BRICKBRICKBRICK is background reading brought to the forefront. With this new collection, poet Mark Laliberte presents a series of visual meditations on the subject of “ poetics”. Like much of his recent output, this project hovers around – but never quite steps into – the cultural zone that pure, popular comics inhabit. The hybrid “texts” presented in this volume (slowly developed from 2001-08), appropriate and invade the hand-made illustrative markings of different illustrators or cartoonists, as they draw bricks – usually in the backgrounds of city scenes. Each drawn source is pulled forward and stripped of all signs of their original narrative intent. In a process that is metaphorically connected to the careful manipulation of written words on a page, each work is digitally constructed – brick-by-brick – into new and distinct walls that the reader will likely enjoy hitting up against.

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Mark Laliberte (b. 1971) is a practicing writer/ visual artist / designer / soundmaker / curator / multi-headed hydra who has exhibited & performed extensively in galleries across Canada & the USA. Laliberte has had pageworks, poems & other printed experiments appear in publications big & small, including: Carousel, Descant, Lantern, Misunderstandings, Other Cl/utter, Pilot, Prairie Fire, Prefix Photo, Rampike, subTerrian, Vallum … He recently completed ‘Au Bruit de la Guerre / (With the Noise of the War)’, a permanent public art project for Toronto Transit Commission (launching Dec 2010, St. Clair Ave at Oakwood Ave). This four-panel experimental “comic-poem” translates the visual energy of comic book imagery (line, word bubble, sound effect, cartoon body parts etc) into a unique graphic code-system — it is a massive work that derives from / reinterprets the small b/w bookwork, Take Away Its Wings and Force It To Fly, self-released in 2008 in an edition of 100 copies. Laliberte is currently working on his next full-sized manuscript, tentatively titled Cloud & Bubble.

BookThug’s editorial vision is to enrich and advance the tradition of experimental literature. All manuscripts are evaluated for their artistic merit and their ability to continue the ‘conversation’ about experimental literature. In other words, every manuscript must display an awareness of the intellectual and artistic tradition which preceded it, while then stretching the concepts further, responding to today’s philosophical, scientific, political, and aesthetic environment. BookThug seeks to publish innovative books of poetry, prose and creative criticism that extend the tradition of experimental literature. Specifically, BookThug aims to:
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