Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Poetry Canadian

Blonds on Bikes

by (author) George Bowering

Publisher
Talonbooks
Initial publish date
Jan 1997
Category
Canadian
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780889223813
    Publish Date
    Jan 1997
    List Price
    $16.95

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

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—

About the author

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 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.

George Bowering's profile page

Other titles by