folio
: Barry McKinnon (1944-2023)
, edited by Jeremy Stewart and Donna Kane : see the expansive folio here
above/ground press has produced a couple of chapbooks by Barry McKinnon over the years--Into the Blind World (2012) and G o n e S o u t h (2021)--as well as include work by him in an issue of Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] in 2022, with follow-up interview, which is very much worth reading.
Barry McKinnon and Brian Fawcett in Toronto, 2004
Sad to hear from Paul Nelson that Prince George, BC poet and above/ground press author Barry McKinnon died yesterday morning. above/ground press was fortunate enough to publish two chapbooks by McKinnon--Into the Blind World (2012) and G o n e S o u t h (2021)--as well as include work by him in an issue of Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] in 2022, with follow-up interview. A larger obituary/write-up forthcoming at robmclennan.blogspot.com
We're pleased to announce the Long List for the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize, as selected by our dedicated judges, Beverley Daurio and James McDonald. The judges read about 100 submissions of books, chapbooks, and ephemera, looking for the best in "poetry of observation" by a Canadian poet.
Stay tuned for the Short List! The winner will receive $1,000, thanks to our generous donors.
Here is the Long List of 10 titles, in alphabetical order by the poets' names:
Lines – Cameron Anstee (St. Andrew Books)
Undoing Hours – Selina Boan (Nightwood Editions)
wind – Guy Ewing (Puddles of Sky Press)
a grain of sand – Helen Hajnoczky (above/ground press)
Zero Dawn – Shelly Harder (above/ground press)
A Number of Stunning Attacks – Jessi MacEachern (Invisible Publishing)
Gone South – Barry McKinnon (above/ground press)
Rain's Small Gestures – Pearl Pirie (Apt. 9 Press)
Ghosthawk – Matt Rader (Nightwood Editions)
So/I – Andy Weaver (above/ground press)
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")
When I started writing at the age of 16, I wrote fast, filling boxes with quickly scribbled lyrics dashed off with a sense of excitement and risk. I never know what I was about to say or where the page was to take me. Now I’m 67 and the energy and pleasure of the writing process hasn’t really changed, but I wait much longer between poems. I’ve had to learn patience. Much writing and thinking for me is practice in preparation for the event when the poem arrives.
I’ve also learned to live with another paradox of its activity: The poem simultaneously identifies its writer to the world, but only comes into being when the writer, so to speak, is out of the way. What a strange occupation and process that requires obliteration of self at the same time that it reaffirms it. I think I knew this early on.
