Steve McCaffery
Professor, Gray Chair
Department of English

438 Clemens Hall
Phone: 716.645.2575
Email: stevemcc@buffalo.edu

B.A. (Hull University, England); M.A. (York University); Ph.D. (State University of New York, Buffalo)

Born in Jessop's Hospital, Sheffield, England on 24 January 1947 (the day of Artaud's final performance), poet-critic Steve McCaffery is the author of 1 novel, 15 volumes of poetry, two dozen chapbooks and 4 critical works. Most recent to appear are Bouma Shapes (Zasterle Press, Gran Canaria, Spain, 2002), Prior to Meaning: the Protosemantic and Poetics (Northwestern University Press, 2001) and in two volumes Seven Pages Missing (volume 1 Selected Texts 1969-1999; volume two Previously Uncollected Texts 1968-2000) Coach House Books, 2001-02. He was a founding member of the Four Horsemen sound poetry ensemble in 1970, (with bp Nichol) of TRG (Toronto Research Group),1972 and the College of Canadian "Pataphysics, 1979. Along with Dick Higgins McCaffery developed deviant translation methods including allusive referential, homophonic, numerical replacement translation, and creative misunderstanding and remains a charter member of the latter's Institute. Although one of the theoretical founders of Language Poetry, McCaffery's interests have consistently extended into sound, performative,and intermedia areas, (some of his video performances collected as "V Beyond the Ideo" garnering an Honourable Mention as Runner-Up in the 1985 Video Culture International Competition, Art Video & New Media Performance Category). His multiplicity of collaborations involve ones with R. Murray Schafer, Robert Filliou, bp Nichol, Opal L. Nations, Dick Higgins, Charles Bernstein, Bruce Andrews, Ray DiPalma, Ron Silliman and Karen Mac Cormack. He has twice been nominated for Canada's Governor General's Award in poetry. (In 1992 for Theory of Sediment and 2001 for Seven Pages Missing Volume 1.) Before coming to Buffalo McCaffery taught poetics, philosophy and the paraliterary at York University, Toronto and is Founding Director of NACIP (the North American Centre for Interdisciplinary Poetics). A new volume of poetry, Slightly Left of Thinking, is to appear through Chax Press in Tucson. With Stephen Cain he is presently editing for publication The Zebras' Progress: an annotated edition of his three decades of correspondence with Dick Higgins. He lives in Buffalo with his wife Karen Mac Cormack, 20,000 volumes of books, an empty bottle of 1978 Chateau Mouton Rothschild, and three unrivalled collections of Lithuanian Credit Cards, unpaid Icelandic parking tickets, and Franco-Belgian beer mats.

He teaches poetics, critical theory, and contemporary literature.

A detailed cv is available at: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/mccaffery/

Steve McCaffery on the web: http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/linebreak/programs/mccaffery/
http://mitpress.mit.edu/book-home.tcl?isbn=026218186X