Anyone who went through Toronto small press through the 1990s and into the aughts has a story about Toronto poet and publisher John Barlow, whether his kindness, his openness, his small press enthusiasms, his readings, the seeming-chaos of his small publishing through OVERSION. There was a chaos there, one barely contained through pages of poems slightly too small to read, sometimes with submissions laid overtop into an entirely new piece, both saving and combining space. It took some time for me to realize exactly what he was providing along with publication: a perspective, entirely turned on its head. He was always around, always offering copies of OVERSION as hand-out or exchange. I was in a few issues, although issues were also updated, shifted, altered, so there was no such thing, I don’t think, as a consistent “issue” of OVERSION. His poems were non-linear, straightforward, wise, fragmented, punctuated. He would get to the point and then go somewhere else, seemingly. He would say all the right things and then all those other things. It was John in a nutshell.
I’m shocked to hear that he died this past Wednesday, October 9, 2024, in hospital, following a heart attack. It doesn’t feel real. He was present, even if I hadn’t seen him in a while. He was always around, friendly with all the small press outsiders and insiders alike.
He was always around, whether at Toronto readings or small press fairs or a launch or along Bloor Street, near The Future Bakery, appearing in the background when you would least expect it, but always, somehow, present. I think I encountered him nearly every time I wandered into Toronto, which I did often, throughout the second half of the 1990s and into the following decade. He had trade collections with Exile Editions, which seemed confusing, but they were books that existed, almost in conflict with Barlow’s writing and publishing ethos: a solid, formal object. Somewhere in the late 1990s, he offered me a poetry submission while I was at the urinal in the bathroom upstairs at The Imperial Library Pub, most likely during the same evening of an above/ground press event I hosted there, circa 1997 or so. I said, John, man, give me a minute. Who else would submit a poem to someone standing at a urinal? The poem, in case you were curious, was published soon after as an above/ground press “poem” handout.
Or another night, invited along with a group of outsiders for late night Chinese food, most likely after a reading, somewhere along Spadina Avenue with John Barlow, David Owen, Nicky Drumbolis, possibly jwcurry and at least one or two others. A fight broke out at another table, with plates and bowls thrown, with more than a few customers getting out of the way. Barlow, seemingly unfazed, simply ordered more rice.
A 2013 author biography via The Toronto Quarterly reads: “John Barlow was born into the air force in Moncton, New Brunswick, then to a base in St. Jean, then out of the air force to spectacular Windsor, Ontario, and then the world (Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Toronto). He has published books with Exile Editions: ASHINEoVSUN II, Laurel Reed Letters, LyrycalMyrycal Press, the cd booklet with Balmer Press, and of course Oversion Press, Sandra and Rose’s presses, and others presses paid for via hourly wage jobs, near all of it ~ lucrative humanly, but wildly unprofitable poetry.” The biography he offered me earlier this year, as apparently he discussed with Peter McPhee: “John Barlow lives and works in Toronto where he farms doves and circus sparrows.”
John seemed the sort of person that, for years, I considered that one could get a sense of other people on what they thought of him: if you liked and admired John Barlow, you were most likely a good person. If you didn’t like John Barlow, well, you lacked something, whether curiosity, or an openness, attention or simply kindness. John had his difficulties, none of which he hid, but he radiated both curiosity and kindness. There’s a story about his bank at one point accidentally declaring him dead, which took a great deal of work on his part to overturn, and shook him a great deal. Maybe the bank knew better than he? And then there’s this, one of his last messages to me, back in May of this year:
The truest seeming
thing I’ve ever heard
about life death
and eternity, is that some parts of life
are eternal.
Completely eternal. Always occuring and always good.
He had abandoned publishing, he told me, but somehow I was offered poems. We were discussing poems and novels and writing across April and May via Facebook messenger, and he’d actually sent along a few pieces for Touch the Donkey, the first of which appeared in the April 2024 issue. And this second poem, which I hadn’t yet placed:
Murderous gangs rule the world
no myth holds and religions are clearly false
the only moralities are civic awareness and ecosystem harmony
The people thousands of years ago would agree
Responding to my query about a potential interview around his poem, as part of Touch the Donkey, he declined, offering: “I'm not feeling any vibe for appearing on screen, performative activity, specially qua the technology of internet. I'm not even inhabiting my visuality these days. But I do have the beginnings of a submission for a future issue as such.” I enjoyed his brief offering on writing, as he continued:
The novel is an unwieldy art form. Writing novels one always feels draped across the bow of rickety 18th century ships of narrative continuity. It's just not how my mind works, not for more than a few hours anyway, All continuities are broken, “I am not in the mood of my novel today”
The only way to live is to have numerous things in progress. Today, re-arrange the gnomes, tomorrow put them back as they were. Nothing in this life in time is linear.
Perhaps we should all be reading a random John Barlow poem throughout our readings from now on, continuing that non-linearity (which itself, is a linearity; perhaps I might never get that right). Bill Kennedy offered via Facebook that there will be no formal service, but there will be a memorial, although no details as yet.
rob mclennan [photo credit: Amanda Earl] lives in Ottawa.