Justin Stephenson is a Canadian moving image designer and creative director who primarily works with staging language and poetry in moving images.
Working with film, TV, video poetry, and interactive design, Justin's new film, 'The Complete Works', is based on and responds to the work of renowned Canadian author bpNichol. Fifteen years in the making, 'The Complete Works' is making its world premiere at Queensland Poetry Festival in August.
The film adapts the work of internationally acclaimed avant-garde poet bpNichol. From comic book detective stories and westerns to documentary and magic realism, and from hand drawn animation to computer generated images, 'The Complete Works' wrestles Nichol’s writing off the page and projects it on to the screen. It uses bpNichol’s poetic methods on Nichol himself to create a film that is subversive, entertaining and visually arresting.
A letter from a far away place, Justin Stephenson writes to Australian fans of bpNichol and attendees of the 2015 Queensland Poetry Festival:Dear Australia,
One of my favorite reviews of bpNichol's work came from a Canadian Member of Parliament. Nichol was awarded a Governor General's poetry award for 'The True Eventual Story Of Billy The Kid', wherein Nichol's Billy was rumoured to have been a blood thirsty killer because his dick was too short.
Mac T. McCutcheon moved, in the Canadian House of Commons, that the award to bpNichol be rescinded because, "many respected reviewers, plus members of this house, have assessed this work as an affront to decency and a discouragement to serious literary effort."
I could only wish to receive such a glowing review!
At the last minute – really the day before I sent 'The Complete Works' in for mastering a couple of weeks ago – I decided to change the opening quote to the film. I had been using a quote from de Certeau concerning the fact that we write not on a blank page, but on everything that came before us. I liked the quote but it didn't really suit Billy the Kid and his issues, or Nichol's sense of humour, or my film.
The film now opens with a few words from Don Quixote which reads, “...[F]eigned histories are good and enjoyable the closer they are to the truth or the appearance of truth, and as for true ones, the truer they are, the better.” Don Quixote made this statement while reading a fictional – untrue – second part to his story. The line about “the appearance of truth” makes me laugh every time I read it in the context of the idea of claiming a complete works of bpNichol.
I am genuinely excited to be invited to the Queensland Poetry Festival to present the world premiere of 'The Complete Works'. It is my hope that you will enjoy all the fantastical tales, truths, rumours and outright lies that I tell in my film. They make up a True Eventual Story of bpNichol and his work.
– Justin Stephenson
One of my favorite reviews of bpNichol's work came from a Canadian Member of Parliament. Nichol was awarded a Governor General's poetry award for 'The True Eventual Story Of Billy The Kid', wherein Nichol's Billy was rumoured to have been a blood thirsty killer because his dick was too short.
Mac T. McCutcheon moved, in the Canadian House of Commons, that the award to bpNichol be rescinded because, "many respected reviewers, plus members of this house, have assessed this work as an affront to decency and a discouragement to serious literary effort."
I could only wish to receive such a glowing review!
At the last minute – really the day before I sent 'The Complete Works' in for mastering a couple of weeks ago – I decided to change the opening quote to the film. I had been using a quote from de Certeau concerning the fact that we write not on a blank page, but on everything that came before us. I liked the quote but it didn't really suit Billy the Kid and his issues, or Nichol's sense of humour, or my film.
The film now opens with a few words from Don Quixote which reads, “...[F]eigned histories are good and enjoyable the closer they are to the truth or the appearance of truth, and as for true ones, the truer they are, the better.” Don Quixote made this statement while reading a fictional – untrue – second part to his story. The line about “the appearance of truth” makes me laugh every time I read it in the context of the idea of claiming a complete works of bpNichol.
I am genuinely excited to be invited to the Queensland Poetry Festival to present the world premiere of 'The Complete Works'. It is my hope that you will enjoy all the fantastical tales, truths, rumours and outright lies that I tell in my film. They make up a True Eventual Story of bpNichol and his work.
– Justin Stephenson
'The Complete Works' premieres at the Queensland Poetry Festival, 30 August. 
