The Porcupine's Quill
Celebrating forty years on the Main Street
of Erin Village, Wellington County
BOOKS IN PRINT
Intimate Distortions by Steve McCaffery
On a hard rock in the past, overlooking a wonderful blue sea with the hot sun shining down, somebody writes a love poem and puts it to sea in an old bottle. Centuries later, with the same sun shining, someone else picks up the bottle in a dark bar and drinks the contents. ‘Bring back the future’, shouts a cloud in the sky. It is from the central predicaments staed in this anecdote that this book springs. Employing a translation system known as ‘allusive referential’ McCaffery invents a way of avoiding the strictures of classical translation. Developing all the suggestions and connotations of Sappho’s words and phrases, new texts are produced which are at the same time vital re-readings of the originals. Irreverent, yet executed in a spirit of love and respect, Intimate Distortions curves gracefully (and occasionally naughtily) away from the strict linear dictates of authorized translation to produce poems of delightful misprision.
Review quote
‘The book ... moves gracefully like a dream sequence into the story of relationships. Those relationships are sometimes direct and human, sometimes they are described as language, as dream, as the interaction of isolated words, murmurs.’
—Marty Gervais, Windsor Star
Steve McCaffery was born January 24, 1947, in Sheffield, England. He came to Canada partly to work with bpNichol, and the two poets formed the Toronto Research Group. McCaffery and Nichol also combined talents with Paul Dutton and Rafael Barreto-Rivera as the Four Horsemen, creating and performing innovative sound poetry. McCaffery attended both the University of Hull and York University. During the seventies and eighties, he and Nichol were regular contributors to the poetic journal Open Letter. McCaffery’s collection of critical writings, North of Intention, stands as one of the earliest and best collections of essays about experimental writing in Canada and the U.S., and it demonstrates and explores McCaffery’s own affiliation with the practitioners of the so-called Language Poetry and poetics, often considered a uniquely American phenomenon. McCaffery has twice been nominated for a Governor General’s award for poetry, and now holds the Gray Chair at SUNY Buffalo (Amherst).
The Porcupine's Quill would like to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. The financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) is also gratefully acknowledged.
