Man from Moose Jaw If I could see you again I would tell you how I couldn’t find you at your funeral, where all of Moose Jaw gathered each one of us lost in our own memory, mine of the first time I met you at SaskARTchewan, a conference of the arts in Saskatoon, at least thirty-five years ago & there you are: the writer from Moose Jaw in red Pierre Cardin jacket at a downtown disco & how we show them how it’s done, me jiving all night with the first Moose Jaw Dreamboat, the other two – Currie & MacLean – yet to turn us into the Moose Jaw Movement. You, the town’s poet laureate, the most honoured literary artist in our history, not there in coffin or grave, and lost without your defining presence we gather outside the church, the literati of Saskatchewan lost on a plain of grief, bereft without you, yet still together moving strong in lines that circle each other, leap & torque like a Hyland poem full of new light, of love of place, of words I would tell you about leaving the city, knowing I have not left you there behind me. I hear the explosive crack and boom and crash of ice breaking up on a fast-flowing river, its heave and heft of chunks rising and bashing against a bridge that takes me to my youth racing on my balloon-tired CCM to the steep banks of the Saskatchewan river when the ice moves so swiftly out, & looking back I know why you absented your funeral, not just because there can be no last word from you, now I find you, oh such a fair boy on the bridge, straddling your own CCM & watching the swirl and spin of great wedges of ice, edges sharp as giant glass shards. All poetry, that eternal present held there, in you, & wheeling away from the river, leaving your town, I erect a signpost for all who love this land, this poet: MOOSE JAW, The Home of Gary Hyland. Byrna Barclay composed for the launch of the Moose Jaw Festival April 21, 2011
May/June 2011
Gary Hyland, at left. Fort San in the 1970s Pat Krause Collection
******
I
was lucky enough to have known Gary Hyland for more than thirty-five years. He was a mentor and a critic and a wonderful friend. Gary was famous for his sharp eye for detail both on, and off, the page. The son of a hairdresser, he never failed, for example, to notice and comment on a new hairstyle, cut or colour! His powers of observation, combined with his wit, heart, intelligence and craft, and the drive to be the best poet he could be, resulted in an astonishing body of work. Gary’s imagination was huge and as varied as the topography of this country. Through the years, he explored all kinds of poetic terrain - from the adventures of adolescence growing up in a small prairie city to the ups and downs of romantic life to the angst of human existence - all from the vantage point
FREELANCE
13