Kyle Flemmer, The Wiki of Babel

 

I was built by Skanska at a cost of £333 million

I was provided with two machine gun companies

I am near resonance

I later ran a joiner’s workshop

On August 1, 2015, I became a UN Special Rapporteur

I had urged the purchase of the mountain

I placed it with all the other pigeons

I belong mainly to the district

I protested in a telephone conversation

One day, I kill a ninja from a different family

During Lenten services, I tap prayer sticks to keep the rhythm

I received generally positive reviews

After the Rwanda genocide, I returned to Rwanda

In 1927, I was elected a Fellow (“About me”)

I’m admittedly a bit behind on the work of Calgary poet, editor and publisher Kyle Flemmer, the author of Barcode Poetry (Calgary AB: The Blasted Tree, 2021), Supergiants (Hamilton ON: Wolsak & Wynn, 2025) and TzAR: Pixel Art Anthology (The Blasted Tree, 2025) (as well as a mound of chapbooks), with the latest full-length title being The Wiki of Babel (Calgary AB: University of Calgary Press, 2026). As poets such as bpNichol and Steve McCaffery and Derek Beaulieu and Christian Bök and Amanda Earl and Kate Siklosi and Dani Spinosa and jwcurry and Hugh Thomas (among many, many others) have worked elements of translation, mistranslation and recombination, Flemmer incorporates a further layer through digital manipulation and elements of chance, offering a variation on prior procedural works by such as Jackson Mac Low—including the recent publication of The Complete Stein Poems 1998-2003 by Jackson Mac Low, edited by Michael O’Driscoll, with a foreword by Anne Tardos (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 2025) [see my review of such here]—Ottawa poet Grant Wilkins [see his latest title here] and Toronto poet R. Kolewe—including the recent A Net of Momentary Sapphire (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2023) [see my review of such here]—or the infamous collaborative apostrophe (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2006) by Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler, “the first book ever written with a search engine” [see my review of such here]. The notion of the procedure, of course, being both the means to a new kind of end as well as a processional end unto itself, blended together to shape fresh and unexpected ways of considering how words and meaning are shaped and comprehended; how information is collected and stored, and how it connects to other information. As he offers as the opening of his introduction to the collection:

The Wiki of Babel is a collection of poetry by Canadian writer and artist Kyle Flemmer. It was published in 2026 by University of Calgary Press. The poems in The Wiki of Babel are composed from text fragments copied from Wikipedia through a series of chance operations and word association games that make use of the hyperlinked structure of wikis. It is a work of conceptual writing that explores the aesthetics of collaboratively-authored hypertexts.

The collection includes five series of poems that use a variety of browser-based tools and selection procedures to navigate, excerpt, and rearrange text from Wikipedia articles. The Wiki of Babel addresses themes of collective knowledge, information organization, and reader interactivity.

I’ve always considered the best kind of writing one that allows a collision between unexpected words, sounds, ideas or structures; one that allows, through that collision, the pure elements of the poem to form in the reader’s own comprehension of those collisions, and Flemmer’s The Wiki of Babel is an ambitious assemblage of the multiple languages of the Biblical Tower of Babel (in which a scrabbling group were struck by G-d to speak in multiple different languages, thus no longer being understood by each other, therefore seeming to all speak in a “babble”) and the wealth of information shaped and collected and hyperlinked across Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (and this title reminds me that Vancouver poet Rob Manery had been working on a hyperlinked poem/poem project back in the mid-1990s, which makes me wonder whatever happened to that, if it ever saw completion). Organized into cluster-sections, Flemmer’s engaging, delightful and playful collection of collage-lyrics is structured via sections “Suggested languages,” “Alternate histories,” “Current events,” “Community portal” and “Canadian hypertext,” the final of which includes some fun explorations through language via Canadian classic novels, including Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers (1966), Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2001), Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912), Marian Engel’s Bear (1976) and Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners (1974). Consider the first third of Kyle Flemmer’s “The Diviners,” that reads:

writer who grew up in Manawaka, Manitoba
confused with the real-life town of Maniwaki, Quebec. 

