Writing the Okanagan
George Bowering was born in Penticton, where his great-grandfather Willis Brinson lived, and Bowering has never been all that far from the Okanagan Valley in his heart and imagination. Early in the twenty-first century, he was made a permanent citizen of Oliver. Bowering has family up and down the Valley, and he goes there as often as he can. He has been asked during his many visits to Okanagan bookstores over the years to publish a collection of his writing about the Valley.

Writing the Okanagan draws on forty books Bowering has published since 1960 – poetry, fiction, history, and some forms he may have invented. Selections from Delsing (1961) and Sticks & Stones (1962) are here, as is “Driving to Kelowna” from The Silver Wire (1966). Other Okanagan towns, among them Rock Creek, Peachland, Vernon, Kamloops, Princeton, and Osoyoos, inspire selections from work published through the 1970s and on to 2013. Fairview, the old mining site near Oliver, is the focus of an excerpt from Caprice (1987, 2010), one volume in Bowering’s trilogy of historical novels. “Desert Elm” takes as its two main subjects the Okanagan Valley and his father, who, as Bowering did, grew up there. With the addition of some previously unpublished works, the reader will find the wonder of the Okanagan here, in both prose and poetry.

"1121490064"
Writing the Okanagan
George Bowering was born in Penticton, where his great-grandfather Willis Brinson lived, and Bowering has never been all that far from the Okanagan Valley in his heart and imagination. Early in the twenty-first century, he was made a permanent citizen of Oliver. Bowering has family up and down the Valley, and he goes there as often as he can. He has been asked during his many visits to Okanagan bookstores over the years to publish a collection of his writing about the Valley.

Writing the Okanagan draws on forty books Bowering has published since 1960 – poetry, fiction, history, and some forms he may have invented. Selections from Delsing (1961) and Sticks & Stones (1962) are here, as is “Driving to Kelowna” from The Silver Wire (1966). Other Okanagan towns, among them Rock Creek, Peachland, Vernon, Kamloops, Princeton, and Osoyoos, inspire selections from work published through the 1970s and on to 2013. Fairview, the old mining site near Oliver, is the focus of an excerpt from Caprice (1987, 2010), one volume in Bowering’s trilogy of historical novels. “Desert Elm” takes as its two main subjects the Okanagan Valley and his father, who, as Bowering did, grew up there. With the addition of some previously unpublished works, the reader will find the wonder of the Okanagan here, in both prose and poetry.

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Writing the Okanagan

Writing the Okanagan

by George Bowering
Writing the Okanagan

Writing the Okanagan

by George Bowering

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$24.95 
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Overview

George Bowering was born in Penticton, where his great-grandfather Willis Brinson lived, and Bowering has never been all that far from the Okanagan Valley in his heart and imagination. Early in the twenty-first century, he was made a permanent citizen of Oliver. Bowering has family up and down the Valley, and he goes there as often as he can. He has been asked during his many visits to Okanagan bookstores over the years to publish a collection of his writing about the Valley.

Writing the Okanagan draws on forty books Bowering has published since 1960 – poetry, fiction, history, and some forms he may have invented. Selections from Delsing (1961) and Sticks & Stones (1962) are here, as is “Driving to Kelowna” from The Silver Wire (1966). Other Okanagan towns, among them Rock Creek, Peachland, Vernon, Kamloops, Princeton, and Osoyoos, inspire selections from work published through the 1970s and on to 2013. Fairview, the old mining site near Oliver, is the focus of an excerpt from Caprice (1987, 2010), one volume in Bowering’s trilogy of historical novels. “Desert Elm” takes as its two main subjects the Okanagan Valley and his father, who, as Bowering did, grew up there. With the addition of some previously unpublished works, the reader will find the wonder of the Okanagan here, in both prose and poetry.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780889229419
Publisher: Talonbooks, Limited
Publication date: 11/03/2015
Pages: 320
Product dimensions: 8.80(w) x 11.70(h) x 0.50(d)

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 also 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.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Delsing (1961)

Sticks & Stones (1962)
Radio Jazz

The Valley (1963)
Okanagan Storm
Locus Solus
Locus Primus
Patrol

Points on the Grid (1964)
Meta Morphosis

The Man in the Yellow Boots (1965)
Recharge

The Silver Wire (1966)
Driving to Kelowna

Baseball (1967)
2nd Inning

The Gangs of Kosmos (1967)
I Don’t

Autobiology (1972)
The Raspberries
Some Deaths
Growing
Working and Wearing
The Lake
The First Two Towns
The Fourth Town
The Pool
The Joints

Flycatcher (1974)
Flycatcher
Time and Again
Apples

The Catch (1976)
Desert Elm II
Desert Elm V
Desert Elm VII
Desert Elm IX
Desert Elm X
Reconsiderations II

Protective Footwear (1978)
Re Union

West Window (1982)
Trucking Peaches

Smoking Mirror (1982)
Calm After
The Smooth Loper
At Fairview, Burnt to the Earth

A Way With Words (1982)
The Memory of Red Lane

A Place to Die (1983)
A Short Story

Caprice (1987)

Urban Snow (1991)
Grizzle Boy
Oliver Community Park 1948

The Rain Barrel (1994)
The Rain Barrel,
Blithe Trees
Rhode Island Red
The Creature

Shoot! (1994)

Bowering’s B.C. (1996)
Rock Creek
En’owkin

Blonds on Bikes (1997)
Fall Bird

His Life, a Poem (2000)
Winter 1958
Winter 1963
Spring 1971
Winter 1978
Fall 1983

A Magpie Life (2001)
Ewart Bowering
Deking Dad
Poems for Men
Parashoot!

Cars (2002)

Standing on Richards (2004)
The Outhouse

Left Hook (2005)
The Autobiographings of Mourning Dove

Vermeer’s Light (2006)
Unlikely Childhood Transculturation

Crows in the Wind (2006)
I Watched My Father

Baseball Love (2006)
Growing up in Baseball

Eggs in There (2007)
I remember going to church
I remember being in the back seat

Valley (2008)

The Box (2009)
An Experimental Story

Horizontal Surfaces (2010)
Lawrence

The Diamond Alphabet (2011)
Babe
Donkeys
Okanagan

Words, Words, Words (2012)
The Family Son

Pinboy (2012)

Teeth (2013)
Tie

Six Events to Make a Poet (2015)
The Giant Snowball
Someone’s Horse
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