George Bowering

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George Harry Bowering (born December 1, 1935) is a prolific Canadian novelist, poet, historian, and biographer. He was born in Penticton, British Columbia, and raised in the nearby town of Oliver, where his father was a high-school chemistry teacher. Bowering is author of more than 60 books.

Bowering is the best-known and most talented of a group of young poets including Frank Davey, Fred Wah, Jamie Reid, and David Dawson who were together at the University of British Columbia in the 1950s. There they founded the journal Tish. Bowering lives in Vancouver, British Columbia and is Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University, where he has worked for more than 25 years. He describes himself as a Protestant agnostic. In 2002, Bowering was appointed the first ever Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. That same year, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He was awarded the Order of British Columbia in 2004. Bowering is equally proud of his achievements as a poor-defense singles-punching great-mouth sandlot baseball player. He played various infield positions for the York Street Tigers (Montreal), the Granville Grange Zephers, the Zunks, and finally for the Paperbacks (Vancouver), from which he retired only a few years ago.

Bowering is one of the judges for the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Contents

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Poetry

-Barney the dinosaur-1979

  • Points on the Grid - 1964
  • Sticks and Stones - 1964
  • Windigo - 1965
  • The Silver Wire - 1966
  • Rocky Mountain Foot - 1968
  • The Gangs of Kosmos - 1969 (winner of the 1969 Governor General's Award for Poetry)
  • Touch - 1971
  • Geneve - 1971
  • Curious - 1973
  • In the Flesh - 1974
  • The Catch - 1976
  • Allophanes - 1976
  • The Concrete Island: Montreal Poems - 1977
  • Another Mouth - 1979
  • The Mask In Place - 1982
  • West Window - 1982
  • Smoking Mirror 1982
  • Kerrisdale Ellegies - 1984
  • Seventy-One Poems for People - 1985
  • Delayed Mercy - 1986
  • Urban Snow - 1992
  • Parents from Space - 1994
  • Blondes on Bikes - 1997
  • Diamondback Dog - 1998
  • His Life - 2000 (Nominated for a Governor General's Award)
  • Changing on the Fly - 2004 (shortlisted for the 2005 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize)
  • Vermeer's Light: Poems 1996-2006 - 2006

[edit] Fiction

  • Mirror on the Floor - 1967
  • Autobiology - 1972
  • Fiddler's Night - 1973
  • Flycatcher and Other Stories - 1974
  • A Short Sad Book - 1977
  • Concentric Circles - 1977
  • Protective Footwear - 1978
  • Burning Water - 1980 (winner of the 1980 Governor General's Award for Fiction)
  • A Place to Die - 1983
  • Caprice - 1988
  • Harry's Fragments - 1990
  • Shoot! - 1994
  • The Rain Barrel - 1994
  • Parents from Space - 1994
  • The Rain Barrel - 1994
  • Piccolo Mondo - 1998 (with Angela Bowering, Michael Matthews & David Bromige)
  • Diamondback Dog - 1998
  • Standing on Richards - 2004

[edit] Non-Fiction

  • Al Purdy - 1970
  • Sa Way With Words - 1982
  • Craft Slices - 1985
  • Errata - 1988
  • Imaginary Hand - 1988
  • The Moustache: Memories of Greg Curnoe - 1993
  • Bowering's B.C: A Swashbuckling History - 1997
  • Egotists and Autocrats: The Prime Ministers of Canada - 1999
  • A Magpie Life: Growing a Writer - 2001
  • Cars - 2002
  • Stone Country - 2003
  • Left Hook: A Sideways Look at Canadian Writing - 2005
  • Baseball Love - 2006

[edit] External links

Preceded by
None		 Parliamentary Poet Laureate
2002 – 2004		 Succeeded by
Pauline Michel
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