"This tender self-exploration can move us all to a wiser and more receptive recognition of the world we live in daily, inside and out."
-Robert Creeley

These poems span fifteen years of life in the northern industrial output of Prince George, BC. They portray family, friendship, sex, death, health, work, love and human hope as subjects of a harsh social, economic, and bureaucratic system that is itself trapped in its own contradictions and ironies. The Centre is McKinnon's first full-length book since Pulp Log, which won the BC Book Prize for poetry in 1991.