George Bowering Photo ©Endre Farkas

I lived in Montreal from 1967 till 1971. Those were the peak years of what we have come to remember as the Sixties. In Montreal one felt a little out of it. The French-speaking artists and bohemians had their own nationalistic preoccupations, and some of those were interesting for the little English-speaking enclave, but mainly the writing and music scenes were elsewhere, San Francisco, Vancouver, New York. Still and all, stuff did happen for me in that backwater. When I arrived in town there was a jazz place called The Barrel, where I would hear the Ayler brothers, but it soon closed. Here is the lineup for the poetry-reading series I helped schedule at Sir George Williams University for the 1969-1970 school year: Jerome Rothenberg, Bill Bissett, Allen Ginsberg, Stan Persky, Diane Wakoski, Frank Davey, Ron Loewensohn, Robert Hogg, Al Purdy and Joel Oppenheimer. One day in 1969 I went to talk with John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their bed-in for peace.

But still my attentions were elsewhere. I was covering the bed-in, for example, for the Georgia Strait, the Vancouver weekly for whom I was the Montreal correspondent. I wrote about five letters a day. I put together my poetry magazine Imago and sent it into the real world. I knew several Montreal poets, but the only ones that were in my world were a couple youngsters in my classroom. I read a lot of Gertrude Stein.         

And like a lot of her faithful readers, I imitated her. But only for a project, only for the series of 48 items that would become the book Autobiology. Were these imitations? Would I have the nerve to call them “variations”? Robert Duncan liked the term “derivations.” I remember when, in conversation he met the objections of reviewers who put down a poet’s work for being “derivative.” There is, of course, nothing shameful about being derivative. Shelley derived from Bion. Pound derived from Dante. Those reviewers, who seem not to have laboured much in the work of poetry, are always calling for originality. Speak to me or originality and I will turn on you in rage, said William Butler Yeats.

         

Yeats got his metaphors from creatures in his wife’s dreams, of course, but he knew that he was one of many coworkers in the great task of poetry. The language he was working with was far larger, older and wiser than he would ever hope to be, and so was the great work. I remember asking the woman who was teaching my child “creative writing” rather than composition why she was doing that, and the woman told me it was so that my child could “express herself.” My child was lucky that there were James Joyce books in the house, H.D. books and Robert Duncan books. If my child wanted ever to be a writer, she had better not be satisfied to express herself, I thought. She could learn a lot by trying to imitate the writing of H.D., let’s say.

         

In 1953 Robert Duncan wrote a “composition book” entitled Writing Writing and described as “Stein Imitations.” When the book was published by Fred and Pauline Wah’s Sumbooks in 1964, the title appeared on the cover in Duncan’s handwriting, with the title in cursive, with no space between words—“writingwriting.” On the dedication page he wrote that he “labord to write in [Gertrude Stein’s] mode,” and referred to “these pieces of writing-like-Stein.” This text would form part of Duncan’s 1968 book Derivations.

         

Naturally. If a writer works all her life to find a way of writing, and succeeds in making a Finnegans Wake or a Helen in Egypt, why should we followers be advised to avoid using what she has given us? Who asks present-day physicists to ignore the work of Niels Bohr? If you are a young poet who is not afraid of work, and you spend hours and hours writing poems like those of Susan Howe, let’s say, I can guarantee that eventually we will be able to see you doing something that derives from Howe but gets somewhere else. Composers are always writing derivations, from folk music and dances, from foreign music, or from specific composers. And the language itself? The English language is a giant derivation machine. Etymology is our greatest source of metaphors.

         

It’s not hard to figure out which writers I have derived from over the years. They include William Carlos Williams, Jerome Charyn, William Eastlake and H.D. In early summer of 1970 I decided to do a little book of Stein Imitations. The subject would turn out to be, as the title should suggest, things that have happened to me physically and had their effects mentally. The writing would start in a notebook I got myself for our trip to England. It would be my second visit there, and Angela’s first. Luckily for us, her old school friend Heather was living in London NW 12 with her Ulsterite husband Alan.

         

On June 12, 1970, I sat down in Heather’s little kitchen and wrote by hand the first of the 48 sections, and called it “The Raspberries,” a recollection of the childhood incident that made it impossible for me to eat fresh raspberries for the next two decades of my life. “When I was thirty I had free raspberries in the back yard and I loved them,” went the first sentence.

