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in February 2020, my friend, the poet Ken Belford passed on to the next world.
I have been thinking of him and I’d like to share some of that thinking with
you, to take this time to remember him.
Ken
and I met in 2004 in Rob Budde’s 4th-year creative writing class at the
University of Northern British Columbia, where I was then an undergraduate. Ken
was reading his poems and answering questions in the class. I was immediately
struck by the time and care he took to explain where he came from, what he was of:
not the university system, not the publishing racket: the bush. It took me
longer to understand that not everyone in the class had a frame of reference to
grasp what he was explaining.
I
think Ken anticipated, correctly, that for many of those students, poetry was
an educated, bourgeois activity; that any difficult or experimental poetics was
first of all to be situated within the decadence of an educated, bourgeois
sensibility; that poetry was something else besides being in or on the land. I
was from the bush myself, and was lucky enough to come to poetry in the bush—and
much later to education and the middle-class world. In that world, I felt
myself to be a marginal character, so I felt an immediate affinity for what he
was saying. Sixteen years later, I am still learning from the analysis and the
vision that he patiently unfolded for that classroom.
Ken
and I first connected on an experience of northwestern BC. I have never been to
the Nass Valley, but I’ve played most of the music festivals and venues between
Prince George and Haida Gwaii, in addition to many happy excursions in the
bush, camping or visiting with bush-dwelling folks around the northwest, my
whole life. I have been endlessly awed by the depth and breadth of Ken’s
knowledge of, and vision for, that region. Ecology and decolonization formed
the moving background of his interpretation of the world, and he carried the
responsibility for making that vision available across the old boundaries,
humbly and with a certain pointed anger and a certain humour. Ken was always
studying and always teaching. To me, he spoke wisdom, but critical wisdom—never
woolly or sentimental. I felt challenged by Ken to be not just wiser, but
smarter. This he did gently.
Ken
and Si’s home is in the same neighbourhood as my Mom’s old house, just one
street over from her, at the edge of what Prince George folks call “the hood.” A
beautiful flower garden in the front of their place brightens the block. Ken
and I used to go for coffee at a nearby mall chain café, or I would see him on
my rounds, having coffee with Rob Budde, as I walked across town for one reason
or another (or for no reason at all). In 2008, my partner and I bought our
house on 9th Avenue, on the other side of that little mall where the coffeeshop
is and was, and we would see each other at the grocery store there weekly or
more often.
I
had the honour of preparing remarks to introduce Ken at his reading launch of
his 2013 book Internodes in Prince George. That event was held in the
first vegetarian café in our neighbourhood (not a long lived one,
unfortunately). I spoke that evening on Ken’s re-envisioning of masculinity
embedded in a poetics of eco-political interconnectedness, of his fierce
resistance to the boys’ club. This honour was magnified when I first published
my little literary magazine, Dreamland (2014-2016); Ken’s was the first
poem in the first issue, and he was part of the first issue’s launch reading.
After
I moved to White Rock, Ken and I continued to keep in touch, and I saw him
every time I visited Prince George. We also started writing one another long
emails, sometimes containing drafts of poems, in 2011 or so – a habit we
maintained until near the end of his life.
Although
I wrote him longer and longer letters, Ken responded more rarely and briefly,
but I knew this was because he was sick. He was sick for a long time. He was
philosophical about it, but you can’t philosophize pain away. To me, Ken’s
illness still seems irredeemably unfair, and not just because of his
scrupulously responsible lifestyle, but also because we only come to need him
more, never less.
I
went to see Ken last October in Prince George. I visited him at his home, as I
had only a few times before. His appearance shocked me, since I was used to
seeing Ken athletic, very slow to age, but I accepted it as one does under such
circumstances—not to betray one’s shock to the person in any way, not to talk
about sickness unless they raise the topic, not to ignore any topic they want
to touch on, and not to linger on difficult topics too long. To be honoured to share
those times with that beloved person. Ultimately, we talked about the same
topics we always talked about: health, poetry, publishing, people we knew
(especially writers), politics, ecology. I had been warned against tiring Ken
out with this visit, and I intended to heed that warning. It was hard to leave when
the time came, because I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be back until the spring.
When
I think of Ken now, I remember all these times, and I also remember the
imaginary Ken I projected: in the bush. Walking with a camera and a notebook,
taking the lead, turning back to look at me through shaded lenses, with a
smile, making sure I can keep up. And when I think of Ken walking this bush
without end, I think of Ken in the books—and me, reading them—without end.
Jeremy Stewart's first novel, entitled In Singing, He Composed a Song, has been
accepted for publication by the University of Calgary Press. Stewart won the
2014 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry for Hidden City (Invisible).
He is also the author of (flood basement (Caitlin 2009). His writing has
appeared in Canadian Literature, Geist, Lemon Hound, Geez, and Open Letter,
among other places. Stewart is a PhD student in English Literature at
Lancaster University, UK. His research concerns Jacques Derrida’s “Envois” and The Book of Daniel. He once dropped a piano off a building.
