Earle Birney
It was a strange first meeting with Earle Birney. The girlfriend I had at the time was in search of her father she never knew. Her mother was a beat/artist type and had affairs with most of Vancouver’s artistic community of the day. As a result Naida grew up in foster homes never knowing who her real father was.
One day she decided that it could be Earle Birney and since he lived in the same west-end district of Vancouver as we did she would give him a phone call and ask for a meeting. She said that she wanted to talk about her mother who was now a bit of a nut-case and living in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Earle accepted and a couple of days later we found ourselves in Earles apartment having tea. After much beating around the bush Naida asked the question if it was possible that Earle was her father. I think Earle knew all the time where this was going and replied in a slow and thought-full answer. At the time that Naida was conceived he was out of the city on an extended lecture tour. He said it would be difficult to discern her true father as her mother slept with just about every-one including him. (This was way before DNA tests)
Earle tactfully changed subjects and we chatted a while then made our adieus.
A couple of days latter we got a phone call from Earle inviting us to a dinner party at his place the following Friday. We accepted and I remember Earle’s wife greeting us at the door and introducing us to two other literary couples. After a few of drinks Earle sat everyone at the dining table. He requested that I sit next to him. This surprised me as part of our chat we had the previous week he asked me if I enjoyed poetry and I replied no, most of it I find horribly maudlin or pretentious shit. I remember Naida’s shocked look. I tried to dig myself out of the hole by saying that I kind of enjoyed his poem David which was required reading in high school. (I didn’t)
So I found myself seated next to one of Canada’s great poets and didn’t really know what to expect or to say. Earle put me at ease immediately by talking about photography, contemporary music and politics, much to the chagrin of the two other couples who clearly wanted to talk poetry and such. At one point Earle leant to me and whispered that he got so tired rehashing the same old shit and he was glad to have some one around that he could talk to. We became good friends after that.
Shortly after he split from his wife for the last time and started seeing Ann Wong, a cute Asian girl about our age. I took the photo on this page at a dinner party at our apartment. Not long after he and Ann moved to Toronto. I helped him pack up and move his stuff to his storage locker. One bit of advice, never ever offer to help a writer move. You will not believe the amount of books these people have.
At a much needed break for me, he was just supervising as he recently had a mild heart attack and could do no lifting, I sat and he brought out a book and said that here is some poetry that I may like and began reading The Song of Roland, the first English translation. It was bloody good. After he finished he gave me the book and a few other mementos. One envelope included some old B&W negatives. He said these might be worth some thing someday and left it at that. Many years later I found the envelope and made a contact sheet. I could recognize a much younger Earle but the other fellow in the shot I could not. After Earle’s death and the subsequent book on his life it dawned on me who the other fellow was. The photos had to be taken in Mexico by Earle’s wife when they were on holidays there and the friend they were visiting was Malcolm Lowry.
