Nichol, bp (Barrie Phillip)

Barrie Philip Nichol (September 30, 1944 September 25, 1988), who often went by his lower-case initials and last name, with no spaces (bp Nichol), was a prolific Canadian poet and also a language artist, editor and publisher. He was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and became widely known for his concrete poetry while living there in the 1960s. He received his elementary teaching certificate from the University of British Columbia in 1963, but he only worked briefly as a teacher before dedicating himself to writing. His best-known published work is probably The Martyrology, a long poem encompassing 9 books in 6 volumes. Nichol also worked in a wide variety of other genres, including musical theatre, children's books, collage/assemblage, pamphlets, spoken word, computer texts, fiction, and television. In 1970, he began to collaborate with fellow poets Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton, and Steve McCaffery, forming the sound-poetry group The Four Horsemen. He was also active with Coach House Press and Open Letter, with his own presses, grOnk and Ganglia, and in the therapeutic community, Therafields, for a number of years. Nicol was married in 1980 to Eleanor Hiebert.