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Square Root
- GenresPoetry
4 pages, small square folded chap the size of a matchbook
First published April 1, 2009
9 people want to read
About the author
Derek Beaulieu
52 books17 followersFrom wikipedia:
Derek Alexander Beaulieu (born 1973) is a Canadian poet, publisher and anthologist.
Beaulieu studied contemporary Canadian poetics at the University of Calgary. His work has appeared internationally in small press publications, magazines, and in visual art galleries. He has lectured on small press politics, arts funding and literary community in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Iceland.
He works extensively around issues of community and poetics, and along those lines has edited (or co-edited) the magazines filling Station (1998–2001, 2004–present), dANDelion (2001–2004), and endNote (2000–2001).
He founded housepress in 1997 from which he published small editions of poetry, prose and critical work until 2004. The housepress fonds are now located at Simon Fraser University. In 2005 he founded the small press no press.
In 2005 he co-edited Shift & Switch: new Canadian poetry with Angela Rawlings and Jason Christie, a controversial anthology of radical new poetry which has been reviewed internationally.
Beaulieu has shifted his focus in recent years to conceptual fiction, specifically visual translations/rewritings. His book Flatland consists of visual patterns based on the typography of Edwin Abbott Abbott's classic novel Flatland and his book Local Colour is a series of colour blocks based on the original text of Paul Auster's novella Ghosts.
How to Write, a collection of conceptual prose, was published by Talonbooks in 2010.
Beaulieu lives in Calgary, Alberta.
Derek Alexander Beaulieu (born 1973) is a Canadian poet, publisher and anthologist.
Beaulieu studied contemporary Canadian poetics at the University of Calgary. His work has appeared internationally in small press publications, magazines, and in visual art galleries. He has lectured on small press politics, arts funding and literary community in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Iceland.
He works extensively around issues of community and poetics, and along those lines has edited (or co-edited) the magazines filling Station (1998–2001, 2004–present), dANDelion (2001–2004), and endNote (2000–2001).
He founded housepress in 1997 from which he published small editions of poetry, prose and critical work until 2004. The housepress fonds are now located at Simon Fraser University. In 2005 he founded the small press no press.
In 2005 he co-edited Shift & Switch: new Canadian poetry with Angela Rawlings and Jason Christie, a controversial anthology of radical new poetry which has been reviewed internationally.
Beaulieu has shifted his focus in recent years to conceptual fiction, specifically visual translations/rewritings. His book Flatland consists of visual patterns based on the typography of Edwin Abbott Abbott's classic novel Flatland and his book Local Colour is a series of colour blocks based on the original text of Paul Auster's novella Ghosts.
How to Write, a collection of conceptual prose, was published by Talonbooks in 2010.
Beaulieu lives in Calgary, Alberta.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 24, 2012
http://tsky-reviews.blogspot.co.nz/20...
Derek Beaulieu
√¯¯¯
Default Publishing for Dusie Kolektiv year 3 (2009)
(pdf here)
This is a wonderful example of the book as an object, proving that the book-noun is not restricted to, or synonymous with, the codex (though this is often assumed to be the case – see Keith Smith's "The Book as Physical Object" in A book of the Book, edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Steven Clay (Granary 1999). This has obvious implications for the future of the e-book, which as of yet has mostly consisted of codex-simulation.)
The endeavours of many of the presses involved in the Dusie Kolektiv move beyond (or improvise upon) the codex’s generally accepted mode of existence as a semantically invisible vehicle for text, as is the case with this series of visual poems.
The concept of the codex is exploded here in a burst of multidirectional physicality, with the usual single, chronologically regulated trajectory replaced by a series of flaps, each operating as a breach or rupture in the book’s planar field, and containing one of the pieces in this series (constellation?).
This rupturing is not contained to the idea of the book, but also takes place on the graphemic level. Each of the four pieces that comprise this work exhibit a futurist/vorticist dynamism, exploding textual normalcy, which signification is made subordinate to the jouissance of visual dynamics. This bears resemblance to the calligraphy of graffiti artist’s bombs, or the logos of metal bands, where typographical aesthetics and excess subsume signification (take as an example of the latter the Xasthur logo, which, after the insertion of the central sigil, has become completely illegible). Like both of these, there is the remnants of a typeface, yet they are scattered, superimposed upon one another. There is no previous text to decipher, no history. There is just what this text will become in collaboration with a reader.
As such the flower-like opening of this work serves a similar function, while also telling of the potential existent in folds and cuts – I’d love to see what could be achieved in the collaboration of a visual poet and publisher doing something like Jack Ross’ Borges translations (especially with the beautiful production values of someone like Peptic Robot).
The only complaint I have is small, and that is the quality of the poems’ printing – they’re a bit blurry. However interesting issues arise here concerning reproduction, distribution, and the existence of the image; and thus the poem/book: where/what is the original? And if this lurks somewhere on a computer, as an intangible sequence of ones and zeroes – what, then, are the implications?
Derek Beaulieu
√¯¯¯
Default Publishing for Dusie Kolektiv year 3 (2009)
(pdf here)
This is a wonderful example of the book as an object, proving that the book-noun is not restricted to, or synonymous with, the codex (though this is often assumed to be the case – see Keith Smith's "The Book as Physical Object" in A book of the Book, edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Steven Clay (Granary 1999). This has obvious implications for the future of the e-book, which as of yet has mostly consisted of codex-simulation.)
The endeavours of many of the presses involved in the Dusie Kolektiv move beyond (or improvise upon) the codex’s generally accepted mode of existence as a semantically invisible vehicle for text, as is the case with this series of visual poems.
The concept of the codex is exploded here in a burst of multidirectional physicality, with the usual single, chronologically regulated trajectory replaced by a series of flaps, each operating as a breach or rupture in the book’s planar field, and containing one of the pieces in this series (constellation?).
This rupturing is not contained to the idea of the book, but also takes place on the graphemic level. Each of the four pieces that comprise this work exhibit a futurist/vorticist dynamism, exploding textual normalcy, which signification is made subordinate to the jouissance of visual dynamics. This bears resemblance to the calligraphy of graffiti artist’s bombs, or the logos of metal bands, where typographical aesthetics and excess subsume signification (take as an example of the latter the Xasthur logo, which, after the insertion of the central sigil, has become completely illegible). Like both of these, there is the remnants of a typeface, yet they are scattered, superimposed upon one another. There is no previous text to decipher, no history. There is just what this text will become in collaboration with a reader.
As such the flower-like opening of this work serves a similar function, while also telling of the potential existent in folds and cuts – I’d love to see what could be achieved in the collaboration of a visual poet and publisher doing something like Jack Ross’ Borges translations (especially with the beautiful production values of someone like Peptic Robot).
The only complaint I have is small, and that is the quality of the poems’ printing – they’re a bit blurry. However interesting issues arise here concerning reproduction, distribution, and the existence of the image; and thus the poem/book: where/what is the original? And if this lurks somewhere on a computer, as an intangible sequence of ones and zeroes – what, then, are the implications?
May 21, 2009
Open a small flat envelope. Find one tiny flat square. Unpack it. Unfold it. Build a cube. Fold layered letters around edges and create a bird. Throw it. It falls. Turn it upside down to become a crab. Raise winged flaps i.e. legs to build a house. Squint to decode writing. Read “For more info go to...” Agree that the writing comes far off the page. Put on desk and shoot paper clips into square root.
April 11, 2009
I think this publication is one of the cleverest this year in way of size, economy and presentation. A real treat!
June 26, 2011
This is ingenious in execution, but I am ambivalent when it comes to conceptual art.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews