Muttertongue what is a word in utter space

by Allen, Lillian; Betts, Gregory; Barwin, Gary

• ISBN13: 9781990773389
• ISBN10: 1990773389
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-03-20
• Publisher: Exile Editions

Summary

Muttertongue: what is a word in utter space – by Lillian Allen (Toronto’ s seventh Poet Laureate, a dub poet, writer, and Juno Award winner), Gary Barwin (poet, writer, composer, multimedia artist, performer, and educator), and Gregory Betts (whose writing explores the boundaries between self, other, and alien – the radical other) – is a collaborative collection that crackles in its exploration of land, language, and page space. Combining the intensity of Dub Poetry with the intricacies of experimental poetics, Muttertongue presents a sonorous soundscape echoing with the question of where (and why) is here (hear). The book opens with a dialogue between the three authors, and concludes with an Afterword by Kaie Kellough. The release of the book recedes a new music LP by the three authors (June of 2025). This is a project by the Muttertongue Trio: Allen • Barwin • Betts.

Author Biography

Lillian Allen is the City of Toronto’ s seventh poet laureate. She is a dub poet, reggae musician, writer, poet, and Juno Award winner. Lillian is also a creative writing professor at OCAD University (Toronto). A pre- and post-language innovator, she works at the intersection of dub, sound, and rebel poetics. Gregory Betts is an experimental poet, editor, scholar, and professor from St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. He has published five books of poetry, including If Language (a constraint-based project of 56 perfect paragraph-length anagrams), and The Others Raisd in Me. He has also published a history of experimental writing in Canada titled Avant-Garde Canadian Literature: The Early Manifestations; and (with Exile Editions) the superb book on Canada’ s great Group of Seven Painter, Lawren Harris, titled Lawren Harris: Inside the Ward: His Poems and Paintings (carried perennially at the AGO). Gary Barwin is the author of 26 books, including a Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy – which won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, and Bird Arsonist Award (with Tom Prime) – and his national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates which won the Leacock Medal for Humour, and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, while also a finalist for the Governor General’ s Award for Fiction, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize.