His equally extensive poetic subject matter has shadowed his odysseys throughout North America and to Europe, the Caribbean, South America, Asia, and Australia, and to some of the internal settings of his own character. Birney's decision to arrange the contents of his Collected Poems (1975) not only chronologically but also geographically is an acknowledgment of the importance of place in his life and poetics. Although unimportant in themselves, places assume significance for Birney when they are inhabited, when they are entered, when they are quitted: when they are peopled and depopulated. For this reason, the act and process of journeying have been sources of fascination to him. Even Birney's predominantly technical concern with matters ranging from the intricate meters and cadences of Old English to the minimalist typographies of concrete poetry have to do with the relations between space and time and with the desire of the human being bound by mortality to transcend his place, to reconcile space and time by staying in motion, remaining moved by life.
To appreciate the role that place occupies in Birney's life and art, one must first consider the site of his birth, Calgary, in the foothills of Alberta (on 13 May 1904, when Alberta was still part of the Northwest Territories), and his childhood in Erikson, in the Kootenay Valley of mountainous eastern British Columbia.
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