Friday, December 30, 2005

bpNichol's Christmas cards

Since Ron Silliman recently mentioned Sheila Murphy's annual Christmas poem mailout, it seems only fair to mention the annual handout that bpNichol started, and his widow and daughter, Eleanor and Sarah Nichol, still continue since beep's death in 1988 at the age of 44. The tradition that bp started, through publishing new work, is continued by Ellie and Sarah through picking from bp's large stable of published work. This year, the poem fragment comes from his collection Zygal: a book of mysteries & translations (Toronto ON: Coach House Press,1985).

to encompass the world
to take it in
inside that outside
outside that in
to be real
one thing beside the other

Last year, Saskatoon's Grain magazine even did a special feature on bpNichol's Christmas mailouts (see the entry I made at the time on it here). It's a good thing I got it, too. The return address seems to be Calgary, and I was about to send her a bunch of things to the Toronto address (when did she move?).

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