folio :
Barry McKinnon (1944-2023)
Barry McKinnon was one of those needed poets who understand
that the poet’s task is to advance poetry, not oneself. I am glad he’s in our
world.
George Bowering (October 31, 2023)
I’m listening to Art Pepper as I write this. Barry McKinnon
introduced me to Art’s music when he was a guest on my campus radio show
sometime in the early 2000s. The jazz I most loved then is not so different
than the jazz I most love now—searching the dark clouds, high on holy fire.
This does not at all describe the jazz of Art Pepper, which is way west coast, smart
and breezy. Like a student, I listened patiently to Art’s music when Barry
shared it with me, and what I can say for sure is that listening again now, I
understand it and like it far better than I did then. Yeah—I can hear it now; I
guess that’s jazz at 42 (versus 24).
It does feel like a lot of time has passed. This folio
in periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics is a tribute to Barry
McKinnon; it is occasioned by his passing in late fall 2023. In the days after
Barry’s death, I was approached by the editors of Thimbleberry Magazine
to edit a memorial folio for him in their print edition; however, difficulties
they had prevented this from being realized. When it became clear that the
issue would not be printed, I sent notes to contributors, among whom was Donna
Kane, who encouraged me to explore other possibilities for realizing the folio.
It so happened that I was at the same time corresponding with rob mclennan, who
offered to host the folio in periodicities. Donna and rob took on the
rest of the task of soliciting and editing submissions, and between the (very
modest) work I had already completed and their (much more substantial) efforts,
this folio is now ready to share with you.
Of course, there would be nothing to show you without
the work of the incredible community of writers that are gathered here to pay tribute
to Barry. This folio contains writing by Hope Anderson, Elizabeth Bachinsky,
bill bissett, George Bowering, Marilyn Bowering, Lary Bremner, Sarah de Leeuw,
Justin Foster, Solomon Goudsward, John Harris, Donna Kane, GP Lainsbury, Sid
Marty, rob mclennan, Paul Nelson, Matt Partyka, Graham Pearce, Al Rempel, Clea
Roberts, George Sipos, Red Shuttleworth, Jeremy Stewart, Paul Strickland,
Sharon Thesen, Simon Thompson, Michael Turner, Fred Wah, and Tom Wayman. This
is a truly distinguished company and I would have expected nothing less. Our
immense thanks to you all.
I want to take a moment to especially thank rob
mclennan for his generosity in hosting this work at periodicities—which,
I suggest, is an especially relevant and meaningful home for it—but also for
his editorial care and support above and beyond. Special thanks also to Michael
Armstrong for sending me a Community Arts Council festschrift for Barry from
decades ago. I want to thank Kara-lee MacDonald and Rob Budde for their attempt
to assemble this folio, without which I may not have been involved in the same
way. Finally, my humble thanks to my co-Editor Donna Kane, without whose hard
work and persistence this work would never have been completed, and to whose
credit, in my view, the project most properly belongs.
I don’t want to spend all that much time on the things
everyone knows about Barry, but I will spend some; let’s take a look through
these snapshots, as in a family photo album – dry yellow grasses rustling
across the frame; at the centre, a hardy pioneer in a stern hat, and in front,
a wispy girl child almost invisible between the sheaves. Overleaf, Barry at a
Montreal house party with Leonard Cohen, who he didn’t know, when their mutual
teacher, Irving Layton arrives with his vaulting pole and a bottle of sherry.
Barry with his period-appropriate glasses as a poet and a reader and a friend
to poets and readers. Drinking a beer at The Barn with a young Joy and friends.
Barry as a character in the stories of John Harris (John gave Barry all the
best and funniest lines). Barry as a winner of the bpNichol chapbook award, and
as a poet bpNichol read and loved. Barry in his (and others’) stories about Al
Purdy and Robert Creeley and the many extraordinary writers who comprised his
international poetry community. Connecting them with Prince George. Barry
standing where Purdy and Birney stood in the photo at Machu Picchu. Barry behind
the kit as a serious jazz drummer and in front of his record shelf as a serious
jazz listener. At a jazz club in Manhattan. Barry in front of a desk with an
ashtray built into it, lecturing an unpredictable clutch of northern kids,
knowing and teaching that academia is not better or smarter than the society it
critiques. Add all these impressions and many more to the portrait of Barry reflected
in the work of the contributors to this folio.
