aka BpNichol cover art

aka BpNichol

A Preliminary Biography

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Thousands of incredible audiobooks and podcasts to take wherever you go.
Immerse yourself in a world of storytelling with the Plus Catalogue - unlimited listening to thousands of select audiobooks, podcasts and Audible Originals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

aka BpNichol

By: Frank Davey
Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Buy Now for £19.99

Buy Now for £19.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

Reflecting on the career of a prominent poet, this biography focuses on Canadian wordsmith Barrie Nichol - more commonly known by his pen name, bpNichol - who was a practicing lay psychoanalyst and vice president of one the largest and longest-lasting North American communes for more than a decade. Recognizing his international influence as both a visual and sound poet, Nichol’s literary achievements are reviewed, including The Martyrology - a renowned, seven-volume poem - four novels, two musical comedies, six children’s books, hundreds of hand-drawn visual poems, and even 10 episodes of Jim Henson’s hit television series Fraggle Rock.

Penned by one of Nichol’s numerous literary collaborators, this account reveals the close connections among the writer’s various activities, particularly how the autobiographical inquiries and Freudian dream theory linked with the young poet’s biographical self-awareness. The audiobook demonstrates how the subject’s main psychoanalytic client was his own writing, following Nichol as he explored its slips, accidental puns, and "unintended" meanings and implications for the communal future of the human species - both in high literature and comical prime time television.

©2012 Frank Davey (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Art & Literature Authors Canadian Entertainment & Celebrities Literary History & Criticism Poetry World Literature Biography Celebrity

Listeners also enjoyed...

Dragonwriter cover art
Simply Dirac cover art
The Roaring Silence, Second Edition cover art
Nabokov in America cover art
Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy cover art
Joy cover art
The Road to Monticello cover art
Tom and Jack cover art
A Life Observed cover art
Outlaw Marriages cover art
The Successful Novelist cover art
The Narnian cover art
Paradise Lost cover art
Bandersnatch cover art
Dylan Thomas cover art
Process cover art

Editor reviews

Dropping his first name and going by the curiously arranged bpNichol, the poet Barrie Phillip Nichol gained quite the following for his concrete poetry. He is perhaps best known for the epic poem The Martyrology, but crossed over a multitude of genres in his career, including musical theatre, collage, fiction, and more. In this biography by one of bpNichol’s literary collaborators, Frank Davey, and performed with a gentle empathy by veteran narrator Kirby Heyborne, listeners get an intimate look at what inspired and drove the late poet. By examining a wide breadth of bpNichol’s work, Davey gives as complete a picture as possible of this enigmatic poet.

No reviews yet