The (CanL)It Crowd: Tim Bowling
It’s easy to feel drained by the business of being a writer, to say nothing of the business of actually writing. By the “business of being a writer,” I mean all the things that are necessary to create and sustain interest around one’s work. The right-place-right-time-social-media-blog-writing-podcast-guesting-launch-and-festival-attending-and-participating-fomo-inducing-song-and-dance of it all.
It’s exhausting, even for someone like me, a pretty extroverted-introvert who, for the most, finds much to like about these activities and events. Edmonton author Tim Bowling is definitely not like me.
Recently, while I was conversing with Tim about publicity plans for his upcoming book, In the Capital City of Autumn—a gut-punchingly breathtaking collection of poetry due out this April with Wolsak & Wynn—Tim expressed a polite wariness about this business bustle.
Understandable.
Tim is the author of twenty-four works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He is the recipient of numerous honours, including two Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund Awards, five Alberta Book Awards, a Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal, two Writers’ Trust of Canada nominations, two Governor General’s Award nominations and a Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of his entire body of work. And that poetry collection that’s forthcoming in mere weeks? It comes on the heels of a novel, The Marvels of Youth, which came out last spring.
When it comes to the business of being a writer, it’s safe to say Tim’s seen some stuff. By now, he knows what he wants to do and what he doesn’t want to do. But he isn’t is hardened or unkind. In fact, within my first few email exchanges with Tim, I sensed immense tenderness. So, I did what I always do when confronted with this thrilling openness: I steamrolled on in and presumed to ask a potentially invasive question.
And we’re here now, so it’s probably no surprise what my question was about. I needed to know what this lovely, accomplished, exceptionally talented, and shy person had to say about being a part of the literary community.
In his answer, which you can read below, Tim touched on something important: something that keeps me feeling vital when I feel drained. Tim wrote of going back to why we fell in love with writing in the first place. For me, this ties back into reading, as a young child.
This tactic is, incidentally, also how I got sober seven years ago. I told myself I was going to believe in possibilities like I used to when I was younger.
Tapping into my younger self worked when it came to laying off the sauce, and it works now, when I become frustrated with the whole business of writing. Writing and reading are how I re-enchant myself with the world and all the people in it. They provide a bit of everyday magic.
So thank you to Tim for helping me—and I anticipate, many of us—remember this.
The incomparable Tim Bowling. (Photo credit: J. Baker)
The (CanL)It Crowd with Tim Bowling
Having lived primarily as a freelance writer for the past thirty years, I've begun to wonder if the concept of literary citizenship has become more important recently because opportunities for generating writing income have shrivelled dramatically while the number of people wanting to write and publish has increased at an even more dramatic rate. When I published my first book in 1995, few of my peers even knew about literary agents or MFA programs, prizes weren't quite so decisive in directing an author’s fate, and hardly anyone even thought of foreign rights or movie rights. Very different today, of course. But when I consider what has happened to the cost of living since 1995, and compare that with increases to the amount of money a writer can receive from various arts organizations (often there has been no increase at all to the annual maximum grant, or perhaps a very small one), and compare that with all of the graduates coming out of writing programs every year, and combine that with the complete absence of Canadian ownership at the financial top of the publishing pyramid and the consolidation of multiple major publishers into a huge conglomerate, and then toss in the theft of our intellectual property from the education sector and the AI companies, well, it's little wonder that writers have to huddle together for warmth and find support where they can.
But all of that, of course, doesn't really change much from the writing perspective. At least not for me. The desire to be a writer, way back in the mists of time, began out of a blend of wonder at the natural world (I grew up in a salmon fishing family on the Fraser River in the 70s) and loneliness within the human one. I'm still wonder-struck by the natural world and feel even lonelier within the human, yet I have had important writing mentors (mostly via handwritten letters, believe it or not) and close writing friends, and I still have a few.
However, I derive most comfort and inspiration, perhaps, from long-dead and sometimes obscure, largely forgotten authors. They help me to understand that the power of literature, or at least its measurable effect, is really beyond our control and our own lifetimes.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (not obscure or forgotten, but he died feeling like a failure) said that "we write the books we cannot find to read." I always wanted to write about the world of the Fraser River estuary because I simply couldn't find any other poetry or novels about it (the oral Indigenous culture, at that time certainly, was not available to me, and obviously I have no right to that tradition anyway). And I suppose, now, I carry on partly out of a sense of responsibility to my past in such a beautiful place, a place constantly under threat from human civilization. But it is increasingly lonely and futile-seeming work, despite the strong support I have had from smaller, Canadian-owned publishers, the generous and committed people who work for them, and my writing peers (of various ages).
On his post here, Gary Barwin mentions the need for writers to be mindful of their own self-care. Can this really mean putting an end to writing? Is a writer ever not a writer? As it's a way of thinking about the world, and of being in it, of living in close contact with the past and of dreaming, always dreaming, of writing your strongest work yet, I just don't think retirement is really an option for most writers (never mind the constant economic need to publish). So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly to the muddy banks of the mighty Fraser. Thanks, Scott (and I don't say that with any degree of irony – ok, maybe just a tad).
What a cover, right?! In the Captial City of Autumn is Tim’s most recent book. Grab it here.
More about In the Capital City of Autumn:
Tim Bowling is in top form in his latest collection of poetry, In the Capital City of Autumn. Threading through autumnal themes such as the loss of his mother and the demolition of his childhood home, his children growing and the inevitable passage of time, Bowling writes with rich lyricism and imagery. Sweet William and loosely woven woollen mitts for his mother, the moon as “an egg in the pocket of a running thief” for time, salmon for eternity. In the Capital City of Autumn, the characters of The Great Gatsby come to life, and three a.m. brings wisdom. These are masterful poems, lightened with a touch of whimsy, poems to sink into on a quiet evening.