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T C featuring: Jordan Abel, Margaret Atwood, R TCR Jean Baird, Douglas Barbour, Sarah Blacker, T H THE CAPILANO REVIEW E Thea Bowering, Colin Browne, Ted Byrne, C A P I Louis Cabri, Alessandra Capperdoni, L A N Stephen Collis, J Marc Côté, Deanna Fong, O R E Dwight Gardiner, Tom Hawthorn, Aleksandra V I E W Bowering’s Kaminska, Kevin Killian, Jessica Langston, Books Monroe Lawrence, Daphne Marlatt, Steve McCaffery, rob mclennan, Sacha Milojevic, Jocelyn Morlock, Erín Moure, Miriam Nichols, Ken Norris, John O’Brian, Aaron Peck, Stan Persky, Carl Peters, Meredith Quartermain, Ian Rae, Nikki Reimer, Chelsea Rooney, Jacquelyn Ross, Karl Siegler, George Stanley, Rob Taylor, Lary Timewell, Michael Turner, Fred Wah, Rebecca Wigood, Andrew 3 ISSN 0315 3754 · $14.00 2 LANGUAGES Zuliani 4 “Thea, do your piano practice! Oh, excuse me, I was sposed to shout that, not type it. I am an automatic narrative plunker-down. I cant help myself, a slave of Gutenberg or Cupertino.” —George Bowering letter to Michael Ondaatje (25 Dec. 1984) Editor Jenny Penberthy Co-Editor Aurelea Mahood Managing Editor Todd Nickel Editorial Board Andrea Actis, Colin Browne, Pierre Coupey, Brook Houglum, Aurelea Mahood, George Stanley Contributing Editors Clint Burnham, Roger Farr, Andrew Klobucar, Erín Moure, Lisa Robertson, Sharon Thesen Founding Editor Pierre Coupey Designer Andrea Actis Website Design Adam Jones The Capilano Review is published by Capilano University. Canadian subscription rates for one year are $28 for individuals, $50 for institutions. Outside Canada, please add $5. Address correspondence to The Capilano Review, 2055 Purcell Way, North Vancouver, BC v7j 3h5. Subscribe online at www.thecapilanoreview.ca/order/ For submission guidelines, please see our website, www.thecapilanoreview.ca/submissions. With your submission, please include a sase with Canadian postage or funds for return postage. The Capilano Review does not take responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, neither do we accept simultaneous submissions, previously published work, nor submissions sent by email. Because copyright remains the property of the author or artist, no portion of this publication may be reproduced without the permission of the author or artist. The Capilano Review gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the British Columbia Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, and Capilano University. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage, as well as the financial support of the City of North Vancouver and the District of North Vancouver through the grants programs of North Vancouver Recreation & Culture. The Capilano Review is a member of Magazines Canada, the Magazine Association of BC, and the Alliance for Arts and Culture (Vancouver). Publications mail agreement number 40063611. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to circulation—The Capilano Review, 2055 Purcell Way, North Vancouver, BC v7j 3h5 issn 0315 3754 | Published October 2014 Printed in Vancouver, BC, by Hemlock Printers. Epigraph quotation on previous page cited in Roy Miki’s A Record of Writing: An Annotated Bibliography of George Bowering (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1989) 224. TCR 3.24 / Fall 2014 5 Editors’ Note 93 Stephen Collis At War With the U.S. Canada EMPIRE 7 Colin Browne George Bowering: The First Fifty 98 Daphne Marlatt In Search of Plot (Deceased) 27 Rebecca Wigod The Three-Ring Binders 104 Steve McCaffery Snowballs in Hells: George Bowering’s 32 rob mclennan Αλλορhαηες A Shelf of Bowering’s Books 113 Lary Timewell 34 Sacha Milojevic northpaw Dreaming a Space for Books and Reading: Project for a George Bowering 117 Thea Bowering Library The Daughter Library 45 Fred Wah 124 Stan Persky Messing around with Sticks & Stones Home Port 50 John O’Brian 129 Meredith Quartermain The Day before the Chinese A-Bomb On First Looking into Burning Water 61 Margaret Atwood 135 Jessica Langston George Bowering and The Gangs of George Bowering’s British Columbia, Kosmos Postmodern and Post-colonial 64 Ken Norris 141 Jordan Abel Bowering’s Books Burning Water (Indian, Indians) 73 Ted Byrne 148 Miriam Nichols Justice is a Woman: Reading Genève George Bowering and the New American Poetry 81 Carl Peters George Bowering’s Autobiology: A Boat 155 Alessandra Capperdoni George Bowering’s Poetry as Cultural 89 Michael Turner Poetics Georgeous 165 Karl Siegler 221 see to see — Rummaging Through the Lost and Found of Kerrisdale Elegies Nikki Reimer reviews George Stanley’s North of California St. 170 Erín Moure Monroe Lawrence reviews Ben NINE TERCETS Lerner’s 10:04 Chelsea Rooney reviews Margaux 172 Douglas Barbour Williamson’s I Could See Everything Errata-tat-tat Aleksandra Kaminska & Sarah Blacker on PUBLIC