Derek Beaulieu Books

Typography meets poetry at a Pink Floyd laser-light show In Surface Tension, poetry is liquified. Flowing away from meaning, letters and words gather and pool into puddles of poetry; street signs and logos reflected in the oily sheen of polluted gutters of rainwater. Like a funhouse mirror reflecting the language that surrounds us, the pages drip over the margins, suggesting that Madge was right, we are "soaking in it!" Surface Tension updates visual poetry for our post-pandemic age, asking us rethink the verbiage around us, to imagine letters as images instead of text, to find meaning in their beautiful shapes as Beaulieu stretches, torques, slides, blurs, and melts them into Dali-esque collages.

Quill pen, linotype, computer: does how you write affect what you write? This book spurns the sentence and woos the phrase, the image and the language of printing, weaving fragments together to address the question of how publishing and printing affect writing.

Exploring the innovative fusion of styles, this short fiction collection showcases a unique approach to writing that emphasizes sampling, borrowing, and cutting-and-pasting techniques. It presents a literary mash-up that challenges traditional narratives, inviting readers into a dynamic interplay of voices and forms. Each story serves as a testament to the evolving nature of literature in the modern age.

Pushing the boundaries of poetry and poetics, the author confronts conventional norms and explores the politics of language. This work invites readers to reconsider established literary forms and engage with the innovative use of language, making it a thought-provoking contribution to contemporary poetry.

Since the beginning of his poetic career in the 1990s, derek beaulieu has created works that have challenged readers to understand in new ways the possibilities of poetry. With nine books currently to his credit, and many works appearing in chapbooks, broadsides, and magazines, beaulieu continues to push experimental poetry, both in Canada and internationally, in new directions. Please, No More Poetry is the first selected works of derek beaulieu. As the publisher of first housepress and, more recently, No Press, beaulieu has continually highlighted the possibilities for experimental work in a variety of writing communities. His own work can be classified as visual poetry, as concrete poetry, as conceptual work, and beyond. His work is not to be read in any traditional sense, as it challenges the very idea of reading; rather, it may be understood as a practice that forces readers to reconsider what they think they know. As beaulieu continues to push himself in new directions, readers will appreciate the work that he has created to date, much of which has become unavailable in Canada. With an introduction by Kit Dobson and an interview with derek beaulieu by Lori Emerson as an afterword, Please, No More Poetry offers readers an opportunity to gain access to a complex experimental poetic practice through thirty-five selected representative works.