Poet George Bowering's home library comes to UBC, Kerouac and Hello Kitty included

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“These are the authors that I felt connected with or wanted to feel connected with,” said Bowering, who went to school at UBC and taught at Simon Fraser University for three decades. “I really liked various American authors, or various English authors, or even an Albanian author an awful lot, and read all their books. But they weren’t part of my posse, right? So they’re not in here.

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“You’re not going to find Ernest Hemingway in here, but you will find Ezra Pound, and you will find Gertrude Stein, and so forth.”

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It took a decade to put together the room, which is in a space formerly occupied by the Wallace and Madeleine Chung Collection, which moved to a new location. Kalsbeek said Atwood wrote a letter of support for the Bowering project, and also made a “substantial” financial contribution.

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The books and memorabilia are arranged in shelves along the wall, with vitrines or showcases filled with some of the key items.

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One showcase is filled with beat material, such as a weathered original 1953 Ace edition of William Lee’s Junkie. It looks like a standard vintage pulp paperback with a titillating cover, a nogoodnik guy manhandling a curvy blond.

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But the title “Junkie” and subtitle “Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict” hints it’s something else. In fact, William Lee was beat legend William S. Burroughs, writing under a pseudonym.

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Another showcase has Canadian material, including the January 1965 issue of TISH, a UBC student poetry newsletter co-founded by Bowering. It’s addressed to Jack Kerouac, Box 385, Northport, New York. But the address has been pencilled out, and replaced with Kerouac’s new address, 5155-10th Ave. N., St. Petersburg, Fla.

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It’s the kind of thing you would find in Bowering’s library. When asked if he’s a pack rat, he retorted: “Jean doesn’t say ‘pack rat,’ she says ‘archivist.’ ”

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Some of George Bowering’s books in a display of beat writers. Photo by Jason Payne /PNG

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He laughs and tells a story about how Baird took part of his collection of old T-shirts and turned them into comforters. She made him get rid of his collection of 1940s and ’50s baseball magazines, though.

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“I carried them in a great big box from city to city to city for years and years,” he said. “And then she told me that was silly.”

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Naturally this leads to an anecdote.

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“My first two poems I ever published in a national professional magazine, and got paid for, were two hockey magazines, Hockey Digest and Blueline,” he said.

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One was called the ABCs of the NHL, and featured Bowering’s mini-poems on NHL players in the ’50s.

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“A is for Armstrong George, the Big Chief. Obviously, A most valuable Leaf,” he wrote.

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“B is for Boom-Boom. Big noise at the Forum. If the Habs need six goals, Bernie will score ’em.”

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Clearly the man had a future.

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A Margaret Atwood cartoon of George Bowering in the George Bowering Modernists and Post-modernists Collection at the University of B.C.

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A copy of a TISH poetry newsletter addressed to Jack Kerouac, the famed beat writer. George Bowering was a co-founder of TISH, which was launched by a group of UBC student poets in 1961. The Kerouac TISH is now on display at the George Bowering Modernists and Post-modernists Collection at UBC. Photo: Matt Patton, UBC Library communications and marketing.

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A Hello Kitty Pex dispenser and a bpNichol piece flank books at a new reading room with George Bowering’s collection of books and memorabilia at UBC. Photo by Jason Payne /PNG

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Poet George Bowering loves baseball, hence there is lots of baseball memorabilia at the George Bowering reading room. Photo by Jason Payne /PNG

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George Bowering checks out the beat showcase. Photo by Jason Payne /PNG

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George Bowering. Photo by Jason Payne /PNG

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