the answer to everything: Selected Poems of Ken Belford

My review of the answer to everything: Selected Poems of Ken Belford (Caitlin Press, 2021), edited by Rob Budde and Si Transken, with consulting editor Jordan Scott, is now up at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics.

Ken Belford (1946 – February 19, 2020)

Sad to hear, via Rob Budde’s facebook page yesterday, that Prince George, British Columbia poet Ken Belford has died, after an extended battle with cancer. Some would suggest that Ken wasn’t a prolific poet, but he was one with a sense, it would seem, of the long game, and he had a considerable break between the publication of his first two collections—Fireweed (Talonbooks, 1967) and The Post Electric Caveman (Very Stone House, 1970)—to his return to publishing in 2000 with Pathways into the Mountains (Caitlin), a book followed by an array of books and chapbooks: Ecologue (Harbour Publishing, 2005), When Snakes Awaken (Nomados, 2006), Lan(d)guage (Caitlin, 2008), Decompositions (Talonbooks, 2010), Internodes (Talonbooks, 2013) and Slick Reckoning (Talonbooks, 2016). Not that he was completely silent during that period, either, publishing occasional small chapbooks such as Sign Language (1976) and Holding Land (1981), both through Barry McKinnon’s Gorse Press.

As part of an author biography on the Caitlin Press website reads: “Born to a farming family near DeBolt, Alberta, Belford grew up in East Vancouver. In the late 1960s, he moved to the Hazelton area of Northwest BC, where he homesteaded with his wife and daughter. Together they operated a soft paths eco tourism business in the remote, unroaded Nass River headwaters at Damdochax Lake. Remarried, he now lives in Prince George, BC, with his partner Si, and continues to blend the borders of poetics.” Part of his author biography via the Talonbooks website, more up-to-date, provides further details, writing: “For more than thirty years, he, along with his wife and daughter, operated a non-consumptive enterprise in the unroaded mountains at the vicinity of the headwaters of the Nass and Skeena Rivers.” It continues, writing:

The “self-educated lan(d)guage” poet has said that living for decades in the “back country” has afforded him a unique relationship to language that rejects the colonial impulse to write about nature, but speaks from the regions of the other.

We might have caught onto each other’s radar through my early interactions with Barry McKinnon, Talonbooks or even Rob Budde, who relocated to Prince George from Winnipeg back in 2000, around the time that Belford was returning to trade publishing. One thing I always enjoyed was the array of chapbooks he would self-publish under the “off-set house” imprint, something that began during the early years of his resurgence. Occasionally a new envelope of his chapbooks would arrive in my mailbox, most of which I tried to review. I got the sense that his work was a life-long accumulation of short, self-contained, often untitled lyrics on his particular north, ecological concerns and about how one lives in the world as a human being, and one who works to respect the land, the people and the space in which he lives. I would be curious to see if, as Budde’s facebook post suggested, a final collection of new poems was in the works, and even if there might be a selected or a collected to appear at some point, to show the concerns and structures that so obviously ran throughout his work. I would also be fascinated to see a full list of what he self-published, and a quick scan through my archive shows chapbooks including: sequences (series 1) (2003), crosscuts (series 2) (2003), fragments (series 3) (2003), transverse (series 4) (2003) and seens (2008). I’m sure there were others.

He was always very generous me during our interactions, whether the years he spent as an above/ground press subscriber (he offered that once he read the chapbooks, he made a point of passing them onto younger writers in his vicinity), and the few times we’d actually met in person, including a couple of readings I did in Prince George (including one with Stephen Brockwell), and a visit he did to Ottawa, during a few days he was in town for the sake of a conference at Carleton University, when I hosted him as part of a group reading via The Factory Reading Series. He seemed very aware of being a writer outside of the university system, and complained heavily that a room full of poets who teach in universities, some of whom expected me to run an event for them when they came through town, should be more appreciative of my efforts on their behalf. “And they can afford it!” he gruffed. “You shouldn’t be doing this work for free.” And he pushed $120 into my hand when the rest of the room wasn’t looking.

Ongoing notes: later May 2015

Like a lot of my stories, that one just followed one momentary thought—What am I doing here, putting odd sentences together and creating some little piece of nonsense, when people are dying on the other side of the world and our government’s going to damnation? It’s something that a lot of artists, I’m sure, feel at one time or another, that they’re wasting time or doing something frivolous. So instead of answering myself and ignoring it, I wrote it out as a little thought. I didn’t know how much value to give to that story, but I showed it to a very serious critic and she liked it, so I decided it passed.