not far south of Route 117 (Trans-Canada Highway
route between southern Quebec and the
      Abitibi-Témiscamingue
economy continues to be dominated by resource extraction
      industries
such as farming, logging, fishing, forestry and
timber, fuel wood, wildlife habitat, natural water quality
moisture, range of temperature, and light intensity. 

electromagnetic fields, capacitive methods, and the more
      traditional
one of the four fundamental forces of nature
scientists hypothesize that a fifth force might exist
much weaker than electromagnetism or the nuclear forces
of the mass of a common proton
independent of the composition of the matter. 

particles (or combinations of particles) that act as if
in which case they are called mesons

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jane Park

Jane Park is a second-generation Korean Canadian writer. She is a MacDowell Fellow, and was a participant in the Banff Centre’s Writing Studio, and Diaspora Dialogues. She was born in Edmonton, Alberta, lived in New York City for over a decade, and now lives in Calgary, Alberta. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA at the University of British Columbia. Inheritance is her debut novel.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

I debuted last month with a novel that took me two decades to write. It has been life changing to cross from aspiring to published writer. I feel so much joy and relief.

2 - How did you come to non-fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or fiction?

I initially began writing (really) bad poetry during high school and university. At some point, I realized that my poetry was (really) bad, so I started writing fiction. 

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes? 

This novel took a very long time to write. I was probably too precious with my words, but, at the same time, I am proud of every word that I wrote. For this debut, I wrote whenever I was inspired, which isn’t the best way to write. But that did mean less revision.

4 - Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

I always knew I wanted to write a novel. At the beginning of each section, there was an emotional place that I wanted to land at, and I wrote at getting there.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I read snippets of my novel at various residencies I did, but I like to keep things under wraps until it’s published. Not many people read my work. I entrusted it with my dear mentor, Shyam Selvadurai, because I trusted his editorial guidance.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

I am not at all cerebral when I write. I just allow a voice to take over, and go wherever it leads me. Also, when I write, I likely write about issues I am wrestling with. 

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

There are many roles a writer can take—to entertain, to distract, to inform. For me, I want to be the sort of writer that Kafka talks about in his famous quote, “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” At times, I see myself wielding an axe coming at my reader’s frozen apathy. 

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

It depends on the editor’s capabilities and intuitive grasp of the work. I hired an editor, and felt he didn’t understand my work, so it felt like a complete waste of time and money. However, my mentor, Shyam, understood my work and helped give it necessary shape and direction.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Margaret Atwood’s advice to aspiring writers: read, read, read, write, write write. There’s no shortcut to good writing—you need to read a lot of good books.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?

It’s easy for me to switch genres. I actually find non-fiction easier to write because it’s just excavating a brutal honesty that might be too intense in fiction.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I have two sons age 7 and 9. Now that my youngest is in Grade 1, things are getting easier, but I have yet to maintain a solid writing routine.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I read really good books. That always ignites sparks in my brain.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Sadly, I don’t have a sense of home. I attended six different elementary schools, and moved around a lot as a child and young adult. But maybe sesame oil reminds me of a sense of home? I lived with my grandmother for parts of my childhood, and she always infused her home with this scent. 

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Definitely music. I am always listening to music when I write.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I read the Bible daily and there are many things I wrestle with and reflect upon.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

After I finished writing my novel, I started my MFA at UBC, where the program makes you take all of these different genre courses. I loved screenwriting and creative non-fiction. I have all these class projects that I want to finish and come to fruition.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I would have pursued painting. When I was young, I was better at drawing than writing and I wished I had the courage to go to art school and pursue a BFA. But who knows if I would have succeeded. Any artistic pursuit is so, so hard, it’s a wonder that artists continue to create no matter how much the odds are stacked against them. 

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

It’s a compulsion I honestly can say I could not stop myself from doing (so yes, at times in my life I did try to stop writing and could not).

