Posted: Thursday May 13, 2010

Interview with George Bowering, Canada's first Poet Laureate

1. What is your favourite career highlight as a writer? What would be your ideal career highlight for the future?

(a) Being the poet in residence at the University of Rome, 1985.
(b) Getting an honorary degree from the University of Victoria.

2. Were you ever discouraged from becoming a writer? How did you move beyond that?

Not that I remember.

3. What’s one commonly held belief about writing or a writer career that you’ve learned to be untrue?

That you have to drink a lot.

4. You can select one person from history and ask them a question to which they must give a truthful reply. Whom would you select, and what question would you ask?

George Washington.
Were you embarrassed to take the job after your losing record?

5. You can personally witness one event in history. What would you see?

Nelson Mandela getting out of prison.

6. What kind of discoveries do you make in your writing, if any, when you give a public reading?

Often I am surprised that listeners don’t get the joke.

7. Do you have a pet peeve regarding a particular usage/misusage of the English language? What is it?

I am annoyed when people say “I could care less,” when they mean that they don’t care. Also, I detest the use of “lay” when “lie” is called for.

8. Aside from writing, what are your other talents? What is one talent you wish you had?

I used to be a quick-handed shortstop. I wish that I could play jazz saxophone.

9. Besides taking this survey, what do you enjoy most about publishing with Talonbooks?

I like the editing seriousness of Mr. Siegler.

10. What do you love about Canadian literature?

I like reading a book that refers to a place where I have lived. It can be a foreign book, though.

11. What is one creative solution you use to overcome writer’s block?

I never have writer’s block. I find it hard to believe that a writer does not have more jobs than time.

12. What’s next for you?

I have started a text called How I Wrote Certain of my Books.