What's one of Canada's most respected living poets doing giving a reading at a weekly rock-hop? Blowing away whatever you thought a poetry reading was, philistine! Christian Bök doesn't want your lousy dogma, he's got his own. You name it: aesthetics, kinesthetics, synesthetics; he'll tell you how to do it and where to put it (mostly with and out of your mouth). He's a 'pataphysician, but so's R. Kelly - and you groove on that. Cub reporter Ajay Mehra used the internet to keep a safe distance from such an imposing man.

How's your coffee?

Fine. Starbucks. Triple grande non-fat latte.

Okay. So what's a 'pataphysician?

A pataphysician is a kind of mad scientist in the world of art. A pataphysician makes a nonsensical presumption and then proceeds to use the most rigorous logic in order to speculate about the consequences of such an axiom. If a dropped cat always lands on its feet, and if a dropped slice of toast always lands with buttered side facing down, then a pataphysician concludes that, by tying a slice of toast to the back of a cat with the buttered side facing out, we can make a whirling, perpetual-motion machine simply by dropping the cat.

I noticed that you spell 'pataphysics "'pataphysics" but your book is titled "Pataphysics" in your wikipedia entry; is this because it's difficult to alphabetize something that starts with an apostrophe? Should I correct this?

No need to correct your entry--the diverse spellings are customary.

Your art seems to touch on the relation of its subject to its materials; what is the subject of indie rock? Is it indie feldspar?

Probably more like indie granite.

Will you make people care about art again?

Unlikely.

Will you make people care about beat-boxing again?

Unlikely.

Have you ever attended a Wavelength before?

Never attended one.

What do you think it'll be like?

I'm sure that it is going to be amusing.

Other than dissipating forms into function, what is the purpose of a cyborg?

Cyborgs make us call into question the "organic purity" of living things.

So...you support the US invasion of Iraq?

I am against the war, because (as a poet), I, for one, do not want to have to compete with a war for your entertainment dollar.

Do you like nachos?

Nachos are fine.

By Ajay Mehra