Poet mines past to bring prose above groundGazette, The (Colorado Springs), Dec 1, 2003
by DEEDEE CORRELL
Jon Barker prefers places that make other people claustrophobic.
"I've always loved getting into snug, dark places," the former miner said.
It's only when he can stand straight up in a cave that he gets nervous. "It means the ground isn't well supported. There's a big slab just waiting to be knocked loose," he said. "I feel exposed."
The Widefield High School teacher and closet poet got plenty of exposure this year when he was named the "Miner's Poet Laureate" by the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum in Leadville.
Barker's winning piece, "What's Said Underground Stays Underground," is about the confidences two miners share as they work deep in the Earth.
Barker "captured the way two miners would think about each other and talk. They're brusque. They put on a strong, tough front, but there's a lot more than just that," said Steve Voynick, a member of the Mining Hall's board of directors.
"He impressed us all," he said.
Barker took a long time to become the not-so-secret poet he is.
Originally from Sandwich, Ill., he grew up predisposed to the craft. His mother was the township librarian, and his brother is a journalist. He learned to read early, but didn't particularly care for writing - mostly, he said, because manual typewriters were too cumbersome.
"I was a somewhat reluctant writer," he said.
Geology always fascinated Barker, and after he graduated from college in the 1970s with a degree in the subject, he landed his first job working with water wells.
Over the next two decades, many hardrock mining jobs would follow, most in Colorado.
For Barker, the writing didn't come until he found he had things to say.
"Serious poetry didn't come along until my late 20s, when I had a more interesting life, when I'd lost enough jobs, lost a marriage, had all the difficulties," he said.
Reading other types of poetry, he found himself annoyed.
"Everyone writes about ethereal beauty of blah, blah, blah," he said. "Nobody writes about real stuff except cowboy poets."
Barker said he liked to write about the people he worked with and admired the people - "meat-and-potatoes working men...all these poor slobs you never hear about."
He found the dangers they encountered also inspired words.
Barker wrote one poem after he nearly died in a mine. He and another geologist were a half-mile underground taking samplings when they encountered some bad air. When the barometric pressure is low, "it sucks the air out," he said.
Barker was clambering over some rocks when he lost consciousness and fell on his face into the mud. He couldn't move or breathe. His partner struggled to turn him over and finally succeeded. Barker regained consciousness, and his partner helped him out of the mine.
The dangers of working underground are common themes in mining poetry, Voynick said.
"They're looking for a form of expression where they can write about the place they work, where they can get hurt easily," he said. "It's a tough place to have to work."
Barker last worked as a miner in the late 1980s, when the industry was fading. "The last five years, I had three different employers a year," he said.
As one mine closed, he said he'd go looking for work at another.
Barker moved to Colorado Springs in 1988 and took a series of jobs until he recently got a job at Widefield High School teaching physical science and physics. He still thinks often of the world he used to occupy - one to which a left hand with progressive nerve damage prevents his return.
"But I would love to work in a mine again," he said.
These days, he satisfies his need to dig around underground by spending time with a local chapter of the National Speleological Society, of which he is chairman.
He also keeps writing poems, although during the school year the poetry must take a back seat.
"I write tests," he said.
