give people more time to read, we will postpone our next
meeting until the following Friday 10/26.

Bök will be reading at the Beinecke on Nov 1 and then will meet with our group
on Nov 2.

Very shortly we will be sending around some supplementary readings via e-mail
about and by Bök.

In the meantime, I'm pasting below the judges' citation for the awarding of
Canada's Griffin Prize (one of that nation's highest literay prizes):


Christian Bök has made an immensely attractive work from those ?corridors of
the breath? we call vowels, giving each in turn its dignity and manifest,
making all move to the order of his own recognition and narrative. Both he and
they are led to delightfully, unexpected conclusions as though the world really
were what we made of it. As we are told at the outset, ?Eunoia, which means
?beautiful thinking,? is the shortest English word to contain all five
vowels.? Here each speaks with persistent, unequivocal voice, all puns indeed
intended.


Bio:

Christian Bök?s Eunoia has had twelve reprints and sold 11,000 copies since
its publication in 2001, a phenomenal success story by Canadian standards. He
is the author of the acclaimed Crystallography (Coach House Press, 1994), a
pataphysical encyclopedia nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award for Best
Poetic Debut. Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science is forthcoming
from Northwestern University Press. Bök?s conceptual artwork has appeared at
the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York City as part of the Poetry Plastique
exhibit. He has also created artificial languages for the TV shows, Gene
Roddenberry?s Earth: Final Conflict and Peter Benchley?s Amazon. Bök has
also earned many accolades for his virtuoso performances of sound poetry
(particularly the Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters).


And finally here is a videofile of  Bök reading (I should say performing) the
first chapter of Eunoia.  Given that Bök is in large part a sound poet, it
pays to watch this.
http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/media/gpp2002/bok-higgins.wmv

Look shortly for more Bök-iana and the minutes from our most recent session,
guest written by Jean-Jacques Poucel.


I would also recommend a reading this Tuesday at 4 PM by Charles Bernstein at
the Beinecke Library.  Bernstein visited our group in 2005.

His encyclopedic author page is here
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/index.html

Oh and why not--here's my review of Bernstein's Shadowtime:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/shadowtime/reviews/Deming.html


Sincerely,
Richard Deming, Coordinator


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