         

That was to be the only section I wrote on that trip. I often have a time trying to get past the first page of a book. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I had to destroy the first page of a long poem I started on the first day of a poetry tour begun in Texas. The beginning of my novel Burning Water appeared in a magazine, never to show up again. I lost the first page of another text on a northbound train. In the summer of 1970 we saw quite a bit of London and Dublin, but after a few days I gave up and packed the notebook away. In the fall, back in Montreal, I picked it up again, and wrote the second bit, starting “Sometimes they are called see-saws, but that is in a schoolbook or back east, & we always called them teeter-totters.” So it went, even though I was at the time back east. My poetry boyhood was way out west.

         

All winter I worked on this book, aware under my skin that this would be one of the turning points in my life’s work. In the spring we drove to Vancouver, to settle into an urban commune in Kitsilano, where the hippy youth were starting to grow up. On June 12, 1971, exactly a year after starting, I wrote the last sentence of the book: “What is the boat.”

         

As a production it is no more fancy or finished than Duncan’s Writing Writing. In those heady days a lot of people I knew, including most of the people in our commune, were involved with the aforementioned Georgia Straight. Lately, partly due to the energy and connections of housemate Stan Persky, the paper had been running a literary supplement. Stan edited one that featured the work of Ed Dorn, one of the many US and other foreign poets who had been spending time in Vancouver. I edited the special issue on Ontario, featuring work by bpNichol, Victor Coleman, Greg Curnoe and David McFadden.

         

The next step was to produce poetry books that anyone on Unemployment Insurance could afford. The first few were simply letter-size affairs with stapled covers. I edited the one by David Cull. Then we progressed to a smaller format, something that looked more like a real book, with an actual spine, but still featuring mimeographed pages and photographic covers. The front cover of mine showed me as a tot sitting with my young mother Pearl; the back cover showed me holding my baby daughter Thea.  Autobiology was Georgia Straight Writing Supplement Vancouver Series #7. VWS, it said on the spine. Over the years the press’s name would change, until the new century’s very nicely printed New Star Books.

         

In the early years of the 1970s I was doing a lot of readings, and it was really fun reading from this text. Others liked it, too. Gladys (Maria) Hindmarch, among others, used it as a text in her Capilano College classes. I told her that the students might say, “If he can get me to pay for a book with writing like this, it’s got to be easy to be a writer.”

         

Autobiology, like my daughter, was conceived in Montreal and brought to light in Vancouver. It was indeed a kind of turning point for me, and the model for some books to come, books that would derive from it and step into something else. The next book would have 48 sections too, and it would rub against Gertrude Stein, too, as it numbered the persons I got stuff from in my writing world.

 

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     from Au tobiol ogy

 

CHAPTER 1: THE RASPBERRIES

 

   When I was thirty I had free raspberries in

the back yard & I loved them. In the back yard &

I ate them. & I ate them in the kitchen, out of

an aluminum pot. When I was thirty I loved rasp-

­berries, I loved to eat them. I loved the way

they were made of many pieces in my mouth, & they

came from the outside of the bush & the inside.

They came from the outside in the sunshine & from

the inside in the darkness, & that is where they

went again. But inside in the darkness is where

we are told the subconscious is & that is why I

could not eat raspberries. I could not eat rasp-

berries when I was three years old when we had

free raspberries in the front yard. In Peachland,

where the free raspberries grow, & they grew out

side in the sunshine where I could reach them

when I was three & a half I could reach one & I

ate it & I thought there was a bug on it. But I

ate it too fast to know for certain. Years later

I saw a face at a girl's window & I thought it

was a man named Russell, but I went away too

soon & so I never knew. I never knew whether I

ate a bug on a raspberry. I had never eaten a

bug before so I didnt know what they taste like.

I could not eat raspberries for years after that

day in our front yard when I was over three years old,

even though the raspberries always look so

good with all their round pieces in a cone or

bunch. But there is a hole inside the raspberry

& it could always have a bug in it.

 

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CHAPTER 5: THE BRUSH FIRE

 

   I conceived my love for nature when I burned

the hillside & this I did before I began school.

The name of the town was Greenwood & when I re-

­turned a few years later the hill was green. I

feared a spanking when I came home but received

none & then I conceived my love for my parents.

 

   The hillside burned, it burned faster than

I could walk to step on the fire. Every step was

on the blackened earth I was learning to love. I

conceived my love for nature when I saw it burn­-

ing faster than the men could get shovels into the

earth.

 

   The name of the town was Greenwood & the war

was on, where cities burned in their cement. What

held the hill together beneath the flames I did

not know but I learned love for it & saw those

men joined to the hill & my shame. That I could

cause such peril while there was a war on.

 

   I ran home & waited for the punishing hand

while God allowed fire in the cities across the

sea. It never came & when I went back a few years

later the hill was covered with green wood while

the nearby hills were brown & the war was over,

& I loved it.

