Christian Bök

Born in Toronto, Canada, on August 10, 1966, Bök earned a BA and an MA from Carleton University, as well as a PhD in English from York University in Toronto, where he first became interested in the avant-garde poetics of Canadian writers like bpNichol, Steve McCaffery, and Darren Wershler-Henry, among others.

His collections of poetry include Crystallography (Coach House Books, 1994), which was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and Eunoia (Coach House Books, 2001), a lipogram that uses only one vowel in each of its chapters, which received the 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize.

The judge's citation described it as "an immensely attractive work from those 'corridors of the breath' we call vowels, giving each in turn its dignity and manifest, making all move to the order of his own recognition and narrative...As we are told at the outset, 'Eunoia, which means 'beautiful thinking,' is the shortest English word to contain all five vowels.' Here each speaks with persistent, unequivocal voice, all puns indeed intended."

Bök is also a sound poet and conceptual artist who has produced numerous artist's books, including books made entirely of Rubik's cubes and Lego bricks. Additionally, he has invented languages for the science-fiction television shows Earth: Final Conflict and Amazon.

Bök lives in Alberta, Canada, where he is currently a professor of English at the University of Calgary.