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Just One, No Other®
( jono : /ˈdʒɑnoʊ/ “JAHN-oh” ) ( borden : /ˈbɔɹdən/ “BOR-duhn” )
BIOGRAPHY
Provocateur-Poet
JONO BORDEN is a Canadian poet, novelist, lyricist, screenwriter, and filmmaker known for transgressive lyricism.
Borden’s voluminous outpouring is a smattering and smashing of many traditions, conjuring reactions as diverse and divisive as his influences.
Always with an axe to grind—and fitting, then, that Jono is cousin to Lizzie Borden, among other notable relations—better at swinging hatchets than burying them, splitting with deep-hitting wit his many opponents, Borden cultivates debate, unashamed to articulate what others are afraid to say. What he makes deviates.
“I’m never late because my ego always
arrives a full hour before I do.”
Disturber-of-Shit
Jono’s bibliography, discography, and filmography comprises eleven books, two discs, and one film, including his début poetry collection Simple Simony (2013), the verse novel Isaac & Iskandar: A Conquest in Verse (2015), the double album 7×5 (Uncut) (2016), his second poetry collection Between the Silver and the Mirror (2017), the novel Where the Willow Does Not Weep (2019), his occult library catalogue and esoteric bibliography Catalogus Librorum Impressorum Bibliothecæ Ionathani Bordenii (2021), his third poetry collection Diamond & Dagger (2021), his original screenplay for the Byron biopic Lightning in the Veins (2023), his first short story collection Cor Hydræ (Heart of the Snake): Twisted Tales (2023), his horror chapbook Prologue to an Echo: Seven Tales (2024), his fourth poetry collection Bullets in the Temple (To Open Closed Minds) (2025), and his fifth New Pornographies: A Backward Path to Heaven (2027).
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Bachelor of Arts (Major in Religious Studies with a Minor in Film Studies), Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2010–2014
Bachelor of Arts with Combined Honours in Early Modern Studies (Honours in Early Modern Studies and History), University of King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2006–2010
Nova Scotia High School Graduation Diploma (Honours with Distinction), Avon View High School, Windsor, Nova Scotia, 2003–2006
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His diminutive stature, domineering presence, distinctive resonant radio voice, booming bellowing laugh, penetrating blue eyes, oversized thick-rimmed glasses, lengthy abundant red beard, all-black clothing, and extravagant silver rings worn on every finger. In his audacious writing, whether poetry, lyrics, or screenplays, a tendency toward the brazenly erotic and the abrasively macabre. Always dark humour and bleak irony.
Maker-of-Myth
Referring to Borden as “brazen,” men of letters as respected as George Elliott Clarke say he is “set to rise from obscurity,” comparing him to Byron, Blake, Laforgue, Dylan, Cohen, and Hendrix, another “great, rock songsmith,” noting, “Dude’s got guts!”
Loud in his art and quiet in his life, scholar of religious studies and film studies, Jono practices ceremonial magic.
Committed individualist, Borden takes his own portraits, designs his own graphics, heads Ritualistic Pictures, and lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
“His chutzpah is bracing, brazen. [He has what] one finds in Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Jimi Hendrix, and the words of other great, rock songsmiths. Dude’s got guts!”
