The Answer to Everything: Selected Poems of Ken Belford

Ken Belford’s career has spanned six decades and three lives. The Answer to Everything collects Belford’s poetry of the 1960s in Vancouver, his lan(d)guage poetry of the early 2000s influenced by his time on remote Blackwater Lake, and his more political-charged poetry of the last decade while he lived in Prince George. This collection allows readers to discover or reflect on Ken’s unique and challenging work, seeing patterns and themes in his poetics as they evolved out of his TISH-influenced poetry and into more contemporary dialogues where Belford seemingly establishes a poetic school of his own. The volume contains excerpts from: Fireweed The Post Electric Cave Man Pathways into the Mountains ecologue lan(d)guage Decompositions Internodes Slick Reckoning The collection has been organized chronologically, setting foundational texts from his earlier work next to his celebrated recent books that concretized his distinct poetic sensibilities. This remarkable collection is assembled based on Belford’s wishes by those close to him as a definitive record of his life’s work.