Join Talonbooks and Pages books on Kensington as they celebrate the publication of fractal economies by derek beaulieu on 15 March 2006. For event listings and more information, click here.

This launch will feature a discussion of concrete poetry by fractal economies author derek beaulieu, accompanied by a series of performances from the book by Jill Hartman, Jason Christie, Jordan Scott and Natalie Walschots, each of whom will interpret and respond to the poems inside.

In fractal economies, derek beaulieu pushes the limits of poetry and poetics by grinding language through the mill of photocopiers, found material, collage, printmaking, frottage and Letraset—creating a new language for the genre. These “fractal economies,” challenge the status quo of poetry and of the politics of language itself. Letters are freed from their “normal” behavior, machines are let loose to create on their own and the borders between poetry and artwork are blurred. In an intriguing and well-argued afterword, beaulieu also theorizes ways that concrete poetry—poetry that deals with language in a physical, material way—can move forward into the twenty-first century beyond the limitations of the page, the author and even the poem itself.

“derek beaulieu folds his bountiful letters into this beautiful fractal, which, when folded, looks as bold as a bounding fountain full of glitter, letting us better see his bit of two-bit beauty (far too futile to be free to act as art at all)—until we see that all his fonts are sold to us as his found bounty, fitful in their fetters, like our litter, which is never fully useful, but is bought, like freight, to break the back of capital.”
—Christian Bök

“fractal economies is the bleeding edge of the paper cut.”
—Kenneth Goldsmith

“fractal economies is a map of semantic possibilities and new directions. beaulieu skillfully makes strange with previously established poetic language and, in doing so, opens up a world of subversive traces which reveal the way language manipulates and is manipulated.”
—Jon Paul Fiorentino

fractal economies

ISBN: 0889225397
$15.95 CN; $13.95 US
6 X 9 in.; 96 pp

Source: The Calgary Blow-Out

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