Judith Copithorne (born 1939) is a Canadian

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most ...

and visual poet.

Life and career

Judith Copithorne grew up in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the city, up from 631,486 in 2016. Th ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include ...

, in an artistic family. She started writing and drawing at an early age and, by the time she attended the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

, had formed her own ideas about

the arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both h ...

. At UBC, she studied under such prominent figures as

Warren Tallman Warren Tallman (17 November 1921 – 1 July 1994) was an American-born poetry professor who influenced the Vancouver Tish poets. History Born in Seattle, Tallman was raised in Tumwater, Washington. He attended the University of California, B ...

and

George Woodcock George Woodcock (; May 8, 1912 – January 28, 1995) was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, a philosopher, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet and published several volumes of travel writ ...

. In the early 1960s she became acquainted with an informal group of "Downtown Poets," including writers such as Gladys (Maria) Hindmarch, John Newlove, bill bissett,

Gerry Gilbert Gerry Gilbert (April 7, 1936 in Calgary - June 19, 2009 in Vancouver) was a Canadian poet famous in underground literature for his deliberate eschewing of all awards and competitions as he felt that personal ambition in art led to a lack of sinceri ...

, Maxine Gadd and

Roy Kiyooka Roy Kenzie Kiyooka (January 18, 1926January 8, 1994) was a Canadian painter, poet, photographer, arts teacher, and multi-media artist. Biography A Nisei, or a second generation Japanese Canadian, Roy Kenzie Kiyooka was born in Moose Jaw, Saskat ...

, centered around the Vancouver venues of Sound Gallery, Motion Studio and Intermedia Press. The Downtown Poets were involved in more radical experimentation than the established ''

TISH ''TISH'' was a Canadian poetry newsletter founded by student-poets at the University of British Columbia in 1961. The publication was edited by a number of Vancouver poets until 1969. The newsletter's poetics were built on those of writers associa ...

'' group of the University of British Columbia, represented by poets such as

George Bowering George Harry Bowering, (born December 1, 1935) is a prolific Canadian novelist, poet, historian, and biographer. He was the first Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. He was born in Penticton, British Columbia, and raised in the nearby town o ...

Fred Wah Frederick James Wah, OC, (born January 23, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, scholar and former Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. Life Wah was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, but grew up in the interior (West Kootenay) of British Columbi ...

Frank Davey Frankland Wilmot Davey, FRSC (born April 19, 1940) is a Canadian poet and scholar. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, he grew up in the Fraser Valley village of Abbotsford. In 1957 he enrolled at the University of British Columbia where, in ...

and

Daphne Marlatt Daphne Marlatt, born Buckle, CM (born July 11, 1942 in Melbourne, Australia), is a Canadian poet and novelist who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. At a young age her family moved to Malaysia and at age nine they moved to British Columb ...

. The appellation "Downtown poets" was invented by

UBC The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top three ...

professor

to distinguish the

San Francisco Renaissance The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco, which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetry avant-garde in the 1950s. However, others (e.g., Alan Watt ...

-influenced UBC writers from the homegrown Canadian poets. Judith Copithorne has made many contributions to concrete poetry and other types of experimental writing in prose, poetry and visual poetry, with works centering on domestic space and community. Her primary work involves the intersection of text and visual forms, with early work combining text with abstract line drawings, called Poem-drawings. In the Introduction to the anthology ''Four Parts Sand'', she describes her work in the following manner: Copithorne has published over 40 books,

chapbooks A chapbook is a small publication of up to about 40 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch. In early modern Europe a chapbook was a type of printed street literature. Produced cheaply, chapbooks were commonly small, paper-covered bookl ...

, and ephemeral items; a bibliography of her work was published by jwcurry in the March, 2009 issue #400 of ''1 cent''). She has been published in blewointment and

Ganglia A ganglion is a group of neuron cell bodies in the peripheral nervous system. In the somatic nervous system this includes dorsal root ganglia and trigeminal ganglia among a few others. In the autonomic nervous system there are both sympath ...

