A Canadian classic, the Four Horsemen

Canadian classic, the Four Horsemen, sound poets.

bp Nichol

Raphael Barreto-Rivera

Steve McCaffery

Paul Dutton

From the a clip from Ron Mann's documentary, Poetry in Motion (1981). It was posted 5 years ago on Google video. It's also on YouTube, but in a lower resolution. I chatted with bp at a party I helped to organize for my ex way back in the mid-1980s. bp liked my quiche lorraine, if I recall. He was sprightly, outwardly sort of 'hippy-ish' perhaps, but mentally as agile as any high wire rope walker. Later on, in the 90s, Paul used to come by our house, and talk with my ex. Though I wasn't writing or painting in those days, I had a library of a few thousand books and could hold my own in conversation. I knew lots of bookish things, I guess, which Paul seemed to appreciate. Anyway, this is a bit of trip down memory lane tonight. bp died in September 1988. He'd gone into hospital for an operation to remove a cyst on his spine, a routine operation, and died on the operating table. Completely unexpected in such an operation, and tragic. Tonight I found concrete poems that he'd composed on one of the first Macs, way back in the 80s. What he would have produced had he lived. Though that is a mute statement, isn't it. Glad we have what we do of what he did create.