THE OXFORD
PROFESSORSHIP OF POETRY
Photograph by Benny Capp
Thank you, Members of Convocation, for registering to vote in the election for the Oxford Professor of Poetry. I am delighted to see that the community has elevated my friend A. E. Stallings to this role, and of course, you have made a superb choice (among nominees of great merit). I do appreciate the support of Oxford alumni who have chosen to vote for me (and of course, I am grateful to my friends who have encouraged me throughout my campaign for this honour): I do hope that I might have a second chance in the future to revisit such a magnificent opportunity. I am certainly looking forward (with much anticipation) to the contributions that A. E. Stallings is going to make to the University of Oxford. Cheers, my friends — with much gratitude!
Statement of Candidacy – Oxford Professorship of Poetry
EUNOIA
‘Irresistible — a must for verbivores.’
— Giles Brandreth
‘Eunoia,’ which means ‘beautiful thinking,’ is the shortest word in English to contain all five vowels — and this uncanny moniker refers to a series of ‘lipograms,’ in which each vowel appears by itself in its own story. Eunoia has won the Griffin Poetry Prize (now worth $130,000 CAD), and the book has spent five weeks on the bestseller list in The Globe and Mail. David Bidini from The Rheostatics has composed a rock-and-roll medley entitled ‘Eunoia’ for his album In the Rock Hall by The Bidiniband; moreover, the choreographer Denise Fujiwara has adapted the book for stage (receiving three nominations for Dora Mavor Awards in Dance, all in honour of this theatrical production, which has toured many times across Canada). The Literary Review of Canada has ranked Eunoia among the five most influential books of Canadian poetry, so far published in the 21st century.
Excerpt from Chapter E (recited by Sylvie Bouchard)
Trailer for Eunoia by Denise Fujiwara at Fujiwara Dance Inventions (2014)
Chapter I from Eunoia (recited by Christian Bök)
Trailer for Eunoia by Evan Munday at Coach House Books (2009)
THE XENOTEXT
THE NOCTURNE OF ORPHEUS
(for ‘the maiden in her dark, pale meadow’)
‘The Nocturne of Orpheus’ is a love-poem — an alexandrine sonnet, written in blank verse, with 33 letters in each line, all of which create a perfect, double acrostic of the dedication (for ‘the maiden in her dark, pale meadow’); moreover, the poem is also a perfect anagram of the sonnet ‘When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be’ by John Keats (transforming his meditation about the mortality of love into a mournful farewell by the poet, before he enters Hell). ‘The Nocturne of Orpheus’ appears in Book I of The Xenotext — an ‘infernal grimoire’ that constitutes the ‘orphic’ volume in a diptych about themes of both biogenesis and extinction. Book I revisits the Orphic legend about the defiance of poetry in the face of Death, retelling fables about the futile desire of poets to rescue love and life from the ravages of Hell.
The Perfect Malware from The Xenotext (by Christian Bök)
Performance at Ro Theatre in Rotterdam (2018)
The Xenotext — Lecture for ‘Beakerhead’ (by Christian Bök)
Performance at Theatre Grand Junction in Calgary (2013)