Cascadia Poetics LAB blog

Paul: You know, you moved up here and one of the first things you did as a teacher in Prince George – was it UNBC at the time when you moved here – the University of Northern British Columbia?
Barry: No, it was the College of New Caledonia.
Paul: And you were teaching English in a welding class?
BM: Yup, it was a technical school. We moved into a technical school before they built the college.
PN: And this is 1969?
BM: Yeah, 1969. But in that first year here we taught out of the high school. We’d start teaching at three in the afternoon after the high school was out, so we were a night school. We were kind of interlopers. The high school teachers thought, “oh, here are these smarty pants academics coming in and taking over the functions that we’ve provided!”

Jerome Rothenberg was a legendary poet, translator and anthologist. His work on various poetry anthologies, including Poems for the Millennium were an inspiration for our Cascadian Zen series. He died on April 21, 2024 and we’re presenting this archive audio of the interview conducted in November 2001 as our latest Cascadian Prophets podcast. R.I.P. Jerome! Our introduction from 2001.