new from above/ground press: G o n e S o u t h, by Barry McKinnon

G o n e S o u t h
Barry McKinnon
$5

in Arizona
the desert – weather within

weather, no discernible season, sense of its ancient

growth – the Sequoia? tree, names I don’t know – the desert sans name / or taxonomy/  but for this little burst, minute, pink to cactus red buds  to take as measure.  (what was or is it in a temporality /does not need us nor, without a mind, need itself.  thus,  ... it’s worse than the puzzle it appears.   

the desert

/no matter the temperature / cold sun stings.  this/no meaning as is with any sensation being only itself in the same condition.

the desert

looking at an interior, not yrself exactly, - but a vast expanse that if you entered wld you be you?  this was its fear, yr fear, all fear  in whatever risk one or it takes.
("in Arizona")

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Barry McKinnon was born in 1944 in Calgary Alberta, where he grew up.  In 1965, after two years at Mount Royal College, he went to Sir George Williams University in Montreal and took poetry courses with Irving Layton.  He graduated in 1967 with a B.A. degree.  In 1969, he graduated with an M.A. from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and was hired that same year to teach English at the College of New Caledonia in Prince George where he has lived and worked ever since.

Barry McKinnon’s The the was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for poetry in 1080.  Pulp Log was the winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award for the B.C. Book Prizes in 1991 and Arrhythmia was the winner of the bp Nichol Chapbook Award for the best chapbook published in Canada in English in 1994. His chapbook Surety Disappears was the runner-up for the bp Nichol Award in 2008.

This is McKinnon’s second above/ground press chapbook, after Into the Blind World (2012).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com