            Lydia Davis, The Art of Fiction No. 227, The Paris Review

There’s been a ton of activity around here lately, or perhaps there hasn’t; perhaps my time full-time with toddler has shifted my perspective. Who knows? I bake, I wander with wee babe to the park, and the occasional reading even happens. Currently I’m in the midst of a slew of new above/ground press publications for the upcoming semi-annual ottawa small press book fair weekend, on June 12 and 13: might we see you there?

Rose turned eighteen months last week. Her big sister Kate gifted her a “Flash” mask, which means, of course, there can only be blurry photos.

Prince George BC: Rob Budde was good enough to send me a copy of Kara-lee MacDonald’s Eating Matters (Hobo Books, 2015), a chapbook of poems exploring eating disorders and the social pressures/expectations of women. The collage aspect of the collection, very much composed as a single project, is rather interesting. Some pieces might be less effective than others, but the variety and scope of the structure makes the read more than worth it. To see how one might get a copy, check with karaleemacdona@gmail.com

The hardest part is knowing

that she should know better.

It isn’t as if she isn’t educated—

as if she isn’t well-read. She can tell you

what de Beauvoir says,

what Butler says,

what Bordo says.

At the end of the way,

—theory fails

to account for disjunction

between bodily urges and

rational thought.

When the late hour and quiet house

have broken her resolve,

she responds predictably.

A trip to the kitchen before

inducing in the bathroom.

Running water to mask

the sounds.

Philadelphia PA: From Brian Teare’s Albion Books comes Jean Valentine’s small chapbook friend (2015), a collection of lyrics that appear to reference her prior poem for Adrienne Rich, a piece that shares a similar title. An award-winning New York City poet, Valentine is the author of numerous books, and winner of a wide array of awards, from the Wallace Stevens Award and the Shelley Memorial Prize. The short poems in friend are carefully composed and packed tight, while still allowing a particular looseness to breathe between her lines.

MY WORDS TO YOU

My words to you are the stitches in a scarf

I don’t want to finish

maybe it will come to be a blanket

to hold you here

love not gone anywhere

Perhaps extending from that previous piece, these poems explore the attachments between people. She writes of loss and love, and even deeper bonds, such as the final stanza of the poem “AFTER: ISN'T THERE SOMETHING,” that reads:

            I want to go back to you,

who when you were dying said

“There are one or two people you don’t want to

let go of.” Here too, where I don’t let go of you.

Toronto ON: The recently-launched Toronto chapbook publisher, WORDS(ON)PAGES, released a small handful of chapbooks this past spring, including Daniel Scott Tysdal’s THE DISCOVERY OF LOVE (2015), “COMPOSED ON THE OCCASION OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE DISCOVERY OF LOVE, WHICH MARKED THE THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PASSING OF THE GAY MARRIAGE ACT ON JANUARY 18, 1979.”

The discovery? Yes, ma’am, I remember,

clear as day. I was searching the Good Book

for a verse that would really stick it to

the homosexuals. You see, that was how

I thought back in ’77. It was late, which

I don’t remember so much as know. I still

don’t sleep well when travelling, even

though that night I was in Dade Country, only

an eight hour drive from my own bed [laughs].

Dade’s where they were passing that law,

you see, to help the homosexuals. Or stop

hurting them. [Pauses] I don’t recall.

Either way, the lot of us Pastors and Deacons

were madder than mules chewing bees

[laughs], ready to bring down all the light

and fire of the Lord on those heathen

councilors in Miami. And then it

happened. [Pauses]. This I remember

as clear as day. I saw that word and I felt

God’s own great hands wrap me up like

a blanket round a baby and for the first

time I truly felt [pauses] Him, [pauses]

I mean us, us, the power He granted us

with this one word that changed the whole

ballgame: love. It was right there in John’s

First Epistle: “We love because He first loved

us.” I couldn’t believe we had missed it!
Lord forgive us, for centuries! [Laughs.]

