photo: Gabor Gasztonyi
Geoffrey Nilson is a poet, editor, musician, and literary critic born in Duncan, BC. His most recent book Light Makes a Ruin (2022) was released with Ottawa’s above/ground press. Since 2017, he has been the editor and publisher or poetry micropress pagefiftyone. Previously, Secretary and member of the Board of Directors for the League of Canadian Poets, Nilson is currently a PhD student in the Department of English at Simon Fraser University and (occasionally) teaches literature at Vancouver Community College and for the Humanities 101 community program at University of British Columbia. Nilson writes and lives as a guest on the unceded traditional territories of the Qayqayt people (New Westminster, BC).
QUOTES
"Images that dislocate meaning...technical skill applied to the glosa...elegant couplets... expressionistic...dramatic and imagistic eloquence...Paraphrases from a public whiteboard exhibits much truth and daring with flair and considerable skill."
-Alfred G. Bailey Prize Jury
"Geoffrey Nilson pays homage to a poet in his glosa 'Fractals,' which borrows a few lines from Michael Ondaatje’s 'The Time Around Scars.' Nilson shape-shifts through words, a bookstore, 'a spider of airborne static / between dust & light.'"
-PRISM international
"The images are vivid, the metaphors unexpected. One hears traces of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. The poems seek to both depict and question the importance of the places we inhabit...the characters are tigers, victims, colonizers, rescue medics and suburbanites. Geoffrey invites us into their complicated and very alive worlds."
-Jen Currin
"Geoffrey Nilson's writing is both grounded in hard-won personal experience and elevated by mysterious notes of grace. Like the musician he is, he knows how to hit notes that please and transport, but he also insists on challenging his readers. Geoffrey has an affinity for experimental language and a deft ability at juxtaposition, which leads to new insights, new ways of seeing and thinking. For all the risks he takes as a writer, he remains committed to craft and to an unspoken pact with his readers to both connect and astonish."
-Rachel Rose
"Images that dislocate meaning...technical skill applied to the glosa...elegant couplets... expressionistic...dramatic and imagistic eloquence...Paraphrases from a public whiteboard exhibits much truth and daring with flair and considerable skill."
-Alfred G. Bailey Prize Jury
"Geoffrey Nilson pays homage to a poet in his glosa 'Fractals,' which borrows a few lines from Michael Ondaatje’s 'The Time Around Scars.' Nilson shape-shifts through words, a bookstore, 'a spider of airborne static / between dust & light.'"
-PRISM international
"The images are vivid, the metaphors unexpected. One hears traces of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. The poems seek to both depict and question the importance of the places we inhabit...the characters are tigers, victims, colonizers, rescue medics and suburbanites. Geoffrey invites us into their complicated and very alive worlds."
-Jen Currin
"Geoffrey Nilson's writing is both grounded in hard-won personal experience and elevated by mysterious notes of grace. Like the musician he is, he knows how to hit notes that please and transport, but he also insists on challenging his readers. Geoffrey has an affinity for experimental language and a deft ability at juxtaposition, which leads to new insights, new ways of seeing and thinking. For all the risks he takes as a writer, he remains committed to craft and to an unspoken pact with his readers to both connect and astonish."
-Rachel Rose
