Robin Skelton owned more than 90 rings, collected more than 4,000 78 rpm records and published more than 100 books. He was fond of Irish whisky and flea markets; he never learned to drive a car and he disliked telephones. As a Wicca witch and a poetry guru, he blessed houses, banished ghosts, cured Margaret Atwood's arthritis, helped Marilyn Bowering to conceive and rescued Susan Musgrave from the psychiatric ward on her 16th birthday by proclaiming, "You're not mad, you're a poet." And when he died at home in Oak Bay, on August 22, of congestive heart failure, at age 71, as evidenced by the loving testimonials by the likes of Musgrave, Margaret Dyment, Yvonne Owens, Adrian Chamberlain, Marilyn Bowering, Margaret Blackwood and Joe Rosenblatt, the sense of loss, particularly in Victoria, was acute. Having Skelton on the streets, as poet Linda Rogers put it, was like living near Merlin.
Skelton was born in Easington, East Yorkshire on October 25, 1925, the son of a schoolmaster. An only child, he read Chaucer before age seven. He studied at Leeds University and Cambridge, taught English Literature at Manchester University for 12 years, grew his famous beard (when beards weren't allowed) and served with the R.A.F. in India (codes and ciphers) from 1944 to 1947. He published his first book, Patmos and Other Poems, in 1955, along with a biography that same year, John Ruskin: The Final Years. Taking his first wife to St. Ives for a holiday, hoping to revive a failing marriage, Skelton met the artist Michael Snow who promptly fell in love with Skelton's wife. Both couples divorced and remarried their opposite spouses, remaining friends thereafter. Married to Michael Snow's ex-wife Sylvia in 1957, Skelton emigrated to Canada in 1963 to teach English at UVic. With John Peter he co-founded The Malahat Review in 1965 and was Malahat editor from 1971 to 1982. He was founding chairman of UVic's Creative Department, established in 1973. He was editor at Sono Nis Press from 1976 to 1983. He chaired the Writers Union of Canada, 1982-83, and co-founded the Society of Limners with his wife and other Victoria artists. With his dear friend Charles Lillard, who died earlier this year, he sponsored readings and publications under the aegis of The Hawthorn Society. The Skelton's house, built in 1912, was an important focal point for Victoria's art community.
Prolific as a writer, critic and anthologist, Skelton was a self-described 'minor Pooh-Bah' and Libra whose belief in witchcraft, and his public practice of witchcraft, was enormously important to fellow Wiccans. In 1978 he was initiated into the 'Old Religion' by Jean Kozocari, with whom his daughter Alison had been studying, and later co-authored with Kozocari A Gathering of Ghosts (1989), earning him the accolade of 'ghostbuster'. He testified in the '100 Huntley Street' witchcraft trial in Victoria and once conducted an (as-yet) unsuccessful ritual on Parliament Hill to convince Ottawa's politicians to repeal the GST on books. Just a few of Skelton's many books include Spellcraft (1978), The Collected Shorter Poems, 1947-1977 (1981), The Collected Longer Poems, 1947-1977 (1985), Memoirs of a Literary Blockhead (1988), The Practice of Witchcraft (1988), The Parrot Who Could (1986) and Popping Fuschias: Poems 1987-1992 (1992). Having tried to discover every verse form on the planet, Skelton wrote at least one poem in each form during his old age. The result, The Shapes of Our Singing, will mark an appropriate end to Skelton's varied career upon its publication in 1999 by Eastern Washington University Press.
Robin Skelton was predeceased by his son, Nick, in 1994. He is survived by his wife Sylvia and daughters Alison and Brigid. At 60, a symposium was held in Skelton's honour. A memorial service was held at UVic's Centre Auditorium on September 20, 1997. A scholarship fund for writers has been established by the Hawthorn Society (250-592-4703) in Robin Skelton's name. "I sometimes think I have lived a life of miracles," he once wrote, "or perhaps of serendipity. Certainly I have always managed to live two or three lives at the same time, and I am sometimes puzzled to know which hat I am supposed to be wearing when approached by strangers."

[BCBW 1997]