 

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CHAPTER 9: SOME DEATHS

 

   My cousin Russell died the night before &

I stayed on the lawn & said I didnt want his

saxophone. It was a death without sex because

he was twenty & I was twelve & we lived twenty-

seven miles apart. In Penticton he played the

saxophone & in Oliver I dreamed of playing the

drums & that dream was dead & the duet was dead

as well & after that I played alone but not the

drums. They offered me the saxophone but I stayed

by myself on the lawn.

 

   My Aunt Dorothy died when I was a baby so

I saw her but mainly in the photograph. She died

of TB where she workt against death as a nurse.

She workt against TB & she died & I never saw

her photograph after I passt the age when she

died & I had my chest photographt to see whether

I had TB.

 

   My grandmother Clara died at Easter & my

grandfather Jabez walkt on his crutches around

the living room saying "Mother" as if she would

not be resurrected. He said it as if she were

his mother, & he an old man. He said it as if

she would not be resurrected & he a former min-

­ister of God. It was Easter & the food she had

cookt for the family lay where she left it &

began to undergo the changes brought by death.

Perhaps it was thrown away & perhaps the family

ate it all.

 

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CHAPTER 10: THE SUBSTANCE

 

   Inside the substance were the orange cheez-

­ies in the beaks of the mother duck & her duck-

­lings swimming on the smooth pond. Inside the

cheezies were the knobby knees of the gull stand-

­ing in the still air on a round rock. Inside the

rock was a rusty nail driven into a tree in the

park. Hung on the nail was an inchworm hanging

on the end of an unseen thread & the inchworm

hung in front of my face in the sudden sunlight

above a tap giving clear water that glistened

in the sunlight. In the water was a flat fish

glimmering all its colours on a flat rock drying

in the continuous sunlight. Inside the fish was

a thick tree trunk with a swirl of growth that

told of its age begun before white men came to

the coast. Inside the tree trunk was a white ice

cream cone of soft ice cream that retained its

conical shape going down my throat till the em-

­pty cone was left & became a part of the forest.

Inside the empty cone was a high orange bridge

that waved its narrow end back & forth as we

walkt beneath its thick end on the edge of the

rocky cliff Across the bridge was a range of

blue mountains I would never ascend high as I

was here in the middle of the park.

 

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CHAPTER 14: COMPOSITION

 

   Consciousness is how it is composed. Con-

­sciousness is how it is composed. I told the

Jungian professor there is no such thing as the

subconscious, I decided to appear at his window

where the blackness was & shout there is no sub

­conscious. Consciousness is how it is composed.

We cant go asleep I said & find out what we are

thinking because then we are asleep. Or are

we asleep. Consciousness is how it is composed. We

are sometimes composed when we are awake. I think

we are always being composed when we are awake &

consciousness is how it is composed & we are it

too because we are nobody's dream. When we dream

we are awake. It is composed & not by us because

we are in the composition. I say consciousness

is how it is composed. Consciousness is how it

is composed, & that is how we are conscious so

we were never asleep composing. I wanted to ap-

­pear at his window before he fell asleep & tell

him I was no dream. I may be romantic but I am

no dream. That is simply the way I am composed.

I am composed by him & composed by me & they are

different but they are not dreams they are con-

­sciousness. That is how they are different & that

is composition.

 

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CHAPTER 17: THE CODE

 

   I crackt the Captain Marvel code without

paying to join the club & that has something to

do with it. It is having something to be doing

with it. Not necessarily to be being more clever

than XZKGZRM NZIEVO but more than the ones who

are joining & paying & not thinking about the

importance of the & a. It is not so much com-

­posing as the imposing & breaking the code to

break the imposing. The letters are imposters

easily broken & composing is not there it is

going.

 

   To be there but we are here, on this side

of the page begging to be seen breaking. The code

broken is no breaking of the law it is the dis‑

covering of the law. The law is covered by a code

begging to be crackt. Moses & the making of Cap-

­tain Marvel that big red cheese both to be broken

on the alphabet doubled on itself I was still

mosaic when I broke the puzzle & put it together

with the help of the & a.

 

   The code is broken article by article & that

is the gradual making of the making of the law.

That is the marvel to be seeing what they who are

joining & paying are not seeing that is the mak-

­ing of the law uncovered.

