Performative Archives: The Visual Poetry of bpNichol and Derek Beaulieu

Abstract

By taking to task the materiality of writing, visual poetry asks what can be remembered and through what channels. Though the archive may function in poetry in the broadest sense as a metaphor for memory, the boundaries of that narrative change along with the shape of the print medium. If visual poetry is an archive of scriptural experiment, its recordings are subject to the flux of a dynamic aesthetic and an environment increasingly grounded in technology. This paper will concentrate upon the dramatization of textuality through the example of two Canadian poets, bpNichol and Derek Beaulieu across the twentieth and the twenty-first century. It shall be considered how their visual poetries engage with archival processes and in doing so, bring into focus the changing temporality and spaces of memory.