Barry McKinnon

Barry McKinnon was born in 1944 in Calgary, Alberta where he grew up. In 1965, after two years of 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. and in 1969 with an M.A. from U.B.C.(Vancouver), and was hired that same year to teach English at The College of New Caledonia in Prince George where he has lived ever since.

McKinnon writes primarily in the form of the long poem/serial sequence, a form that gives him the necessary range in which to articulate the poem’s central truth from various & variable angles & perspectives. In his own words, he sees the long poem “as a way to log my experience & to record what I value most in a context of forces, subtle or not, that threaten those values.” As D.H. Lawrence writes: “We’ve got to live no matter how many skies have fallen.”

McKinnon has been an active editor/publisher/designer since the late sixties.

Bibliography: Poetry

The Golden Daybreak Hair. Toronto: Aliquondo Press, 1967. The Carcasses of Spring. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1971. The Death of a Lyric Poet. Prince George: Caledonia Writing Series, 1975. Songs & Speeches. Prince George: Caledonia Writing Series, 1976. I Wanted to Say Something. Prince George: Caledonia Writing Series, 1976. Sex at Thirty One. Prince George: Caledonia Writing Series, 1977. The the. (Fragments. Prince George: Repository /Gorse Press, 1979. The the. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1980. Finalist for the Governor General's Award. Thoughts/Sketches. Prince George/Vancouver: Tatlow /Gorse Press, 1985. The Centre. Burnaby: A Line Up One Chapbook. Line: A Journal of Contemporary Writing & its Modernist Sources, 1985. Pulp Log. Prince George: Caitlin Press, 1991. Winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award ( B.C. Book Awards). Arrhythmia. Prince George: Gorse Press, 1994. Winner of the Bp Nichol Chap-Book Award for the best chap-book published in Canada in English, 1994. The Centre. Prince George: Caitlin Press, 1995.