folio : Barry McKinnon (1944-2023)
Iwas the poetry emissary from the University of Victoria where I was teaching, tothe Feb.1980 Words / Loves writing conference in Prince George, and this waswhere I first met Barry. For some of it, I was a bemused spectator at readings wheremale northern poets addressed, argued with and praised each other by name intheir works. I didn’t mind it, but I didn’t get the point. Robert Creeley, the‘main’ poet invited, was great and I had long liked his work, but it was arelief, and it was inspiring—maybe especially in that context - to hear AudreyThomas read an entire world into being with a story. Barry invited some of usto his and Joy’s house. While there, talking poetry and poetics, browsing the libraryin the garage, seeing some of the work Barry was printing and publishing, Iglimpsed the scale of the cultural project Barry and others were undertaking. Itwas not going to be easy. I knew Prince George – I had family there and hadworked in the I.B. Guest book and stationery store when I was a student. Onehot, dusty, soulless afternoon I had gone into the then-main library and askedthe librarian where the poetry section was.He said, “You’re the first person who has ever come in and asked for poetry.” I don’t know if that was true (it was thelate 1960’s) but I found a volume of Gregory Corso’s poetry and also took out acopy of Dante’s Inferno. It is because of Barry’s much later interest in Dantethat I mention this here. What stayed with me at the time was Barry and Joy’skindness and hospitality and Barry’s commitment to a life in poetry and to hisstudents: in sum, he was a person of generosity of mind and spirit. This neverchanged over the decades of our irregular keeping in touch, although to thesequalities I would add courage – perhaps integrity is the best overall word forwhat I saw in him.
Ourlast correspondence, some time ago now, followed a long conversation aboutDante after a TWUC meeting. After years of writing and teaching, I felt I wascoming to the end of something and so did Barry. He quoted Creeley’s, “Happy inhell” - an echo, I thought, of Milton’s Paradise Lost - and an Al Purdyanecdote connected to Creeley’s line, “When I know what others think of me / Iam plunged into loneliness.” I had found what I felt was Dante’s prescriptionfor writing (and life) in the beginning of the Divine Comedy: it is a Muse – alove that lasts through life and death; a Literary Guide; and Memory in thesense of Memory, the mother of the muses in Greek mythology. This is not new,but I had only recently read it as a recipe. It seemed to me to be a good wayto approach a book or a difficult life passage. In retrospect, it was of coursea conversation about being in The Dark Woods well on in middle age and needing amap.
Barry’sfine polemical/lyrical poem Into the Blind World inhabits Dante’sin-between space of seeing as a living soul among the dead. In his afterwordsto Parts I and II, Barry disavows a “return to the bright world”- “to look oncemore upon the stars” tending more to believe Robert Creeley who writes “‘thedarkness surrounds us’ - yet within it we must live and experience whateverrange we are given or decide.” There are lyrical moments that, for me, situatethis outlook better, one in an email where Barry speaks of the excitement of workingon this project, “just when I thot ‘the end’ – as in, at this age, all thatwill not be experienced again, I get the surprise. a virgil, a Beatrice, or thething that was always there. a complicated way of saying I feel like I did as akid, early on, standing in a farm field with butterflies in my stomach.” Then,being a writer, he worries, “how close is sentimentality to sadness.”
Amoment in the poem which fixes, for me, where Barry stood as a poet, and maybe concerningthe life he had made in the north are these:
Itrudged thru snow
snow/to a darker globe /beneath pins of stars
Thisprompts me to my own afterword which may help tie some of this together. It waswhen I read W.S. Merwin’s book The Mays of Ventadorn where he discusses hisexploration of 12th century Provencal troubadours and writes hisappreciation of Dante for naming troubadours and quoting their lines in his work- and so saving them for us – that Iunderstood that writers referring to each other as did some conference poetsback in 1980 and throughout years of friendships and disagreements, just as thetroubadour poets did with each other in their songs, was a means of survival andcultural continuity as well as a declaration of territory. The questions Barryraises in his life-long poetry walk in the snow remain worth trying to answer -Who has the right to sing? And where? And of what? And for what? And to whom? Andwhen if not right now?
MarilynBowering
May27, 2024
Marilyn Bowering is a poet and novelist who lives inVictoria BC. Her most recent book is the non-fiction literaryinvestigation and memoir, More Richly in Earth, A Poet’s Search for MaryMacLeod (MQUP 2024). She was the winner of the 2023 Ruth and David Lampeprize for poetry. Marilyn is also thelibrettist for Marilyn Forever (Gavin Bryars) and theauthor of essays in publications including the anthology Green Matters: EcoculturalFunctions of Literature (2019). She has been short-listed for the world-wide Orange Prize, long-listed forthe Dublin Impac Award, twice short-listed for the Governor-General’s Prize forpoetry, and received the Dorothy Livesay, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Ethel Wilson andPat Lowther Prizes as well as several National Magazine awards.
