In the Millennium is a thirteen-part sequence written over the last ten years that measures a wide range of the poet's experience. The writing emerges in response to human processes, conditions and places: love, sex, death, the insecurities and pressures of the inner and outer world, and the politics of person and place that act as prompts for whatever he, as the poet, is given to reveal. Much of the poetry in In the Millennium is also informed by the abrasive grit and beauty of the north, especially in the poems "Head Out," "Prince George (Part 1)," and "Prince George Core." "Bolivia/Peru" is a long poem that documents a trip to the poorest places in South America. But no matter what the contexts, In the Millennium articulates McKinnon's belief that the contemporary poem has to resemble the various and fractured realities it addresses — to make whatever is at hand, no matter how complex, emotionally visible.

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.

Barry McKinnon's profile page