Magazine 175 Tom Hawthorn Jacqueline Ross on Artist Poetry and Bowering on-deck Poets Theatre Jocelyn Morlock on Composer 180 Kevin Killian Residencies and Collaboration Bowering’s Fragments Louis Cabri reviews Ron Silliman’s Against Conceptual Poetry 183 Ian Rae The Art of (Re)collecting: Bowering and the London Scene 233 Contributors 193 Aaron Peck On Nuts and Other Editions: The Cover Image: Books in George Bowering’s Study George and Roger Bowering, c. 1959 197 Deanna Fong Photo credit: Fred Miller George Bowering in Performance: Three Constellations 201 Rob Taylor His Life: A Poem 204 Dwight Gardiner My New Jodorowsky Script 206 Jean Baird Editing with George 211 J Marc Côté Publishing George Bowering’s Pinboy 214 George Stanley The Other Side of Being Red 219 Andrew Zuliani Untitled Excel Spreadsheet: An Acrostic for George Bowering Editors’ Note This special issue of TCR—our largest yet—pays tribute to the mercurial and inestimable genius of George Bowering. George summons big numbers. In fifty years of publishing he has seen over a hundred books into print by over sixty different publishers. The print and online editions of “Bowering’s Books” assemble forty-six writers with a wide variety of pieces, some of them critical discussions of George’s books, some of them memoirs and biographies, some of them tributes that adopt language-stratagems that rival his own. We include reflections by his publishers, by his former students, and of course by his irrepressible friends. Other pieces refer to his meticulously amassed book collections, another examines his long history of public readings, and a recent interview asks George to create yet another collection, a library of the fifty books most important to him. Accordingly, we include an architect’s vision for a “George Bowering Library.” It’s a major challenge for even a committed reader and writer to keep pace with George, let alone capture the extraordinary subtlety of his work: we offer instances, we describe, and we swap anecdotes. But his genius is a spirited and elusive entity. There’s a tease waiting for the critic at every turn and a goading to keep at it and see if we’re equal to his wit and invention. Meanwhile his eye’s on the tangent, on a new experiment, on another hybrid, on disruption of his and our paths of thinking. This issue is for George, with awe and with gratitude for the laughter and the joy in language! For their help, thanks to Tony Power at the Contemporary Literature Collection, SFU Special Collections; to Monroe Lawrence; to Jean Baird; and to Roy Miki and his extraordinary tribute to Bowering’s books—A Record of Writing (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1989)—invaluable to the process of editing this issue. —Jenny Penberthy & Aurelea Mahood 5 George among books in his study at 2499 West 37th Ave., c. 1981. Photo credit: Paul Little for SFU Colin Browne / George Bowering: The First Fifty The following conversation took place in Vancouver in the kitchen of Jean Baird and George Bowering on the afternoon of Saturday, August 16, 2014. Prior to turning on the recorder, I asked George, given the theme of this special issue of The Capilano Review, to consider building a library from scratch. With this undertaking in mind, what would be the first fifty books, and why would we make this library? George Bowering: Oh, in the hope that archaeologists far in the future will dig it up and say, “Oh! This is what they had before they imprinted things in our foreheads!” No. I guess I’ve always been fascinated with libraries. I built one in my house and then got rid of it and then built another one. When I was a kid every time I read a book I’d give it away. I’m now starting to do that again except with very certain authors, like you, for instance. [Laughter] But I always did that up until I was 22, or something like that, which meant several hundred books I just gave away—magazines and books—and whatever I read I would give it away when I was finished with it. Except for sports magazines which I kept and still have. Colin Browne: Was that because you didn’t have a place to keep them? GB: I think I had a sense that I would try to get through life with nothing but a briefcase. This was when I was thirteen. I didn’t want to have things. I was never going to smoke, I was never going to drink, and I was never going to have things. It was partly because I was like a personal, private Jesus freak, and He didn’t have anything, right? I thought, “That’s really cool,” because it’s the opposite of what most people are urged to do—get a car, get a house, etc. Nobody had to teach me to be different from everybody else. There is a copy of Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days on the table between us. CB: I see we have a copy of Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days.