Geoffrey Nilson was born in Duncan, BC on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Cowichan Tribes. A poet, editor, literary critic, and the founder of micropress pagefiftyone, Nilson is the author of four chapbooks and his writing has appeared recently in Canadian Literature and Arc Poetry Magazine. He holds a BA in Creative Writing from Kwantlen Polytechnic University and a MA in English from Simon Fraser University, where he studied avant-garde poetry and poetics with specific interests in Canadian literature, art history, axiology/value theory, and Western Marxism. In a past life, he was musician, songwriter, and recording engineer for various solo and collaborative projects. Nilson currently lives in New Westminster on the unceded territory of the Qayqayt nation and is the BC-YK Regional Representative for the League of Canadian Poets.
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