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Susan Musgrave wrote a book of poetry, Exculpatory Lilies, after the death of her husband and daughter. Her poems gutted me. The last greatest film was American Fiction, adapted from Percival Everett’s book Erasure. The film is very clever and hits on so many things a BIPOC writer may experience.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Currently, my brain is very noisy and disorganized: a novel, a screenplay, and creative non-fiction. We’ll see how this all plays out.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

 

Roxanna Bennett, We Gladly Feast on Those Who Would Subdue Us

 

II

& forgetting what you’re after &

      The pliers were used to open her mouth,
      was refusing to speak

    its keeper kept it supplied

in a ‘mental’ hospital. More radically than anywhere else in the outside is invalidated
as a human being. Must remain until the label is 

untainted by hate a necklace of 54 skulls
on my screen

 

 

myriad strange specimens

 

& the space he occupies is no longer of his own choosing. After being subjected to degrading
ceremonial known as psychiatric examination 

 

      the government indulges (“The Oxford Dodo vs. The Anatomical Venus”)

The fifth full-length poetry title by Roxanna Bennett, following The Uncertainty Principle (Toronto ON: Tightrope Books, 2014), unmeaningable (Guelph ON: Gordon Hill Press, 2019), The Untranslatable I (Gordon Hill Press, 2021) [see my review of such here] and uncomfortability (Gordon Hill Pres, 2023), is We Gladly Feast on Those Who Would Subdue Us (Gordon Hill Press, 2026). Moving beyond the sonnet-shapes of prior work into more of an expansive collage structure, We Gladly Feast on Those Who Would Subdue Us furthers Bennett’s work across “disability poetics,” a conversation I would be curious to see the author extend, also, into the form of the essay. I know Toronto poet Therese Estacion [see my review of her debut here] has a new collection, Jelly, Baby: Essays on Disability and Vulnerability (Toronto ON: Bookhug Press, 2026), but I have yet to go through such. The poems are gestural, composed with great flourish and a sly and subtle wit. “Sound n,” Bennett provides, within the second section, “an impression of somebody / something formed from / but significant / especially /// thigh. The subtle body / wrote / GOOD BYE /// accommodate, make / would ever curse us / word, you can find out if /// can’t be both.”

What is interesting about Bennett’s book, beyond being produced sideways—which I always find irritating, admittedly, as a reader; why not just make a wider book? I think back to Méira Cook’s Slovenly Love (London ON: Brick Books, 2003) [see my review of such here] or Stephen Collis and Jordan Scott’s collaborative Decomp (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2013) [see my review of such here]—opens with a page of “acknowledgements & process notes” and a three-page list of “influences, references, & sources,” material usually held for the back of any collection. As Bennett’s “acknowledgments & process notes” includes:

Many of these are ‘found’ poems using text from various sources. We had originally set out to write about the divine shadow feminine but She will not be intellectualized, only embodied. As various illnesses took away my ability to use electronic devices & think & speak & write with coherency, She invited me to turn inward, dance deeper into Madness, & to use unconscious analog art-making methods such as cut-up, collage, & chance operations. &—although I don’t love this term, it smacks of the hospital, preferring instead to be divinely guided rather than operated upon—as adaptation.

The result is this rough beast before you.

Thank you for reading.

Assembled across three sections, each of which are constructed as extended lyric sequences that interconnect—“The Oxford Dodo vs. The Anatomical Venus,” “The New Bodily Ethos” and “Excavation of the Colossal Mother”—there is something interesting in how one might see Bennett’s prior engagement with the sonnet as attempting to find order within a particular kind of chaos. Through the use of found material set in collage, a different kind of order, Bennett works a lyric structure more overtly chaotic, or, more likely, one that allows for a coherence through the chaos itself. Working with, and not against, what Bennett’s own possibilities provide. And in which Bennett’s compositional approach evolves from composing a poem with one’s own material, to being able to discern where the poem might already exist, within that same material. The pastiche provides Bennett a way to think through their improvisations to achieve something entirely fresh. Or, as Bennett themlseves write, towards the end of the second section:

      I rise & become one
in new shapes