Barry McKinnon (1944 – October 30, 2023)

Rae Armantrout and Barry McKinnon at VERSeFest (Ottawa), March 2012

Sadto hear from Paul Nelson that Canadian poet, editor and publisher Barry McKinnon died 11:30am on Monday morning in Prince George. Nelson writes that “plansfor a spring memorial service will be made soon.” I don’t precisely recall whenI started interacting with McKinnon, but I know I was reading his work in theearly 1990s, sitting in the Morriset Library at the University of Ottawareading The the. (Coach House Press, 1980), i wanted to say something(Red Deer College Press, 1990) and Pulp/Log (Caitlin Press, 1991),all of which became important for me in terms of thinking of the cadence andbreadth of the long poem. If you can, pick up a copy of The Centre: Poems1970-2000 (Talonbooks, 2004), a collection that really displays the ‘poemas long as a life’ mantra that bpNichol articulated, something shared withNichol’s own multiple books of The Martyrology (1972-1993), or RobertKroetsch’s Completed Field Notes (2002).

Therewas something jwcurry once said of McKinnon’s poems, his long poems, that I alwaysthought was interesting, suggesting that the first half of any McKinnon long poemis working up to a single point, and the second half working away from thatsame point. My collection Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011), was one of anumber of works I produced over the years as a direct result of reading BarryMcKinnon’s work. At McKinnon’s prompt, as well, I’m probably one of the few continuingthe “Sex at 31” poems he and Brian Fawcett began, something I wrote about a fewyears back as part of Jacket2. It must have been in 2000 or so that I wasup in Prince George, staying with McKinnon for the sake of a reading, and diggingaround his archives to see what there was. He handed me a “Sex at 31” poem byArtie Gold that he produced back in the late 1970s, which Artie allowed me toreprint as an above/ground press broadside, a poem that later fell into thesecond ‘best of’ above/ground press anthology. Thanks to Barry, I followed thatparticular thread (composing poems for every seven years, as was their originalconsideration: thirty-one, thirty-eight, forty-five and fifty-two, so far), andam still pulling away at it, in as much homage to McKinnon and Fawcett (andGold) as anything else.

Barry McKinnon and Brian Fawcett post-Talon/ECW launch, Toronto, 2004

InMcKinnon’s basement circa that 2000 visit, as he was complaining that aparticular bill bissett title he produced in 1970 ( Stamp collection ) wasn’tseen or acknowledged by anyone, and he opened a cupboard to reveal a stack of afew hundred copies. Hard to get attention for something sitting in yourbasement storage, I suggested, so he gave me some fifty copies to distribute,which  I handed out at further stops onthat same reading tour, including in Calgary, Winnipeg and Toronto. We metprior to the reading over drinks, and he offered me a copy of The the.,telling me it was one of only five copies he had left (extant copies had fallenprey to one of Coach House Press’ infamous “dumps,” which left unannounced copiesout at the curb). After the reading, we went out for drinks, landing late inhis living room. His wife Joy, unimpressed.

Welaunched together in 2004, having both books in the same season with Talonbooks,landing in Toronto as Brian Fawcett heckled us both from the crowd (David Phillips,on his part, heckled McKinnon through his Vancouver launch at the KootenaySchool of Writing space). We even brought him to Ottawa for VERSeFest in 2012[see my report on such here], where he participated in The Factory LectureSeries.

Italways felt like Barry McKinnon was a poet who deserved far more attention thanhe received, and how moving north to Prince George to teach in 1969 put him onthe outskirts of literature (this was certainly how he felt), despite theenormous amount of activity he encouraged, prompted and hosted during his timein the north. Who else would have brought Robert Creeley to Prince George? iwanted to say something, originally self-produced through his Gorse andreprinted years later by Caitlin, is an important early long poem from theCanadian prairies, one that was hugely influential to other writers, even ifthe larger public weren’t aware of it until long after those influenced by thepoem had published their own variations. McKinnon became an important figure inNorthern British Columbia, as publisher, poet, organizer, teacher and as anexample of someone in that geographic space who was able to produce interestingwork, and take seriously the conversation and thinking of literature. I knowover the past twenty years or so he was getting frustrated with traditionalpublishing (he’d long been a chapbook publisher, so one foot was always on theoutside), focusing more on putting work online than sending it out to anyone. I would recommend working through his website and seeing everything he’d putthere.

I interviewed him a few times, including in 2012 and more recently, for Touchthe Donkey. I reviewed a number of his works, and even attempted a lengthyessay on his work circa 2006, which fell into my first essay collection with ECW Press.Paul Nelson also did an interview with him in 2015 that is worth paying attention to.

Hewas always kind to me, and deeply engaged at what was going on with writing. Thosevisits were always few and far between, and I shall miss him.