Nigel Beale and Tim Bowling in Conversation on Book Collecting, and Bowlings new Book In the Suicides Library
Twice shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Poetry, Tim Bowling has won the Canadian Authors' Association Award for Poetry and two Alberta Book Awards. Nigel Beale met the author in Ottawa to talk about his new book In the Suicide's Library. Topics covered include book collecting, coincidence, suicide, the spirit, passion and harmony of books, the use of hands, the line between bibliophiles and maniacs and the importance of physical books to the culture.
When the hustle and bustle of modern life, the responsibilities of marriage and parenting, and the weight of middle-age get Tim Bowling down, he heads for a bookshelf in search of the solace books and reading can provide. Alone in the modern literature stacks of a university library, Bowling opens a tattered copy of Wallace Stevens’s poetry collection Ideas of Order and, on the front flyleaf, finds the elegant signature of Weldon Kees - an obscure American poet, painter, photographer, filmmaker and musician who apparently committed suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge in 1955. So begins Bowling’s quest into American literature and the world of book collecting, and finally he faces two questions: "What keeps you going?" - and, perhaps even more important: ”Is it ever acceptable to steal a book for your own collection?”
Twice shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, Tim Bowling has won the Canadian Authors’ Association Award for Poetry and two Alberta Book Awards. Nigel Beale met the author in Ottawa to talk about his new book In the Suicide’s Library. Topics covered include book collecting, coincidence, suicide, the spirit, passion and harmony of books, the use of hands, the line between bibliophiles and maniacs and the importance of physical books to the culture.
Twice shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, Tim Bowling has won the Canadian Authors’ Association Award for Poetry and two Alberta Book Awards. Nigel Beale met the author in Ottawa to talk about his new book In the Suicide’s Library. Topics covered include book collecting, coincidence, suicide, the spirit, passion and harmony of books, the use of hands, the line between bibliophiles and maniacs and the importance of physical books to the culture.
Listen to Nigel Beale’s interview on The Literary Tourist:
>>> Tim Bowling on Book Collecting, and his book In the Suicide’s Library