A AASSAS

You might also like

Download as txt, pdf, or txt
Download as txt, pdf, or txt
You are on page 1of 5

B. W. Powe From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia B.W. Powe Bruce 123.jpg B.W. Powe.

September 2010 Born 23 March 1955 (age 58) Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Occupation Writer--poet, novelist, essayist, philosopher, journalist; Profe ssor of Literature Children Katharine Powe Thomas Powe Bruce William Powe (/pa?/; born 23 March 1955) is a Canadian writer poet, noveli st, essayist, philosopher, and teacher. Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Early life and background Career Works These Shadows Remain Bibliography References External links

Early life and background Born in Ottawa, Powe lived in Toronto from 1959 until 1996. His father is Bruce Allen Powe, author of the novels, Killing Ground, The Aberhart Summer and The Ic e Eaters. He attended York University for English studies where in 1977 graduated with a B achelor of Arts degree. Powe received a Master of Arts degree from the Universit y of Toronto in 1981; he studied there with Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye. He received his PhD from York University in October 2009. His PhD is on Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye, their crossings in history, their agon and complemen tarity (their conflicts and harmonies), and the stirring alchemy of their though t. The thesis was also concerned with the role and position of these visionaries in Canada, and the role and position of guides and mentors. His uncle is Joe Schlesinger, senior correspondent for the CBC news. Career He was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor of Literature at York in July 2010. Powe currently teaches in the Department of English at York University. H e lectures on visionary literature, teaching writers from Hildegard von Bingen a nd Dante to Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, and conducts honour seminars on Marshal l McLuhan and Northrop Frye. Powe continues to teach first year introduction to literature courses. In 1997 he moved to Stouffville, Ontario, where he still lives. His two children , Kate and Thomas (twins), enrolled at York University in 2010. Powe was most recently featured in The New York Times in an article reflecting o n Marshall McLuhan on the centennial of his birth. An article on Powe's work on McLuhan's centennial and of his most recent book, T hese Shadows Remain: A Fable, was featured in York University's YFile Daily Bull etin.

"The Spectral Ball of Theory: A Lyrical Essay", an essay originally intended for Powe's upcoming book, was featured in York University's community newspaper, Ex alibur. The website for Ottawa'a Writer's Festival recently published an article on Powe 's contribution to the festival this year. Works Powe has written books of thoughts, poetry, essays, and fiction (long and short) . He has also written nationally-seen columns for The Globe and Mail and "The To ronto Star". This is what the press has said over the years: He has been called "way cool" by the Globe and Mail, "one of our finest cultural commentators" by t he Toronto Star, a poet who can write "hair-raising lines" that seem to come "fu lly formed from the cosmos" by The Globe and Mail and who takes "considerable, u nfashionable risks" by The Malahat Review, "a visionary--a modern day Magellan" by The Montreal Gazette, "an intellectual terrorist" by Barbara Amiel in MacLean 's, and "enigmatic...and necessary..." by The Edmonton Journal. Kenneth J. Harve y said Powe's "Heart beats against the current... [and in his work] at its ultim ate core invents something original--and oftentimes breathtaking... To say brill iant would be an understatement..." (Ottawa Citizen) About Outage, the Calgary H erald said, "Powe has created something remarkable...a sort of video novel, a hy brid of genres and media that transcends the ordinary and offers a new vision in a enw way of a society dancing to electronically generated signals..." Pico Iye r said his writings represented "a soaring alchemical vision." R. Murray Schafer called Outage "a fully realized work of art." Canadian Literature said of his p oetry that "[his] subtly textured themes...affirm the importance of the romantic voice in these troubled times." The Montreal Gazette, in 2007, said that his es say prose style is "like well-chosen brush-strokes on a canvas." At IdeaCity in 2001 Moses Znaimer called B.W. Powe's stances, public lectures and writings "a c ombination of poetry and rock'n'roll." Elana Wolff, poet and critic, in her book Implicate Me: Short Essays on Reading Contemporary Poems (Guernica, 2010), has this to say about Powe's writings: "... a prescient writer on the cyber-age and codes and patterns...there is actually n o neat genre-division in Powe's writing. ...His prose frequently reads like poet ry... The Unsaid Passing is...[an] emotionally unshielded selection of pieces th at range in length from five words to several sections. ...Powe wants both trans personal and transcendent connection from poetry. ...unabashedly spiritual, and passionate...uncommon for our age. He wants us to acknowledge our capacity for d eep feeling, our vulnerability and authentic need for each other, and for the sa cred. ...In the poems of The Unsaid Passing, B.W. Powe goes where he has not gon e in any of his previous work... and written luminous, numinous pieces of mystic al and humanistic sensibility." (Pages 119-121) His work has been profiled on CBC-TV, TVO, CITY-TV, Bravo-TV, ACCESS and CTV. His novel, Outage, was listed as one of the best ten novels of the year by Phili p Marchand in The Toronto Star, in 1995/96. It was also an editor's choice novel in the Globe & Mail in 1995. His book, A Tremendous Canada of Light was selecte d as a notable book of the year by the Globe and Mail in 1993. His book of poems , The Unsaid Passing, was shortlisted for The ReLit Prize in 2006. Towards a Canada of Light (2006; the third revision of the Canada of Light theme ) and Mystic Trudeau: The Fire and the Rose (2007) were conceived as companion p ieces, part of his contemplation of the visionary possibilities of Canada and it s cultural legacy. In Charles Forans's October 2007 review of Mystic Trudeau in The Walrus, he said of the book: "[it] likely makes of its subject only what Tru deau privately made of himself. Powe knew him in his final years and kept record s of their conversations. Expanding on Trudeau's pithy remarks, Powe offers a re

