Oh, Noble Nature Poet: An interview (of sorts) with Canada’s foremost nature poet, Don McKay

(First published in the Gaspereau Press 2001 Omnibus Reader)

The following is all that remains of an interview between Kathleen Martin and Don McKay, taped somewhere in the great Canadian North. the tape opens with sounds of water lapping gently and the occasional plash-splash of a paddle.

KM: Do you always write in a canoe like this?

DM: Yep. Gets me away from the paparazzi and the evils of digital technology. You know, that’s a not-too-bad J stroke you’re doing, young lady. Try not to shift your weight, though, it’s making me spill my martini.

[Background sound: A distant rushing under the gently lapping and plashing.]

KM: Sorry.

DM: That’s O.K., probably it’s hard to work the tape recorder and paddle at the same time. You got a black fly on your nose, by the way, either that or a very fast forming facial blemish. Now don’t go shifting your weight while you swat it, I’m having a terrific poetic idea. How much vermouth did you put in this thing anyway? Thought I said very dry.

KM: Sorry.

[Background sound: Some roaring under the not-so-distant rushing and the slightly more urgent lapping and plashing.]

DM: That’s O.K., takes a while to get the hang of nature poetry, all the ins and outs, the dos and don’ts. For instance, never say "Oh," like "Oh Mighty Moose" or "Oh, Rose-breasted Grosbeak", not even "Oh Canada" unless you’re at a hockey game. I remember this one time –

KM: Oh –

[Background sound: Steady roaring and rushing, somewhat hectic lapping and plashing.]

DM: There you go, just when I’m in the middle of explaining not to go oh and ah over this and that you up and do it, sounding like one of them wooly-headed scribblers gushing over every sunset and daffodil when they couldn’t tell a J stroke from a J cloth. Anyway, I’m working on this poem about this time I was shootin these rapids in a thunderstorm –

KM: Oh oh, there’s a big –

[Background sound: Roaring and rushing merging into a general thundering.]

DM: Dagnabbit, where were you during that class on interviewing nature poets, out at Tim Hortons? Here I am trying to impart a few nuggets of wisdom and you keep interrupting with this high romantic crap, next thing we know it’ll be your heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains your whatever. Actually, the drowsy numbness always used to pain my backside, back in the days when I was paddling instead of doing interviews. Got so I always sat on this wolverine pelt. Anyways, what I’m trying to say among all these interruptions is, there I was, shooting these class 9 rapids in the birchbark canoe my old friend Grey Owl left me, when this lightning bolt hits a White Pine which goes up like a torch and illuminates this 900 pound grizzly waiting on the shore right by the rapids –

KM: Rapids, rapids, rapids, that’s it, that’s what i –

DM: What do you mean that’s what you, what’s you got to do with it? Listen here, young lady, unless you start paying attention, and I mean poetic attention, you’ll never get anywhere interviewing us serious nature poets with our razor-sharp perceptions and finely tuned sensibilities. And another thing – don’t gesticulate like that when you’re out in a canoe looking for critters, you’ll scare them all off. Now where was I, oh yes the 900-pound grizzly. Well, just as I came up to him, I grabbed my handy hunting knife, the one with "To my good buddy Don from Sir Charles G.D. Roberts" engraved on the blade –

KM: Oh to hell with it –

[Background sound: Very loud splash, followed by rushing, roaring, thundering which takes up the rest of the tape.]