Typewriter Art (or not?), Margaret A.V. Gill
Oiso Books, 2026
I first encountered images from this series when publisher Tom Gill posted them on Facebook, asking the wider community what they thought of the writing of Margaret A.V. Gill, his 88-year-old aunt. I was as enthusiastic then as I am now. When exposed to her nephew’s editorial work on Keith Armstrong’s RUHuman (an exceptional overview, which is available here: https://the-case.co.uk/books/ruhuman/) Ms. Gill was unsure of Armstrong’s output, and how it could be defined as poetry, but she replied in a way that I find incredibly inspiring: she wrote back.
Typewriter Art (or not?) takes diaristic-epistolary approach to reading through RUHuman and documents Gill’s engagement with form, process, and thinking. While the initial pieces were, the author admits, created in “puzzlement” and “parody” or Armstrong’s work, the shaped poems begin to take on another role. Drafted primarily using Paint Shop Pro-7 (having long abandoned typewriters), Gill’s poems move from parody into self-discovery. The poems may have started with aesthetic resistance, but as the book progresses, the author admits that her explorations begin to include references as diverse as Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and Hokusai’s The Great Wave, artwork begets artwork interwoven with references to other texts, each indicative of a poet with an open mind; a mind which may have started in doubt but moved into creative response.
The final section of Typewriter Art (or not?) applies the compositional methods that Gill developed in response to Keith Armstrong’s work to create work which centers on her faith, how her faith guides her position in community, and reflects on her role in the Aldermaston Peace marches (which advocated for Great Britain to declare unilateral disarmament as a means to advocate that other countries do the same).
At 54 pages Typewriter Art (or not?) is a slim volume but one that adroitly demonstrates the act of amateur artistic reflection and creation. The author may see herself as puzzled and resistant to writing which is outside of her experience, but instead of being closed, responds in kind. As I said, I see Margaret Gill as embodying the best in poetic response: a willingness to ask questions, to attempt the form, to reply, and the self-reflection to change her opinion and allow poetry to then become a tool for her to speak of her own experience.
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Oiso Books’s Piktogram bilingual English/Japanese imprint is “a new occasional series of pamphlets dedicated to exciting artists/poets working in vispo – visual poetry, or the crossover zone between poetry and art.” Typewriter Art (or not?) is the first in the series, with further forthcoming titles from Robin Tomens (UK) and Takahiro Sawamura (Japan), check out piktogram.oisobooks.com for more information.
Dr. Derek Beaulieu is the author/editor of over twenty-five collections of poetry, prose, and criticism. His most recent book, Do It Wrong: How to be a Poet in the 21st Century, was published by Assembly Press in the Spring of 2026. Beaulieu has received the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal for his dedication to Albertan literature and CCWWP Robert Kroetsch Award for excellence in innovative pedagogy and teaching practice. He is the only graduate from the University of Calgary’s Department of English to receive the Faculty of Arts ‘Celebrated Alumni Award’ and the only graduate in creative writing to receive Roehampton University’s Chancellor’s Alumni Award. Beaulieu has served as Poet Laureate of both Calgary and Banff and is the Director of Literary Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. He can be found online at www.derekbeaulieu.ca
