The Four Horsemen (poetry)

The Four Horsemen was a sound poetry group of Canadian poets composed of bpNichol, Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton and Steve McCaffery that also performed concrete poetry. The group was active from 1970 to 1988. They released 2 12-inch vinyl records of their collaborative sound poetry (Nada Canadada, 1972; Live in the West, 1977), 2 cassettes (Bootleg, 1981; 2 Nights, 1988), as well as 3 print collections (Horse d'Oeuvres, 1977; A Little Nastiness, 1980; The Prose Tattoo, 1983 ) & the unique broadside Schedule For Another Place (1981). The Four Horsemen also appeared in Ron Mann's 1982 documentary film Poetry in Motion.

Their work embraced a wide range of polyphonic possibilities, from straightforward prose through disarranged poetry, chant, nonsyntactical sound charts, improvisation in varying degrees and multiple forms of games. It is worth noting that, previous to their work, there were few references available in terms of scoring the varied leves of complexity polyvocal sound poetry could take (as Nichol notes in his introduction to The Prose Tattoo, "Vive la liberté but vive la certain limitations."). Their development of various forms of gridded texts added much to the primarily optophonetic devices previously in literary use, releasing the scores from the rigidity imposed by the more conventional techniques found in choral work focussed on extended vocal techniques.

They were Canada's first sound poetry ensemble, leading directly to the formation of at least 3 further groups: Owen Sound in Toronto (Michael Dean, David Penhale, Steven Ross Smith, Richard Truhlar), Re:Sounding in Edmonton (Douglas Barbour, Stephen Scobie) & Quatuor Gualuor in Ottawa (currently consisting of director jwcurry, Nina Drystek, and Chris Johnson).