And the scriptures were just stuffed with

it. Mark 12:31, “Love your neighbor as

yourself.” Romans 13:8: “Let no debt

remain outstanding, except the continuing

debt to love one another.” (“1. THE FORMER PASTOR MAYHEW RAY”)

Subtitled “EXCERPTS FROM AN ENDLESS ORAL HISTORY,” Tysdal’s five-part poem exists as both celebration and historical warning, utilizing real events for the sake of a lyric-through-accretion. Tysdal’s published poetry to date, which include a small handful of trade collections and small chapbooks, are each constructed in unexpected ways, utilizing collage, the idea of the archive and folded materials to produce highly inventive and incredibly powerful works that, in themselves, question the possibilities of what poetry could be. What is a poem? Tysdal’s work continues to challenge the idea of simply what is possible.

kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Their Biography: an organism of relationships

Although Kevin McPherson Eckhoff has been praised as “the onanism of the literary world,” there is much we are still decoding about his possible past of villainy. A man who is as complex as an algorhythm can only be understood and analyzed through close observations of semiotics (and the endeavor of shopping for attractive shirts of the spectacle variety). It would appear that his features evoke emotional, confessional lyrics that reveal the depths of a sensitive soul… or is this mere performativity?

For his fourth book, British Columbia poet kevin mcpherson eckhoff’s Their Biography: an organism of relationships (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2015) is less a composition by the author than a selection of invited submissions on and around the author by a multitude of others. Deliberately twisting ideas around “identity or relationships or language,” the collage aspect of the collection writes “about” the author as a collaborative and deliberately contradictory “memoir.” What becomes interesting through the process of going through Their Biography: an organism of relationships is just how much the structure instead opens up a different kind of portrait: one created less out of facts than through, as the title suggests, a series of relationships. This portrait portrays a writer deeply engaged with writing, his community of friends, family and contemporaries, and the notion of “serious play,” one that a number of his “authors” reflect in their individual chapters. There is such a generosity present throughout sixty-two chapters of anecdote, illustration and pure fiction. At the end of the collection, as a “Table of Contents,” he includes a full list of “chapters” and their authors, including what appears to be family members included alongside well known Canadian poets such as Gregory Betts, Eric Zboya, Vickie Routhe Ness McPherson, Al Rempel, Amanda Earl, Laurel Eckhoff McPherson, Rob Budde, Jeremy Stewart, Jonathan Ball, Claire Donato and Marlene Martins McPherson, among others. Some pieces are incredibly playful, deliberately inventing facts around the fictional character “Kevin McPherson Echoff,” while others are a bit more straightforward, suggesting the use of a more literal narrative of facts. What becomes clear, and quite compelling, is the ways in which the portrait makes itself directly impossible through the collage, and reads akin to a biography of a character that, in the end, becomes entirely separate from the British Columbia poet. This is a highly entertaining and imaginative book, and after a while, it might no longer matter if this character is real, or has anything to do with the the author himself.

When I first met Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff I was in a costume and he didn’t recognize me. I met Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff coming out of the grocery store and noticing that we had both shoplifted. It was then that I knew what the word hemorrhage really meant, and how to spell it. I first met Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff while taking dancing lessons; he was the only one to ask if I knew how to samba. At that time I didn’t know that he would one day be a U.S. congressman, and treated him like any other samba. When I first met Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff he was carried by a circus man and in turn he carried a trapeze artist, which means we must have been at a circus. It wasn’t until later that I recognized the glimmer of terrible audacity in his buckling knees, but when I did, the realization drove me to Vancouver. When I finally meet Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff after all these years he will just be getting off the plane from the Deep South and I imagine his thick accent perfuming our cab ride to the dog food plant. I met Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff when I was a child and he was an elderly gentleman who taught me how to read and introduced me to the wide world of daredevil listening. It was then that I became a follower Marxism-Leninism against his wild gesticulation. The day before I met Kevin I had a dream in which two jigsaw puzzles (one alive and one dead) and two glass suitcases (one clear and one frosted) told me to make a clearing in a field in which they could birth the future. I assume these were Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff and Jake Kennedy, though I could be wrong. It wasn’t until later that I realized how literal the prophecy was. I met Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff lying naked in the middle of the highway, but when I offered him a lift he spat in my eye. At the time I didn’t realize that was just his way of speaking. When I first met Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff it was a cold day in the spring and a deer stood in our path, casting aspersions our way. It was then that I realized what kind of metal Kevin was made from: an aluminum alloy with 5% bronze. I met Kevin McPherson-Eckhoff while we were both in the middle of something important, but it wasn’t until later that I realized it wasn’t that important.