Pearl

(Paperback)

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Description

The making of a poem is like the making of a pearl: you take something irritating and create a jewel. George Bowering's "goodbye" book of poems, Pearl is a bushy collection that centres around a promise he made to himself that, before he left, he would write a poem about his mother, Pearl Bowering a hillbilly, athlete, and champion bridge player. Pearl includes this promised poem and more, raucously sprawling in a myriad of directions and tones, insisting on poetry's multifariousness and big-heartedness. Pearl is at turns touching, ribald, and cheeky a string of gems that reflect on the end of a life well lived and well written, all while openly resisting the idea that a poet might wrap up their time with a tidy couplet.

Author Bio

George Bowering, Canada's first Parliamentary Poet Laureate, is a major Canadian literary figure and one of the country's most prolific authors, having written more than one hundred books, including works of poetry, fiction, autobiography, biography, and youth fiction. His texts have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Chinese, and Romanian. A founder of the influential poetry journal TISH, Bowering went on to become a distinguished novelist, poet, editor, professor, historian, and tireless supporter of fellow writers. He has twice won the Governor General's Literary Award, and has been shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize, the BC Book Prize, the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and the British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. Bowering is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and has also been awarded the Order of British Columbia and the British Columbia Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence. The George Bowering Collection and Reading Room at UBC Rare Books and Special Collections is scheduled to open in late 2025.