Conducted by
Daniel Zomparelli


In the Summer of Bowering, Geist blog­ger and Poetry Is Dead mag­a­zine Editor-in-Chief Daniel Zomparelli reviewed George Bowering’s lat­est poetry col­lec­tion, My Darling Nellie Grey. The col­lec­tion is divided into twelve chap­ters, named for each month of the year, and Zomparelli reviewed one chap­ter a week all sum­mer long. To fin­ish the sum­mer off, George Bowering agreed to an interview.

One summer after­noon, I met with George Bowering for a quick cup of cof­fee. When I arrived, he was already sit­ting down, wear­ing an old Boston Red Sox hat and a motor­head t-shirt. We instantly got to talk­ing, and before I knew it, Mr. Bowering was mak­ing fun of me for not know­ing all of the cities in inte­rior BC. What ensued was a flash inter­view, prov­ing his age doesn’t slow him down.

Daniel Zomparelli: Word on the lit­er­ary street is that you’re a ter­ri­ble bowler. Is that true?

George Bowering: You’ve either been talk­ing to my wife or Charles Demers. Charles Demers may have had a bet­ter score than me, but I’m a bet­ter look­ing bowler. When I was up there I looked good. And I know how to bet on horses.

DZ: Your style changes in each chap­ter of My Darling Nellie Grey. It has also changed from book to book dur­ing your writ­ing career. Do you think you have styl­is­ti­cally changed over the years as a poet?

GB: I always say once you’ve done some­thing and it works then don’t do it any­more. In My Darling Nellie Grey some of the chap­ters are maybe exten­sions of what I’ve done before, but once I’m done with some­thing I move on. I admire painters who do that, who get a ser­ial going and do every­thing they can with it, then try some­thing dif­fer­ent. I always admired that. I always hated it when cre­ative writ­ing teach­ers said to find your voice. Worst horse shit I ever heard.

DZ: What are you work­ing on now?

GB: Jack Spicer says you should always work on one thing at a time, but I can never do that. Writing an essay/prose piece on D____ M________’s poetry. [He/She] doesn’t know that. I’m try­ing to destroy a long poem by a French guy you never heard of. Also work­ing on a short story and play. Nothing I can tell you about, but it has nudity, but the nudity has no redeem­ing quality.

DZ: Do you find it eas­ier to work here or back east?

GB: Makes no dif­fer­ence to me. I’m not one of those types that can carry a note­book around and write. Some poets like Allen Ginsberg would be able to write in cars, but I can’t. I never write in air­planes. The only way I could write in air­planes is to write about air­planes in air­planes. Now that’s a project.

Main ques­tion I ask myself before writ­ing is, “I won­der if I could get away with it?” Some writ­ers approach a topic with, “I won­der what it would be like to go there” but I fig­ure you could just go there. I’d rather not get into that.

DZ: You’re a big base­ball fan, so who’s your favourite base­ball team?

GB: Favourite team was the 1948 Red Sox. I love base­ball. Jean [George’s wife] and I go on base­ball trips all the time.

DZ: Where do you two go on base­ball trips?

GB: Went to Italy last year, went to see the Maui Warriors this year. We’ve dri­ven all over the states for base­ball games.

DZ: I was recently at a Canadians game and was learn­ing the art of heckling.

GB: George Stanley came up with the rule, “You can holler any­thing you want at a base­ball game.” So some­times we just yell adverbs or prepo­si­tions. I want to write more sto­ries and books about base­ball but I’m afraid I’ll be referred to as that guy who writes about baseball.

DZ: I highly doubt that.

GB: But it’s fun. And I should get to have a lit­tle fun at this age. I’m not going to write about hockey or the BC Liberal party!

(Jean enters and very cutely inter­rupts our talk.)

Jean Baird: Do you want to have some­one shadow you from the Vancouver Sun dur­ing the next Vancouver Canadians game?

GB: Sure, you coming?

JB: Ill come if you stop yelling at Douglas.

GB: He’s a great player but has a bad attitude.

(Jean gives George a stern look. She walks to the exit of the cof­fee shop.)

GB: You been work­ing hard? (yelling after Jean)

(Jean gives another stern look, doesn’t answer and walks away.)

GB: I used to like Gordon the best. But now I like the short­stop. He’s my favourite. Can’t remem­ber his name.

DZ: What advice would you have for young poets?

GB: If you fuck up, screw ‘em. Actually I was talk­ing to a 15 year old poet, and the father told me to give him advice, and I said “stop writ­ing poetry and go do some­thing sen­si­ble.” He’ll either stop writ­ing poetry, or con­tinue to write poetry and that’s that. Oh, also another piece of advice, read 100 books for every poem … and write a poem every day. Ha!

DZ: In your book My Darling Nellie Grey, did you edit the poems after­ward at all?

GB: Some yes, but mainly no, but the most edit­ing I did was for “Montenegro 1966.” That was because I was already work­ing off a text. That was my first trip to Europe and I took my type­writer with me, I wrote every day. About 16 to 17 hun­dred words of prose, two let­ters, and one page in my jour­nal. So I wound up with a travel book that I never pub­lished, but then along came this poem.

DZ: Was there any­thing else you wanted to be, besides a poet?

GB: There were two things I wanted to be, a pro­fes­sional ball player and a jazz sax­o­phone player. I blew my chance because when I was 14, my cousin died and he was a sax­o­phone player and his mother offered all of his instru­ments, but I was too upset. Now I wish I had taken her up on the offer. I could’a been a contender.

When I was a young guy at UBC, all us young poets played sax­o­phone, except me, I played the tuba.

(A friend of George’s walks by and waves.)

GB: That’s a friend of mine from Iran. He’s a poet. He was in jail when he was in Iran; now he’s try­ing to learn English and write poetry in English.

DZ: If all the poets in Vancouver were in jail, half of Vancouver would go missing.

GB: Closest I came to going to jail for poetry was at a read­ing with Al Purdy and Milton Acorn, in a lane in Toronto and it was bro­ken up by RCMP. I think it was around 1968; the read­ing was sup­posed to be in a shop but we couldn’t have it so we all moved to the lane. I was only in jail a cou­ple times, but it had noth­ing to do with poetry.


When we fin­ished the inter­view, we fist punched good­bye. The giant ring on his fin­ger hurt my knuck­les, and in an instant, he was gone.