We all know it, but I’ll say it anyway: Barry was
generous with writers, especially students. As I have related elsewhere, I took
a class with Barry in my first year at the College of New Caledonia, straight
from dropping out of high school. I showed him my earliest, truly terrible
attempts at poetry, and he managed to be encouraging while carefully avoiding
praising the work itself, which no one could have praised. Among the many
things he taught me, I always come back to Barry’s story about his father, who
told him, “root hog or die.” As an undergrad, I spent a fair bit of time
sitting in Barry’s office, interpreting that teaching with him. Looking back, I
might now like to respond to Barry’s father’s dictum with a quote from the poet
and novelist Roberto Bolaño on the courage of poets: “no one else in the world faces
disaster with greater dignity and clarity.”
Here’s something not everyone knows about Barry: he knew
a lot, and taught me a lot, about success. In many ways, our earliest
conversations always circled questions of success. Barry found or invented
another kind of success far from the centre of the Canadian literary
establishment and publishing industry, at the centre of poetry in another way. There’s
the poetry you write alone and the poetry you read alone, but there’s also the
poetry you read in terms of the poet who wrote it, through your relationship
with them, more or less remote, and there’s the poetry community that gets
together and reads and listens and gossips and drinks and gets up to all kinds
of hijinks. Barry moved through all these poetries with wit, courage, and
generosity. He understood that the indignities to which poetry, and poets, are
subject in the north are funnier than they are cruel—but they are still cruel.
He worked to make poetry and its situation less cruel and more dignified (but
still funny). There are many Gorse and Repository books on my shelves, and I
like to go through them every so often and notice whose names I do and don’t
recognize, and who was actually pretty good, and think about how for these
folks, Barry helped make poetry something more for them that it would otherwise
have been. Those who envy other kinds of success more than they admire this
kind of success have much to learn about poetry and success both.
I’m going to mention the so-called poetry war, if only
because I can guess that some of you are thinking about it. I took a side; I
sided against the group Barry sided with, because they were wrong. And I took
my share of criticism (in 2014, people pointed me to a social media post where
Barry said that by throwing an old, ruined piano off a building, I was
destroying western civilization. Yeah, man! I knew you would get it!). I know
that people remember some of the events differently. We will not use this folio
to refight the poetry war, and that means leaving room for differing views. As
Donna put it, “we are all grieving together regardless of how we remember
things, and it is about Barry.”
What remains sad about it all, though, is that in the
end, people are more than their ideas. Most of those who fought felt they had
to fight, but I still think it would’ve been better if we’d all had a beer
together afterwards. Barry is gone, Ken is gone, Brian is gone. (And bp, and
Al, and Pat, and RK, and Andy, and, and, and…). But we’re still here, for now,
and we remember them, perhaps even as they were; and when you and I finally go
get that beer, let’s talk about them. And let’s take it back to the poetry if
we can. Transcription of feeling, that’s what I thought years ago when I
first read The Centre. Then I thought, transcription of thought,
or notation of thought. Fidelity to attention.
The Art Pepper record has run out. I lift the needle
off the record and switch the turntable to “stop.” I’m leafing through Barry’s
books now—I stumble across the version of “Journal,” a poem dedicated to Pierre
Coupey, that appeared in Last Repository (1971-1981):
think of limbo again. the wages of sin, pretty high. we’ll
die allright – stretched out &
unconscious, will wish to speak to no one
sad & miserable. this occurs in a dream. what the poets knew,
as preparation for the last image of a
tree.
[…]
the paintings, another
thing to fall into – movements of colour
& something
other.
Barry, thank you for saying what you said – I think
I’m starting to hear it better now. Thank you for breathing and listening in
the spaces between the notes. Thank you for saying so much, and for saying it
so well.
Jeremy Stewart (winner, Barry McKinnon Chapbook Award,
2007)
Surrey, BC
June 2024
Jeremy Stewart is the author of experimental novella In Singing, He Composed a Song, as well
as poetry collections Hidden City and
(flood basement. Stewart’s fourth
book, I, Daniel: An Illegitimate Reading
of Jacques Derrida’s “Envois,” is forthcoming in 2024.
Stewart lives with his family in Surrey, BC. He once
dropped a piano off a building.
