George Bowering stands in front of his bookshelves circa the 1970s. (Photo by Sam Tata, courtesy UBC Library)

It was as a student at the University of British Columbia that CanLit legend George Bowering had a literary epiphany that would shape his writing career. 

He had decided to read all of the poetry in the library. He was working his way through the Ws when he got to Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems, the last book by American poet William Carlos Williams. 

Bowering dropped the book in astonishment. “I made a decision right there, that William Carlos Williams was going to be the centrepiece of my whole poetry writing career,” he says. He still remembers the sound the book made when it fell to the library floor. 

It is fitting, then, that Bowering, along with his partner Jean Baird and Katherine Kalsbeek, head of rare books and special collections at the UBC Library, is working on a project to recreate his creative work space as part of the library’s public spaces. The George Bowering Collection and Reading Room will include more than 6,500 books, as well as some of the art and knick-knacks that adorned the walls and sat on the bookshelves of his office, including a Hello Kitty Pez dispenser and a bird’s nest Bowering found while walking the Stations of the Cross at the church Beat writer Jack Kerouac attended as a youth. Portraits of Bowering, including one by Canadian painter Greg Curnoe, as well as photographs of him taken by Michael Ondaatje, are among the collection’s artworks.

The idea is to offer UBC students, faculty and staff, and the public the opportunity to find inspiration in the recreation of where Bowering – a prolific writer who has published more than 100 books and chapbooks – created so much. 

His books have been catalogued, and, with a space in the library earmarked for the room and a completed feasibility study for the work required to ready the space in hand, all that is missing is the funds to move ahead. 

Fundraising for the project’s $500,000 price tag has been underway since last year, but with a deadline at the end of December (after which time the feasibility study expires), the group is staring down a shortfall of $356,687. 

Margaret Atwood has pledged $50,000 and written a letter in support of the project, and Kalsbeek has been inspired by the enthusiasm of multiple individual donors who have also offered their moral support.

Kalsbeek first visited Baird and Bowering in 2015 to discuss ways to handle his book collection, and was struck by the items on the bookshelves, too, which reminded her of a space she had seen in the Free Library of Philadelphia that included a stuffed Edgar Allen Poe raven.

“We started to imagine what we could do with the book collection,” Kalsbeek says. “Without George being there, or Jean being there, or me being in that space, how could we introduce people to George and all of the various people he’s been exposed to, and learned from, and been inspired by through his writing life?”

“It’s not just the books,” Baird says. “It’s the stuff on the walls, it’s the art, it’s the doodads on the shelves, that illustrate how a writer creates. A space that illustrates the things that interested him.” 

Baird also runs the Al Purdy A-Frame Association, where she has “seen for decades the magic that happens when you take a writer and put them in a space that gives meaning, gives authenticity to the life of a poet, to the life of a writing career.

“This collection has the potential for this same sort of magic.”

Bowering, who promises to inhabit the room as a ghost after his death, turns 89 on Dec. 1. 

“If people in the literary community want to say happy birthday and support this by making a donation, boy what a birthday that would be,” Baird says.