Jacket2 international editor Sarah Dowling’s feature devoted to the long history of experimental writing in Canada grew out of North of Invention, a festival hosted at the Kelly Writers House and Poets House in New York in January 2011 that presented ten Canadian poets for two days of readings, presentations, and discussion. Bringing together poets working across multiple traditions, the festival aimed to initiate a new dialogue in North American poetics, addressing the hotly debated areas of “innovation” and “conceptual writing,” the history of sound poetry and contemporary performance, multilingualism and translation, and connections to activism. This feature collects responses to the festival by a number of writers who take the conversation even further north of invention and begin a lively debate of their own.
Edited by Sarah Dowling