This musical poem at once despairs and revels in a frustrating day from the author’s former life in the salmon-fishing industry on the Fraser River Delta. Bowling and his brother are set to head out on the river?it’s the perfect tide at the height of the run?but “Something is wrong with the Volvo prop!”

The text of this poem was hand composed in Goudy Old Style and printed on Mohawk Superfine paper. Jack McMaster’s illustrations combine letterpress printing with the lost twentieth-century colouring technique of pochoir, or painting through stencils.

This 12-page accordion-style book is trimmed to 8 × 8 inches and bound between boards covered in St. Armand handmade paper.

Tim Bowling has published numerous poetry collections, including Low Water Slack; Dying Scarlet (winner of the 1998 Stephan G. Stephansson Award for poetry); Darkness and Silence (winner of the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry); The Witness Ghost; and The Memory Orchard (both nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award). He is also the author of three novels, Downriver Drift (Harbour), The Paperboy's Winter (Penguin) and The Bone Sharps (Gaspereau Press). His first book of non-fiction, The Lost Coast: Salmon, Memory and the Death of Wild Culture (Nightwood Editions), was shortlisted for three literary awards: The Writers' Trust Nereus Non-Fiction Award, the BC Book Prizes' Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize and the Alberta Literary Awards' Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction. The Lost Coast was also chosen as a 2008 Kiriyama Prize "Notable Book." Bowling is the recipient of the Petra Kenney International Poetry Prize, the National Poetry Award and the Orillia International Poetry Prize. Bowling was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. A native of the West Coast, he now lives in Edmonton Alberta. His latest collection of poetry is Tenderman (Nightwood), due out in fall 2011.

Tim Bowling's profile page