The Book Collector

From the salmon fishing grounds to the Special Collections library, from the vanishing rural world of pheasant hunting and canning along the banks of the Fraser River to the deck of the Titanic and the famous book collector’s tragic fate, Tim Bowling’s startling and powerful eighth collection of poems moves seamlessly between the riches of nature and the riches of art.

AUTHOR

Tim Bowling

Tim Bowling is the author of twenty-two works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. He is the recipient of numerous honours, including two Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund Awards, five Alberta Literary Awards, a Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal, two Writers’ Trust of Canada nominations, two Governor General’s Literary Award nominations and a Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of his entire body of work.

Reviews

The Book Collector is Edmonton-based poet Tim Bowling’s eighth collection. Add to that three novels, a collection of interviews edited by him, and the 2007 memoir The Lost Coast, and you’ve got one industrious writer. He is also one of the most gifted poets in the country.–Zachariah Wells, Quill & Quire
…hauntingly imagined and deftly crafted.–Owen Percy, Canadian Literature
Magical, yet very real.–Prairie Books NOW
Bowling has a powerful elegiac voice that often recalls his childhood in the salmon fishing grounds of B.C. … His work has an unusual sonic lushness.–Maurice Mierau, Winnipeg Free Press
Tim Bowling is a Canadian poet with extravagant gifts of association, high-powered technical dexterity, and a rich effortless voice all his own … His poetry is both regional and international in scope for he is equally comfortable talking about fishing for salmon in the Fraser River or writing eloquently about Thomas Hardy’s personal life, or even elegizing a forgotten collector of books, Harry Elkins Widener, who died with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912… –Chris Banks, Table Music
[Many of the poems] reflect on a past washed with the golden glow of remembrance … and lament the inevitability of change and decay. There is a Dylan Thomas-like cast to many of these poignant, loping narratives, which remind us that Nothing Gold Can Stay: not wonder … not times with parents, and not even, perhaps most devastatingly, a way of life and an ecosystem …–Janice Fiamengo, Journal of Canadian Poetry