En savoir plus
These daily riffs during an autumn in Denmark and Italy record perspectives of a husband and wife who see differently.
A propos de l'auteur
George Bowering, Canada's first Parliamentary Poet Laureate, is a major Canadian literary figure and one of the country's most prolific authors, having written more than one hundred books, including works of poetry, fiction, autobiography, biography, and youth fiction. His texts have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Chinese, and Romanian. A founder of the influential poetry journal
TISH, Bowering went on to become a distinguished novelist, poet, editor, professor, historian, and tireless supporter of fellow writers. He has twice won the Governor General's Literary Award, and has been shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize, the BC Book Prize, the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and the British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. Bowering is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and has also been awarded the Order of British Columbia and the British Columbia Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence. The George Bowering Collection and Reading Room at UBC Rare Books and Special Collections is scheduled to open in late 2025.
Résumé
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—
