Stephen Cain - 2013 (DanH-2047) (cropped)

Stephen Cain (born 1970) is a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

poet and academic. In his five books of poetry Cain demonstrates an interest in various poetic forms including

sound poetry Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging literacy and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words". By definition, sound poetr ...

and

concrete poetry Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct mea ...

, as well as constraint-based writing and procedural poetics.

Avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

movements, such as Language Poetry and

Oulipo Oulipo (, short for french: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: ''"workshop of potential literature"'', stylized ''OuLiPo'') is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works ...

, appear to be influences on his writing and his work is marked by frequent use of

alliteration Alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase, often used as a literary device. A familiar example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliteration is used poetically in various ...

pun A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophoni ...

, and disjunction. In content, his poetry often mixes pop culture with literary theory and political concerns. He has been involved with various editorial activities including being a literary editor at the journal ''Queen Street Quarterly'', and a fiction editor at

Insomniac Press Insomniac Press is a Canadian independent book publisher. Founded in 1992 and based in London, Ontario, Insomniac began as a publisher of poetry chapbooks. The company has since evolved into a publisher of a wide variety of fiction, poetry and non ...

. Cain’s critical work focuses on the small press and experimental poetry, including the Canadian writer

bpNichol Barrie Phillip Nichol (30 September 1944 – 25 September 1988), known as bpNichol, was a Canadian poet, writer, sound poet, editor, Creative Writing teacher at York University in Toronto and grOnk/Ganglia Press publisher. His body of work enc ...

. A collection of Nichol's early long poems was compiled and edited by Cain in 2014. With Tim Conley, he co-authored an ''Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages'' (2006). He lives in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

where he teaches at

York University York University (french: Université York), also known as YorkU or simply YU, is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's fourth-largest university, and it has approximately 55,700 students, 7,0 ...

Bibliography

Poetry

*''dyslexicon'' (1998)

Coach House Books Coach House Books is an independent book publishing company located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Coach House publishes experimental poetry, fiction, drama and non-fiction. The press is particularly interested in writing that pushes at the boundar ...

*''Torontology'' (2001)

ECW Press ECW Press is a Canadian book publisher located in Toronto, Ontario. It was founded by Jack David and Robert Lecker in 1974 as a Canadian literary magazine named ''Essays on Canadian Writing''. They started publishing trade and scholarly book ...

*''American Standard/ Canada Dry'' (2005)

*''I Can Say Interpellation'' (2011)

Book*hug Book*hug, formerly BookThug, is a literary press in Toronto, Canada, founded in 2003, which originally concentrated on experimental poetry and currently publishes contemporary books of literary fiction, literary nonfiction, literature in translation ...

*''False Friends'' (2017)

Fiction

*''Double Helix'' (with Jay MillAr) (2006)

The Mercury Press The Mercury Press is a Canadian publishing company which publishes literary fiction, poetry, and non-fiction works by Canadians. Mercury has a substantial jazz list and has also published murder mysteries. Books published by Mercury have won or bee ...

Non-fiction

*''Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages'' (with Tim Conley) (2006)

Greenwood Publishing Group Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. (GPG), also known as ABC-Clio/Greenwood (stylized ABC-CLIO/Greenwood), is an educational and academic publisher (middle school through university level) which is today part of ABC-Clio. Established in 1967 as Gr ...

Editor

*''bp:beginnings'' The Early Long Poems & Sequences of

(2014)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cain, Stephen 1970 births Living people 20th-century Canadian poets 20th-century Canadian male writers Canadian male poets 21st-century Canadian poets Writers from Toronto York University faculty 21st-century Canadian male writers