ading of his character and legacy that is as challenging as many of Trudeau's ow n public assertions. The book is determined to credit Canada with a mystical tra dition and to deliberate in that tradition's arguments, employing language that is poetic, emphatic... Wait for the book's kicker: a call for the establishment of a republic in a twenty-first Canada that has...pirouetted away from 'the last vestiges of colonialism and empire.'" His writings have been translated into French by Derrick de Kerckhove and Michel le Tisseyre. His writings have also been translated into Czech. He has been the program director or co-director for three significant events at York University in Toronto: Marshall McLuhan: What if He Was Right? (1997), The Trudeau Era (199 8) and Living Literacies (2002). He is scheduled to become the Creative Writing Program Coordinator at York University in the summer 0f 2013. He is currently at work founding the McLuhan Initiative for the Study of Literac ies at York University, to be housed at Founders College.[1] He read from this work at The Northrop Frye International Festival in Moncton in April 2011, and in Barcelona, Spain, at the McLuhan 100 conference, in May 2011 . He spoke on Vico, Bruno, Joyce and McLuhan in Naples in June 2011. In the autu mn of 2012 he was scholar/writer in residence at IN3, the University of Catalony a in Barcelona. He spoke at the University of Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain, i n October 2012. His non-fiction study, "Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye--Apocalypse and Alche my", has been accepted by the University of Toronto Press for publication in the fall of 2014. He will be returning as Scholar/Researcher in Residence at IN3 at the University of Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain, in the spring and summer of 2013. There he wi ll be collaborating with Cristina de Miranda (artist and professor) and Matteo C iastellardi (technologist and professor) on the development and production of an e-book, "Opening Time: On the Energy Threshold." He has three other works in progress new poems, a collection of essays,and a gathe ring of fragments and aphorisms and parables and thoughts. These Shadows Remain These Shadows Remain: A Fable is a novella published by Guernica in April 2011. It has garnered praise for its original concept and visionary story. Guernica Ed itions has summated the story, "Images overrun the world. Toons filled with rage and hate hunger for life. A war between simulations and humans. People besieged in a castle of dreams. A mysterious knight shifts between worlds, holding the s ecret that could save all. Orphaned children lead him to the whirlwind, the terr ible faceless source." These Shadows Remain was longlisted for the ReLit Prize in 2012. These Shadows Remain is a work of vision. Powe says the story came intact in a r ecurring dream. When he first had the dream, he wrote down and outline. The more the story appeared in his dreams, the more he added.[2] Author Charles Foran has said, "...(I) am quite haunted by the book. It is, to s ay the least, intriguing, and its resonances are only settling in. The form itse lf is fascinating: a parable? A fable? A story for children, via their parents, or for parents, via their children? As per the Powe aesthetic, it is resolutely NOT of our time and our, ahem, literary culture, and belongs somewhere deep in a European literary tradition, where Carroll and Grimm sit alongside Musil and Am is. But I am also aware of the strong visual component to the tale, its cross of children's cartoon with anime... Likewise, its themes, or preoccupations, with

