This fall’s issue of the Capilano Review pays homage to Canada’s first poet laureate: George Bowering. The tribute got us thinking: could George Bowering be our All Lit Up-ingest poet? This special edition of Read This (and this, and this, and this), Then That (and that, and that, and that) shows how George’s themes, friends, and family have spanned this edition’s featured eight books and seven publishers (plus a lot beyond these, besides).
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Read This, Then That features literary pairings for the voracious reader. As big readers ourselves we know you always want your next book picked out before you finish your current one, so let us help you out with a two-fer recommendation.Read This: Words, Words, Words by George Bowering (New Star Books)(and this) Love at Last Sight by Thea Bowering (NeWest Press)(and this) The Martyrology by bpNichol (Coach House Books)(and this) Mirror on the Floor by George Bowering (Anvil Press)Then That: The Diamond Alphabet by George Bowering (BookThug)(and that) What’s the Score? by David McFadden (Mansfield Press)(and that) North of California St. by George Stanley (New Star Books)(and that) Love and Tribal Baseball by Susan Andrews Grace (Buschek Books)This fall’s issue of the Capilano Review pays homage to Canada’s first poet laureate: George Bowering. The tribute got us thinking: could George Bowering be our All Lit Up-ingest poet? This special edition of Read This (and this, and this, and this), Then That (and that, and that, and that) shows how George’s themes, friends, and family have spanned this edition’s featured eight books and seven publishers (plus a lot beyond these, besides).As you’ll see in the diagram below (also available for download, here!), we began with two of Bowering’s books: New Star Books’ Words, Words, Words, and BookThug’s The Diamond Alphabet. In reading Words, Words, Words, a self-examination of George Bowering’s writing life and influences, the reader sees immediately how interconnected – particularly amongst poets – the Canadian writing scene is. George reminisces about his friendship with bpNichol, and the “so many bad beginnings” of bp’s Martyrology. He talks about raising his daughter, Thea Bowering, also a writer, and how he can come upon “a sly dig at one of my stories” in her work. Also necessary to recommend after this retrospective of the author’s writing life is his first novel, Mirror on the Floor, published in 1967 and recently rereleased by Anvil Press.Also clear in Words, Words, Words is George Bowering’s unequivocal love for baseball. His collection The Diamond Alphabet: Baseball in Shorts marries his love of the game with his love of the English language: pairing fact and fiction in 130 short takes. In this vein follows Bowering’s friend David McFadden‘s Griffin Poetry Prize-winning collection, What’s the Score?, also built of a great number of prosical observations. Likewise, his baseball-going companion and fellow Vancouverite George Stanley‘s collection, North of California St. could be the all-poem mirror to Words, Words, Words. Last, Susan Andrews Grace‘s Love and Tribal Baseball shows another poet deriving art and meaning from the game.Read this (these), then that (those).
