radiant danse uv being: a poetic portrait of bill bissett

Thomas M.F. Gerry is chair of the English Department at Laurentian
University and the editor of Arachne, Laurentian University’s
bilingual interdisciplinary journal of language and literature.

Jeff Pew and Stephen Roxborough initiated “Projekt bill” with an
Internet call asking poets to send poems “about bill” for possible
inclusion in a “meaningful anthology.” radiant danse uv being is the
result.

The title of the book and the “projekt” signal what happens when
people enter the world of “biseteez” (as Jamie Reid names
bissett’s language): they start spelling differently and stop spelling
the same. “Spelling” starts being about wizards, not just about
dictionaries. Dictionaries stop being so important and witchery starts
bucking centuries of nasty prejudices.

And without saying so, biseteez says “lighten up” in more ways than
stop clinging to your dictionary fantasies of “(in)korrekt thots.”
Several poems in the anthology brilliantly capture this release. J Ocean
Dennie’s “annihilation uv p om” dramatizes it—a reversal of the
way Word’s spell-checker is right now, dramatizing on screen its
resistance to these orthographic and ultimately thinking mistakes.
Dennie calls the “annihilation” brought about by biseteez a moment
when “something happy happens inside. / A waterfall of wonder washes
over one.”

Other people approach the inspiration topic differently. Leonard
Cohen’s brief poem, “dear bill,” thanks him “for leaving nothing
out.” Possibility is a very inclusive theme that bissett offers
generously. Margaret Atwood’s “Astral Twin” tells the thoughts of
a person gazing at a picture by bill of a person gazing at the viewer.
In a note at the end of the book, Atwood suggests that she and bissett
are astral twins.

The poems in radiant danse uv being do what poems do best: put into
words magic.