how we've been so altered, chemically, spiritually, by those toons, those simula tions. THAT is North American, of course, Canadian-McLuhan-Gibson, if also, I su spect, Eastern, Japanese. An enigmatic, striking piece of writing, one I shall r eturn to." Critic Marshall Soules acclaimed, "You've captured something important about our culture in These Shadows Remain... It's a compelling allegory about the mutual influence of the parallel worlds we live in, how we don't pay attention to impor tant matters, how children are being sacrificed to a realm of fantasy. As a fabl e, it's of-a-piece with (Powe's) other work, coming at familiar themes in a diff erent mode and register. Its poetry comes from fairy tale, romance, and pop cult ure." "There are mysteries remaining, such as the migration between the screen and hum an world. The knight's confrontation with the wizard seems inconclusive and lack ing in confrontation and resolution, but I appreciate this outcome. The wizard i s also confused, and his power is limited. I like that. Reminds me of the Wizard of Oz - all smoke and mirrors and bluster. And recalls Edwin Abbot's satirical Flatland. I also enjoyed the role and character you gave the children. It's a ca ring and inspiring story that reflects directly on our confusion over fantasy an d reality. On Hollywood Blvd., it's clear that fantasy is winning the battle for mindshare!" Bibliography 1984: A Climate Charged (Mosaic) hardcopy ISBN 0-88962-259-0, paperback ISBN 0-88962-258-2 1987: The Solitary Outlaw (Lester & Orpen Dennys) ISBN 0-88619-141-6 1989: Noise of Time in The Glenn Gould Profile, in Collections Canada, Natio nal Library Archives 1993: A Tremendous Canada of Light (Coach House) ISBN 0-88910-415-8 1995: Outage: A Journey into Electric City (Random House) ISBN 0-394-22124-9 1997: The Solitary Outlaw revised, expanded (Somerville House)ISBN 1-89589779-3 1997: A Canada of Light revised, expanded (Somerville House) ISBN 1-895897-8 9-0 2004: The Living Literacies Print Record, editor (Coach House) ISBN 0-973682 8-0-9 2005: The Unsaid Passing (Guernica) ISBN 1-55071-209-8 2006: Towards a Canada of Light (Thomas Allen) ISBN 0-88762-228-3 2007: Mystic Trudeau: The Fire and The Rose (Thomas Allen) ISBN 0-88762-281X 2011: "These Shadows Remain: A Fable" (Guernica) ISBN 978-1-55071-314-5 2014: "Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye--Apocalypse and Alchemy" (The Univ ersity of Toronto Press) 2014: "Opening Time: On the Energy Threshold." (In3, University of catalunya /York University). 2015: "Where Seas and Fables Meet: Aphorisms and Parables" (Guernica) References Jump up ^ McLuhan Initiative for the Study of Literacies, Staff Jump up ^ Interview with B.W. Powe | Open Book: Toronto External links Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: B. W. Powe Interview with B.W. Powe by Adebe D.A for Openbook Toronto, 27 January 2011. B.W. Powe official website (inactive as of 17 September 2008) Soules, Marshall: Bruce Powe & The Solitary Outlaws The Glenn Gould Archive (Library and Archives Canada): Noise of Time

15 Years in Exile, Volume 16, Number 4 (Winter 1992) Spiritbookword: "An Interview with B.W. Powe" http://www.imaginingtoronto.com/2007week3slidesGEOG4280.ppt York University: B.W. Powe fonds, accessed 17 July 2006 York University: B.W. Powe, accessed 17 July 2006 [1], accessed 26 July 2011 Authority control VIAF: 84486737 ISNI: 0000 0001 0920 4796 BNF: cb12038712x (data) Categories: 1955 births Living people Canadian philosophers Canadian male novelists Canadian poets Writers from Ottawa Writers from Toronto University of Toronto alumni York University alumni York University faculty English literature academics Navigation menu Create account Log in Article Talk Read Edit View history Main page Contents Featured content Current events Random article Donate to Wikipedia Wikimedia Shop Interaction Help About Wikipedia Community portal Recent changes Contact page Tools Print/export This page was last modified on 11 January 2014 at 09:11.

You might also like