 

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CHAPTER 28: ROGER FALLING

 

He had only recently learned to walk but

he was falling on his head just outside the back

porch where the kitten was choked that was not

there now neither kitten nor back porch. The

porch was ript away & there were planks making

a ramp & beside them an excavation with concrete

walls & the bottom covered with round boulders

because Lawrence or Oliver is in the path of an

old late ice age glacier. He was falling or

pusht by a deliveryman into the excavation this

was my little brother Roger nine years younger

than I was he was falling head first into the

path of the glacier on his head nine feet down

on a boulder. My brother, I had first heard of

him outside the back porch doing my back yard

duties, how do you like having a little brother

my father said. It wasnt guilt till I thought

they might think it guilt I watcht it but not

Ike the cat I went, it was just slow or panic,

into the kitchen hollering Roger's in the ex-

­cavation & my sister tried to pick him up &

carry him up & out. How do you like having a

little brother, he could just barely walk &

now he slept in the dark room near the elm trees

with me with a steel clamp in his skull with

a plaster bandage around his head, how do you

like your new hat, we called it Roger's new hat

but that night he was asleep & I prayed in the

room that God would let him live & let his skull

be all right. I dont remember him falling. All

right.

 

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CHAPTER 30: THIRD TOWN

 

   From Peach land to Green wood to Greenwood

where I learned love & burned the hillside & it

was green & far past the hill because I was lit‑

tle though didnt realize it was Deadwood, a

place I never visited with real eyes. I had real

eyes in Greenwood where there was white snow.

White white white, white snow. White snow. I

learned to run down the hill on my sleigh over

seedlings poking their way green above the white

snow & my green blade before me would slay the

shoots & my blood was red on the white snow. The

blood of the white chickens was red on the white

snow & red on the white chickens. The blood of

my dog Caesar the second was red on the white

dog. The deer hung by his feet & his blood was

red between the hairs on his side. My mother

spoke often of a side of beef. Bad words flow

from bad blood. We spoke of the Japanese who

had twins & sacrificed one of them on a stone

cairn that came from the bloody picture in my

family's Bible. The Japanese wore black clothes

in the white snow. It was war time & we had

blackouts & the moon shone on the white snow.

The pickets of the fence were from the grave-

­yard. But the Japanese burned their bodies &

melted a circle in the white snow. White white

white white, white. The egg on the bench began

white & weeks later it was dark & that chicken

never scratcht in the white snow.

 

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CHAPTER 34: THE ACTS

 

   Things. Events & things. I have found this

out about events & things. I have found this out

that events & things cannot act upon. You can

not be acted upon by events & things & you could

not in the past. Each time thereafter you are

only by memory & the gift of the present not the

same, a little. You are not the same & that is

actual. It is not factual, & it is not real. It

is actual. There are events & there are things

but they are not actual until you are there to

act. You are an actor & they are not & they may

not act upon you. Agir, agir, that is the verb

of the person & not the event or the thing. You

are an event & a thing living as a person when

you act upon. Existentialism is a conspiracy of

the mind tempted by discourse & its electrical

child the radio. The radio can not turn you off

& on. Agir is not a verb of the radio. You can

not be acted upon by the radio or by events on

the radio. You can arrive, lift it, & act & act

upon. You are a thing or an event until you act

but that is not true or actual, it may be real

but it is not actual. Man is: he does. The thing

does not do, it is. Done to. Done to is not

event, it is act. Man is not except as he does.

Before that he is only real & that is not enough.

The baby acts before he knows about real, before

he steps into the river that is a thing during

an event, acted upon.

 

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CHAPTER 48: THE BODY

 

   The body is not muddy it is hardly muddy

it is muscles yes it is still muscles with less

hair at the knee & calf where it has worn pants.

The body is not muddy it has worn places espec-

i­ally the knee & calf where the hair was & is al-

­most gone & there is no hair where the scars

are. There are also parts where the eye can ne-

v­er see & they are not worn by the eye behind

glass & they are worn nevertheless. I am some­

times weary of having worn the body for so long

but I will not say that, goodbye to all that,

so long. So long hair it has been so long, it

has never been so long but it is worn. It was

sweet & sometimes cold. The body is not now nor

has ever been muddy, that is clear. I am in the

middle of a stream & my body is the stream &

what is the boat. The body is not muddy it is

mostly water & so was my mother, she was the

first stream the primal stream I floated out on

to the land I landed on making a bit of mud with

my water. There are parts the eye can not see

because they are in the past they tell us has

done just that, what a view of the stream. If

this is the stream & I am still to float what

is the boat. What is the boat.

 

June 1970-June 1971

 

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George Bowering is a veteran poet and novelist who lives on the west coast. His most recent book of fiction was the story collection The Box, from New Star in 2009. In Spring 2010 Talonbooks published his long long poetry book My Darling Nellie Grey. He lived in Montreal 1967-1971.

 

George Bowering, M.A.

Acclaimed for his modesty.