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. McKinnon’s recent work includes The Centre (Talonbooks, 2004) and In the Millenium (New Star, 2009), a thirteen-part collection of his poetry drawn from a ten-year period.

Books by Barry McKinnon

In the Millennium

Writing the Terrain

The Centre