This is a little anecdote shared with me by Gilles Goyette's sister, Michèle. If you're wondering about the meaning of his work, this captures something of Gilles' attitude to his work: he was doing it out of sheer joy, out of his endless pleasure in playing with language. 

i before e except after ^

Gilles and I shared the same Grade 13 English Lit teacher, Mr. Southcott. He was passionate about teaching, making him our favourite, and was fond of us too, being creative types. One day Mr. Southcott approached me with a problem. Gilles had submitted a poem that had him completely stumped. It was a series of repeating letters, numbers and symbols, punctuating the page in a geometrical pattern. “Michele, I don’t know if it’s so brilliant it’s beyond my comprehension, or if it’s just pure gibberish”. He seemed truly perplexed. I had no idea, but I promised Mr. Southcott I would look into it. That night before dinner, I related the encounter to Gilles. I forget what he was doing at the time, but he seemed totally nonplussed by the topic. I found myself wanting to know about the poem too. “Well,” I asked, “does it mean something or is it gibberish?” Gilles shrugged nonchalantly, “It’s gibberish”, and continued on his way. I can’t remember if I told Mr. Southcott. If I had to guess, I did, and I believe his admiration for Gilles only grew.

And with that, House of ShAkE presents the first chapbook from Kallikantzaros, "We gazed lustily". The front cover shows the prompt that Gilles put through a series of what he called alembics, after the term for an alchemical vessel. The rest consists of a series of resulting texts.