Selected works

*''Returning (Returning Press, 1965)'' *''Meandering (Returning Press, 1967)'' *''Release: Poem-Drawings (Bau-Xi Gallery, 1969)'' *''Rain (Ganglia Press, 1969)'' *''Runes (

Coach House Books Coach House Books is an independent book publishing company located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Coach House publishes experimental poetry, fiction, drama and non-fiction. The press is particularly interested in writing that pushes at the boundar ...

/Intermedia, 1971)'' *''Miss Tree's Pillow Book (Intermedia/Returning Press, 1971)'' *''Until Now (Heshe&ItWorks, 1971)'' *''Heart's Tide (Vancouver Community Press Writing Series #8, 1972)'' *''History's Wife: a sculpture (Community Cultural Feedback Project, 1972)'' *''Arrangements (Intermedia Press, 1973)'' *''Albion's Rose Blooms to Calypso Beat (Ganglia Press, 1985)'' *''A Light Character (

, 1985)'' *''Third Day of Fast (Silver Birch Press, 1987)'' *''Horizon (Pangen Subway Ritual, 1992)'' *''Carbon Dioxide (Silver Birch Press, 1992)'' *''For my ancestors (Curvd H&z, 1994)'' *''Tern: (Returning Press, 2000)'' *''Brackets & Boundaries (Returning Press, 2012)'' *''see lex ions (Xerolage 62; Xexoxial Editions, 2015)'' *''Phases / Phrases (Trainwreck Press, 2019)''

Anthologies

*''west coast seen, Jim Brown, ed. (

Talonbooks Talonbooks is an independent publisher of Canadian literature based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Its repertoire features authors writing in the literary genres of poetry, fiction and drama, as well as non-fiction books in the fields of ethnogra ...

, 1969)'' *''the cosmic chef, bpNichol, ed. (

Oberon Press Oberon Press is an independent Canadian literary publisher founded in 1966. It focuses mainly on Canadian fiction—particularly short stories—and poetry, but also publishes criticism, history, biography and autobiography. Oberon has publishe ...

, 1970)'' *''I Am A Sensation, Gerry Goldberg & George Wright, eds. (McClelland & Stewart, 1971)'' *''New Directions in Canadian Poetry, John Robert Colombo, ed. (Holt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada, 1971)'' *''Four Parts Sand, Michael Macklem, ed. (

, 1972)'' *''w)here? the other canadian poetry, Eldon Garnet, ed. (Press Porcepic, 1974)'' *''THE LAST BLEWOINTMENT ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 1, bill bissett, ed. (Nightwood Editions, 1985)'' *''Vancouver Poetry, Allan Safarik, ed. (Polestar Press, 1986)'' *''Judith, Women Making Visual Poetry, Amanda Earl, ed. (Timglaset Editions, 2021)''

References

External links

Abstract / Concrete #1: Judith Copithorne (By derek beaulieu)

"Squaring the vowels - On the visual poetry of Judith Copithorne"
- Interview by

Gary Barwin Gary Barwin (born 1964 in Belfast, Northern Ireland) is a Canadian poet, writer, composer, multimedia artist, performer and educator who lives in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He writes in a range of genres including poetry, fiction, visual poetr ...

, October 23, 2013
"UbuWeb Visual Poetry: Judith Copithorne"Ruins in Process, "Vancouver Art in the Sixties"Ruins in Process, "Judith Copithorne's Sketchbook""Giantesses: Gadd, Copithorne, Rodin & Robertson" & "Concrete Vancouver""And blood poured down""Copithorne, Judith" Explorations in Media Ecology, Volume 18, Number 3, 1 September 2019, pp. 307-316(10)Judith Copithorne An Introduction
{{DEFAULTSORT:Copithorne, Judith 1939 births 20th-century Canadian poets 20th-century Canadian women writers 21st-century Canadian poets 21st-century Canadian women writers Canadian women poets Poets from Vancouver Living people Visual poets

Life and career

Selected works

Anthologies

See also

References

External links