aka bpNichol: a preliminary biography

Author: Frank Davey  Publisher: ECW Press (2012) aka bpNichol is the biography of the major Canadian poet bpNichol, who was a practising lay psychoanalyst and vice–president of one of the largest and longest–lasting communes in North America for more than a decade. Though he died at the young age of 44, Barrie Nichol was internationally influential as a visual poet and sound poet. Nichol authored the multi–volume The Martyrology, one of the most substantial long poems of the 20th century; four novels; two musical comedies; six children’s books; hundreds of hand–drawn visual poems; and 10 episodes of Fraggle Rock. Written by Frank Davey, one of Barrie’s numerous literary collaborators, aka bpNichol reveals the close connections among Nichol’s various activities, and includes a close reading of Nichol’s poetry. Davey examines how the autobiographical inquiries and Freudian dream analyses linked with the young Nichol’s biographical self–awareness, ultimately producing a writer whose main