The publication of bill bissett’s Rush: what fuckan theory; a study of language in 1972 firmly ushered Canadian poetics into the postmodern era. Out of print for 40 years – and reissued here complete with an interview with bissett about the book’s creation and a critical afterword by derek beaulieu and Gregory Betts – Rush embodies a collagist, multi-conscious approach to art that recognizes no division between the work and the world, the author and his sexuality, his breath, his influences; the theory and the practice. Arguing that “a new line has startid,” Rush captures the urgency of a new model of production that resists the closure and mastery of any one mind. It is an elegant rejection of aesthetic ego and all presumptions of authority. Rush: what fuckan theory; a study of language is a vital, vocal protest against business as usual and the exploitation of the individual from one of Canada’s most important avant-garde poets.

bill bissett opened Canadian poetry to postmodernism and from there proceeded in every direction all at once. Since his invention of the blewointment press in 1963, bissett has worked diligently to explode all boundaries of author, text, and context, radically disrupting static and disciplinary modes of art making. Read, taught, studied, and imitated all around the world, he now lives in Toronto, painting and writing somewhere between painting and poetry.

derek beaulieu is the author of nine books of poetry and conceptual fiction, editor of the acclaimed small presses housepress and No Press. He is an instructor at Mount Royal University and the Alberta College of Art + Design.

Gregory Betts is the Director of Canadian Studies and the Graduate Program Director of Canadian and American Studies at Brock University. He is the author of five books of poetry, and the editor of four books of experimental Canadian writing.

112 pages | 7×10 inches | paperback
ISBN 9781927040416
EPUB ISBN 9781927040454