bill bissett: becoming the line moving through space

Deemed The Godfather of Canadian Poetry, bill bissett is a prolific artist whose writing and painting span seven decades. In that time bill has published over seventy books as well as created countless paintings and albums of music, has performed hundreds of readings, ran blewointment magazine and blewointment press, was the subject of documentaries, was persecuted for his work by conservative politicians, received support from Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, and bpNichol, was sampled by The Chemical Brothers, has been an advocate for gay rights, women’s rights, and the environment, and so much more. His writing, which is lyrical at heart and employs a style often described as unconventional, employs purposeful misspelling, visual and auditory elements, and focuses on love, pain, death, politics, sex, longing, beauty, and an attempt to make sense of the senselessness of this world. He is a true artist.

In this episode our host Brad Casey pieces together several recordings done with bill over the last seven years, beginning in 2014 when he contacted bill to do a formal interview on his life, an interview which became lost. Since then Brad has conducted several informal interviews with bill, the latest being in late 2021, and pieced together clips from all of these interviews to create this episode which serves primarily as a portrait of Bill Bissett but also a tribute to the friendship that has grown between bill and Brad over those years.