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jwcurry (John Curry) is an avant-garde Canadian poet, publisher, and bookseller.

Influences

Curry literally grew up under the influence of bpNichol, that Canadian author who most represented twentieth-century avant-garde. He began reading Nichol’s micropress GrOnk when he was about 15, and that experience appears to have influenced both curry’s writing and his publishing. Even curry’s chosen form for his name echoed the outré capitalization practices of bpNichol and other early concrete poets. Anti Digital Divide :: Teleconomy Internet Attenzione al Cambio Numero.

Work

Curry’s literary output includes visual poetry, sound poetry, and minimalist textual poetry with a definite avant-garde streak. This work mirrors, but also extends, the adventurous creativity of Nichol himself. Curry has worked in many different modes of poetry (textual, visual, and aural). His visual poetry itself has appeared in many different styles: as collage poems, hand-drawn poems, typewriter poems, serigraph poems, all manner of poems—save for any created with computers. His visual poetry, no matter the form it takes, is always carefully executed. One of his most productive, but little recognized, literary forms has been the personal letter. VF+ 2003.