ths is erth thees ar peopul.

Thomas M.F. Gerry is a professor of English (Canadian Literature) at
Laurentian University.

Reading bill bissett’s book is like walking in a familiar grove, becoming entranced by the always-changing patterns of leaves against sky, shadow shapes on the ground, and birds singing and calling. Oh, yes, and there’s a child scampering among the trees, shinnying up them, leaping from them, caressing them. And this child’s posing questions, spouting ideas, sometimes to himself, sometimes to you, sometimes to me. “my tongue is burnt / with th transmisyun / uv thots I have / not sd wher / dew these thots cum from.” In another poem, suddenly the child is not a child: “duz narrativ cum from th / digestiv system the respiratoree th / circulatoree … the portabilitee uv th narrativ th / duplisitee uv th narrativ … yes he sd / ther wer wepons uv mass / destruksyun sirtinlee th opsyunal / naytur of narrativ … was he / reelee ther yet ther wer no wepons uv / mass destruksyun what absent.” These questions become a meditation at once innocent and sick of it (“wut can I dew 2 stop th hurt”), coherent in the darkness of the political spinning, incoherent in the glare of all “th verbal reasons [that] change 2 justify / th killing.”

ths is erth thees ar peopul contains many of bissett’s line drawings too. Perhaps I’m finally seeing these, after how many books by bill bissett, but the drawings seem uncannily close to the word poems. Not that they are on similar topics, as illustrations would be, but the drawings feel—and they are definitely textural—as though they’re drawn from the same energy.

When I am not reading a book by bill bissett, I wouldn’t think of mentioning “energy” in that way, as part of a pretty vague explanation. But his poems and drawings create that sensation: looking at them, reading them, or whatever it is that happens when they’re in front of me, I start believing in “going to spirit,” “love,” and, okay, “an enerjee sew / much greatr thn ourselvs.” Why not? he asks.