folio : Barry McKinnon (1944-2023)
My wife got a job teaching up on MacKenzie for the '74-'75 school year. It was kind of an instantly-made settlement to satisfy the logging/lumber mill industry. We went up from California. I had completed an MA in poetry writing, studied with Bill Dickey, Kay Boyle, and also had courses with Nanos Valaoritis, Stephen Arkin, and others.
I liked the idea of a year in isolation in deepest BC... for my writing and reading.
It was probably September 1975. I found a small book shop in Prince George while we were down shopping. I bought a couple of Barry's chapbooks, read them in the car as my Kate shopped. The poems were stunning... great stuff entirely. So, as one could in those days, I found a local phone book and drove to Joy and Barry's home on Gorse... pounded on the door. The beginning of a half-century of friendship.
We had a lot of good talks about poetry and poets. We exchanged in-progress poems.
In the spring of '75, thanks to Barry, I got two courses to teach at College of New Caledonia, plus a course on Canadian and American poetry that we team-taught. I was happily Barry's mentee as well as new friend.
Barry always knew where the night action was... which places were good for loud, wild times... where to take drink where moods were hazardous for those in attendance. Say that again 'n I'll kick your teeth in, one man said to another in a bar that featured, every few nights, genuine knife fights... and then someone hit someone with a pool stick. I took a swing at someone and Barry pulled me to the exit as my opponent was still on hand 'n knees and gathering his wits. Barry and I left that place laughing... and we both immediately agreed that we had the title for a joint project... for a portfolio of poems he would publish with his Caledonia Writing Series... on shitty bank check paper Barry could get on the cheap... broadsheets. Jasus... we were so darned happy to be young and to be writing poetry in Prince George and MacKenzie and in between. We were invincible and Barry got me to read poetry that could widen my sensibility and sense of what a poem might do.
Red Shuttleworth is an American poet and playwright, a recipient of the Western Heritage Wrangler Award for Poetry and a Tanne Foundation Award for Playwriting and Poetry. His most recent book is Eclipse of the Sun: Boxing Poems (University of Nevada Press, 2023).
