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We invite you to join us at Shelf Life Books to celebrate the launch of Kyle Flemmer’s third collection of poetry, The Wiki of Babel. Presented by the University of Calgary Press, Flemmer will be joined by Patrick Horner and Ryanne Kap for a night of readings and conversation about their writing. ABOUT THE BOOKWikipedia is a modern-day miracle. The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit has become a monumental repository of common knowledge, a springboard for research, a source of entertainment, a site of discussion, an archive, a hobby, and a digital representation of information forever in flux.
In The Wiki of Babel, Kyle Flemmer subjects Wikipedia articles to chance operations and poetic constraints, building up an intriguing and bewildering bricolage from fragments of text. Drifting through data, he divines playfulness and humour in the logic of hyperlinks and the surprising juxtapositions they afford. This is poetry of the paratactic leap, a core sample taken from an ever-shifting network of oblique associations.
Fancifully factual, The Wiki of Babel shows how the organization of information and the method of its navigation changes its meaning. A celebration of collaborative expertise and hypertext publications on the internet, this book takes a reverent look back at Oulipian wordplay and a bold step forward in digital poetics.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Kyle Flemmer is a writer, publisher, and digital media artist based in Calgary on Treaty 7 territory. His multidisciplinary work explores the intersections of poetry, code, and visual design, drawing on traditions of concrete and conceptual art to examine how digital systems shape human expression and artistic possibility. Kyle is the author of Barcode Poetry, Supergiants, and TzAR: Pixel Art Anthology. He has performed for the Jasper Dark Sky Festival, the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and at literary festivals and events across Canada. The Wiki of Babel, published by the University of Calgary Press, is Kyle’s fourth book.
Instagram: kyle_flemmer
X: @WildMissingNos
Website: www.kyleflemmer.com
Patrick Horner is a Calgary-based writer and chemical engineer specializing in water treatment and recycling. He is co-director of the Nature and Culture International Poetry Film Festival and serves as the Canadian ambassador for the Poetic Phonoteque, an online multimedia poetry archive based in Copenhagen, Denmark. His debut poetic novel, Refugia, was published by the University of Calgary Press in 2022.
Instagram: phhorner
Website: www.patrickhhorner.com
Ryanne Kap is a Chinese Canadian writer from Strathroy, Ontario. They’ve published in places like Augur, CV2, Grain, and The Rumpus, and their most recent chapbook was shortlisted for the 2025 bpNichol Chapbook Award. They are the Editor-in-Chief of The Ex-Puritan and a PhD candidate in English at the University of Calgary.
Instagram/X: ryannekap
BlueSky: ryannekap.bsky.social
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Event Venue
1302 4 St SW #100, Calgary, AB, Canada, Alberta T2R 0X8
Tickets
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.
