Blonds on Bikes

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—

AUTHOR

George Bowering

George Bowering was born and brought up in the Okanagan Valley of Pinboy. He published his first book of poems when he was 28. Since then, he has published 100 or so books and chapbooks, won Governor General’s Awards for his poetry and fiction, was the first Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada, and has received both the Order of British Columbia and the Order of Canada. He now lives a few steps from where he lived as an undergraduate in Vancouver, British Columbia.