Geoffrey Nilson is a poet, editor, musician, and literary critic born in Duncan, BC. He graduated from Kwantlen Polytechnic University in 2016 with a BA in Creative Writing and worked for a number of years as a copywriter and freelance journalist. His poetry, book reviews, and critical writing have appeared widely in journals and magazines, including Event, PRISM, and Canadian Literature. He has published four chapbooks, the most recent being the visual poetry sequence Light Makes a Ruin (above/ground, 2022), and he is currently writing a long poem on the life and work of filmmaker Orson Welles.
Nilson is the editor and publisher of micropress pagefiftyone, and in the past has served as Secretary and member of the Board of Directors for the League of Canadian Poets. After completing his MA in English in 2021, Nilson is now a PhD student in the department of English at Simon Fraser University, where he was awarded the Whitford / Stevenson Graduate Scholarship in Canadian Literature and was 2024 recipient of the Charles Olson Award. His dissertation in progress – “Refusing Canada: the Nation-Discourse and the Documentary Long Poem” – examines the documentary long poem in Canada to consider how it imagines, affirms, and contests over time the hegemonic narratives of the nation-discourse, asking questions about the value of “Canada” and “Canadian” to understandings of the documentary long poem, and probing how nation, nationality, and national culture are forged in the composition and criticism of long poems in Canada.
While not playing guitar and writing poems (of every possible sort), Geoffrey (occasionally) teaches literature at Vancouver Community College and for the Humanities 101 community program at University of British Columbia.
Nilson is the editor and publisher of micropress pagefiftyone, and in the past has served as Secretary and member of the Board of Directors for the League of Canadian Poets. After completing his MA in English in 2021, Nilson is now a PhD student in the department of English at Simon Fraser University, where he was awarded the Whitford / Stevenson Graduate Scholarship in Canadian Literature and was 2024 recipient of the Charles Olson Award. His dissertation in progress – “Refusing Canada: the Nation-Discourse and the Documentary Long Poem” – examines the documentary long poem in Canada to consider how it imagines, affirms, and contests over time the hegemonic narratives of the nation-discourse, asking questions about the value of “Canada” and “Canadian” to understandings of the documentary long poem, and probing how nation, nationality, and national culture are forged in the composition and criticism of long poems in Canada.
While not playing guitar and writing poems (of every possible sort), Geoffrey (occasionally) teaches literature at Vancouver Community College and for the Humanities 101 community program at University of British Columbia.
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
