Bill Bissett


Bill Bissett is a Canadian poet known for his unconventional style.

Early life and education

Bissett was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. As a child he dealt with several years of illness then bullying because of his sexuality, “I was trying to do as well as I could, and getting snowballs thrown at me with rocks in them because I was gay and I was getting beaten up and having really no friends.”
He attended Dalhousie University and the University of British Columbia. After completing course requirements for his two majors in English and Philosophy, Bissett dropped out of both universities to avoid academic constraints.
In 1962, Bissett had one child with partner Martina Clinton, Ooljah Bissett, Ooljah died in the early 2000s from an unknown illness.

Career

Bissett moved to Vancouver, British Columbia in 1958. In 1962, he started blewointment magazine. He later launched blewointmentpress, which has published volumes by Cathy Ford, Maxine Gadd, Michael Coutts, Hart Broudy, Rosemary Hollingshead, Beth Jankola, Carolyn Zonailo, bpNichol, Ken West, Lionel Kearns and D. A. Levy.
In 1968, Bissett collaborated with experimental rock group Th Mandan Massacre to release a spoken word album, Awake In Th Red Desert, in a limited edition of 500 copies. The album became a highly sought after collector's item, until reissued by Feeding Tube Records in 2019.
In 1977, Bob Wenman and a group of other Conservative Members of Parliament objected to the funding of some Canadian poets, Bill Bissett in particular, by the Canadian Council for the Arts, on moral grounds. Wenman, when speaking to Jean Chrétien, described bissett's work as "disgusting and pornographic." While in Parliament, Wenman requested that bissett's literary work be read into the record, but his request was denied by the Speaker as not relevant.
After Wenman's accusations in 1977, and until June 1978, Bissett received no funding from Canadian Council grants, although there is no clear indication that Wenman's allegations were the cause of this. Indeed, according to Frank Davey, a Canadian poet and scholar, by as early as 1974, bissett had been "ejected from cross-Canada trains, evicted by countless landlords, beaten, harassed by police, and arrested and sentenced to prison."
In 1983, financial hardship, plus a desire to focus on his own writing and visual art, led him to sell blewointment press. From 1986 to 1991, Bissett was the lyricist and vocalist in the London, Ontario band Luddites, they released several demo cassettes and an LP. They disbanded in 1991.
Bissett is based in Vancouver and Toronto, Ontario, alternating between the two cities.
In the Paris Review, Jack Kerouac called Bill Bissett one of "the great poets."
In 2006, Nightwood Editions published radiant danse uv being, a poetic tribute to bissett with contributions from more than 80 writers, including Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Lorna Crozier, Patrick Lane, Steve McCaffery, P. K. Page and Darren Wershler-Henry. In 2006 he was also featured in an episode of the television series Heart of a Poet produced by Canadian filmmaker Maureen Judge.
Bissett's sound poetry was sampled by The Chemical Brothers on their 2007 CD We Are the Night. The CD title was taken from bissett's "Pome for Ooljah". The CD went #1 in the UK and North American Electronic Music Charts.
In 2007, bissett was awarded the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding contributions to literature in British Columbia. The following year, he was given an Honorary Doctorate in Literature from Thompson Rivers University.
In 2015, "Th ground is a prspektiv" by bissett was once again sampled by The Chemical Brothers, this time for their album Born in the Echoes in "I'll See You There".
In 2019, an anthology of poems from nearly every previously published Bissett book, entitled breth was published through Talonbooks. breth features hundreds of poems dating as early as the late 1950s, to as recent as the late 2010s.

Art and poetry

Bissett uses unusual orthography and incorporates visual elements in his printed poetry, and his performance of "concrete sound" poetry, sound effects, chanting, barefoot dancing and playing a maraca during his poetry readings. Frank Davey described him as "rejecting the conventional or 'straight' world not only in lifestyle but in ruthless alterations to conventional syntax and spelling." Themes in his work range from the mystical to the mundane, incorporating humour, sentimentality, and political commentary. He often does not capitalise his name or use capital letters. He has had large exhibits of his paintings.