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Enlarge Cover
list price: $16.95
edition:Paperback
category: Poetry
published: Jan 1997
ISBN:9780889223813
publisher:
Talonbooks
Description
Blonds on Bikes is George Bowering’s first book of poetry since Urban Snow was published by Talonbooks in 1992. Characteristic of Bowering’s other work, this book is largely made up of sequences. The longest one, the title poem, is a composition of daily riffs during an autumn in Denmark and Italy. “Pictures” is an album of verbal portraits by a husband and wife who see differently. There is a series of tributes to other writers on special occasions. Sometimes a short lyric sticks its head up. Whatever the form, Bowering is more interested in sound than he is in ground, more interested in wit than he is in shovels. If you read carefully, you might get a little scared. If you want “one of the last great masters who can use language to impose an individual yet universal order on the perceived world,”
dont get your hopes up. Look out for
air
& the knives
in the air—
Contributor Notes
George Bowering, Canada’s first Poet Laureate, was born in the Okanagan Valley.
After serving as an aerial photographer in the Royal Canadian Air Force, Bowering earned a BA in English and an MA in history at the University of British Columbia, where he became one of the co-founders of the avant-garde poetry magazine TISH. He has taught literature at the University of Calgary, the University of Western Ontario, and Simon Fraser University, and he continues to act as a Canadian literary ambassador at international conferences and readings.
A distinguished novelist, poet, editor, professor, historian, and tireless supporter of fellow writers, Bowering has authored more than eighty books, including works of poetry, fiction, autobiography, biography and youth fiction. His writing has also been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Chinese, and Romanian.
Bowering has twice won the Governor General’s Award, Canada’s top literary prize. In 2019 he received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement for an outstanding literary career in British Columbia.
