W. Mark Sutherland
W. Mark Sutherland is a Canadian intermedia artist, poet and musician. His practice is a hybrid that pivots on the creation of work blurring the borders between poetry, visual art, music and performance art. Sutherland’s poems and scores are published in the following international anthologies: Encountering John Cage Rencontrer, (voixeditions, Paris, France), Word Score Utterance Choreography (Writers Forum Press, London, England), Poetry Nation; The North American Anthology Of Fusion Poets (Vehicule Press, Montreal, Canada), the last Vispo (Fantagraphics Press, Seattle, USA), Typewriter Art (Laurence King Press, London, England), The New Concrete (Hayward Publishing, London England) and The Art of Typewriting (Thames & Hudson, London, England). Gallery exhibitions featuring Sutherland’s work include Scratch, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Canada (2005), Poetische Positionen II, Kasseler Kunstverien, Kassel, Germany (2006), Viaggio nella parola, Cassa di Risparmio, La Spezia, Italy (2007), Videobardo Festival of International Video Poetry, Museo Caixa Forum, Madrid, Spain (2008), Lotta Poetica, Fondazione Berardelli, Brescia, Italy (2009) and Time Signatures, Visual Arts Centre Clarington, Bowmanville, Canada (2016). A brief selection of Sutherland’s public performances includes THEWORDMUSIC Festival, Reykjavik, Iceland (2006), Voice ++ Festival, Victoria, BC, Canada (2007), Yuxtaposiciones Festival, Madrid, Spain (2008), 3durch3, Stuttgart, Germany (2010), Poesia En Voz Alta, Casa del Lago (University of Mexico), Mexico City, Mexico (2016) Symposium on Voice, Guelph, Canada (2014) and The Bucharest International Festival of Poetry, Bucharest, Romania (2018). Sutherland’s Code X (CD Rom, Coach House Books, Toronto, Canada), (Hearing) Aids videopoem and Sonotexts (CD, Electronic Music Foundation, NY, USA) are considered pioneering works of e-poetry, videopoetry and sound poetry. Regarding his 2011 Sonotexts CD (EMF, New York, USA) Julian Cowley of The Wire stated, «This fascinating selection of «sonotexts» by Toronto based artist W. Mark Sutherland, who acknowledges Bob Cobbing as his mentor, may well mark a critical development in the life of sound poetry.»
