KB: He was very big in the community that I knew - very much a leader and people were very much aware of him. He was a person who was seen to be someone worth listening to. He was someone who people respected highly because of his principles. He was a principled man when he was young and he had vision of a better world, and I think that age and class of young people that I knew then were ready for that - their ears were open and they were eager to hear of these things. BM: We should also mention that there was a split of sorts. Hastings Street, downtown guys who were not university people and who at the same time were learning the art and craft of writing poetry. KB: I was influenced by the downtown non-university poets a lot at first because I lived that life. The city then was - the old part of the city from Granville to False Creek through there and down to Hastings was that part of the city I came to deeply love and even now when I go there I can still find remnants of that old city that had, what seems to me, to have so much wonderful character to it - great places that - just even street corners that are left now that I still go and stand on and feel those original feelings. I very much was sort of like Acorn and like Purdy in a way. I came from that working class kind of downtown background but then began to move slowly over the space of a few years more towards Stanley Park. I made it across Granville. Granville was the barrier and it always was the barrier, and then I became aware of Earle Birney who lived on the other side and Jaimie, and out of that I began to be more aware of eventually the younger Tish writers, - young George Bowering, Atwood when she was first publishing. What was Margaret's first book, the one that had so much influence on so many of us? Do you recall the name of it - a contact press book also. BM: I just saw that book not too long ago. It has a image of a snake on it. I was thinking of the Enchanted Adder but it isn't that book. What was Purdy's first book, the one that he tracked down and destroyed, called The Enchanted Echo . He showed it to me once and said in his crazy manner, "this is the worst shit in the world ( laughter) this is the last copy and I'm going to get rid of it! " (laughter). That reminds me of your first book. I actually saw a copy of it, in Hoffers most likely - The Hungry Tide. KB: In which there is a poem about Purdy being wet and dirty and riding on a bus and smelling like an old dog in a storm or something. BM: I don't have a copy of that book. I don't see why you would want to get rid of it, or maybe you didn't. KB: At the time I did. BM: It was self-published? KB: Ya, with drawings by my friend Bob Curr. It was a good time for me so I feel ok about that book now. I think there are some copies somewhere. I don't know. Bill Hoffer had a copy. BM: It doesn't show up in his catalogues though. KB: I should track it down and get a photocopy of it sometime. BM: It's sort of necessary to get that first book out. I've talked to other writers who wish they hadn't started publishing until they were 35, but I think it takes a great sense of energy and risk taking to jump into that pretty exciting world of writing and publishing and then essentially making all of your contacts because of that, even though technically there were some faults. KB: You mean like how the cover was glued on for example? BM: (laugh). Not so much that - it's that the early poems might embarrass you later. But then you might also see the energy and innocence of early work. First books are pretty interesting sometimes for their clear sentiments, the experimentation that it takes to learn how to write. Sometimes I'd like to get back to that sense.