Avant Canada presents a rich collection of original essays and creative works on a representative array of avant-garde literary movements in Canada from the past fifty years. From the work of Leonard Cohen and bpNichol to that of Jordan Abel and Liz Howard, Avant Canada features twenty-eight of the best writers and critics in the field.The book proposes four dominant modes of avant-garde production:
Concrete Poetics,
which accentuates the visual and material aspects of language;
Language Writing,
which challenges the interconnection between words and things;
Identity Writing,
which interrogates the self and its sociopolitical position; and
Copyleft Poetics,
which undermines our habitual assumptions about the ownership of expression. A fifth section commemorates the importance of the Centennial in the 1960s at a time when avant-garde cultures in Canada began to emerge.

Readers of this book will become familiar with some of the most challenging works of literature - and their creators - that this country has ever produced. From Concrete Poetry in the 1960s through to Indigenous Literature in the 2010s, Avant Canada offers the most sweeping study of the literary avant-garde in Canada to date.