GB: There have been times, while reading the poems of bp Nichol or Jack Kerouac, that I have been totally able to just give myself with curiosity and delight to the sounds, the long-going sounds, the whole system of the poems. And never lose the conviction that i am in the presence of poetry. There are lots of other sounds available to us, and some in music, and some in super-simple riming poetry such as in hip hop. But I am talking about, well, in Kerouac's poems when he slides out of discursive sentences, all at once into sloopin' syllables, and this has not been an abrupt alteration of the address as heard. It is not easy. It takes talent and nerve. I find it, when it works, far more interesting than some lyric presenting a sensitive approach to human behaviour.

DM: With your dedication to formalist, progressive approaches to writing, I’ve always been surprised that you don’t embrace visual forms of poetry more wholeheartedly. Why have you avoided that path?

GB: I have dabbled, of course. It is odd, When I published bp Nichol in my magazine, I published his non-visual stuff. I guess I have always been an ear poet. But I have been lucky enough to grow up and old surrounded by friends who can do the concrete and sound poetry for me. In recent times I have been doing a lot more in the way of collaboration, something I tried earlier without much success, except with the joined poems that Frank Davey and I did in Tish. I like the giving up of proprietorship that happens in collaboration.

DM: You once wrote “don’t expect / a fullness here, I’m only / one pair of ears.” A successful collaboration is bound to take you beyond your usual habits of perception. Not to mention that it can help create some of the strongest possible bonds of friendship.

GB: The collaborations I have done, with Angela,with Frank Davey, with the other authors of Piccolo Mondo, with Ryan Knighton, etc., have been so darned enjoyable as something done together. This is what we hoped the poetry life would be.