CONTACT WITH POETS

lations and so on) that we refer to are significant to how we use and respond
to their ideas, even if we happen to think as Derrida, and as our
creative work suggests, that language is more complex than is implied by
the ownership of words and ideas.
He draws a line between “citational” language and “performative”
language, but I think appropriation proves the lack of an edge between
these types. Language can be both if it is written through the simultaneity
of reference and speech act. I wonder if this moves into your work
on the idea of poetics as objects?
beaulieu: Poetics as Objects was a workshop I gave a few years
back through Calgary’s TRUCK Gallery and their Camper Project in which
participants could earn an imitation boy-scout badge for creating visual
poetry and handmade books. My aim was to try and increase awareness of
the physicality of writing and publishing. My own writing treats text as
physical objects, things that can be manipulated much as LEGO ... and is
often quite gestural in terms of creation. In terms of “citational” and “performative”
writing, I argue that my novels, flatland and Local Colour and
prose collection How to Write are in fact transcriptions of reading practices.
And that’s where the searchable text and PDFs come in—non-narrative or
non-plot-driven reading is now much more possible…
Betts: Computers do change everything about reading and writing,
and we are still so early in our collective encounter with this radically
new technology that we likely cannot yet even imagine its eventual impact
on the idea of literature. I feel that we must be in a moment similar to that
period shortly after the printing press arrived, but before writers really
knew what to do with it. So, naturally, they tried to use the new technology
to replicate the old practices. Our first reaction to the computer has
been to rather flatly import page-based writing online.
It does seem somewhat ironic to me that while concrete and visual
poets were true pioneers in introducing, even creating, a radically new
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