"In the course of a writing life that has spanned more than five decades and encompasses almost eighty books of fiction, poetry, history, and criticism he's written and another thirty that he's played an editorial role in, George Bowering has learned a thing or two about the craft. Writing and Reading features thirty recent essays, ranging from a single paragraph to 12,000 words, spanning the range of the author's curiosity, which includes collecting, difficulty, film, painting, photography, music, and Vancouver's poets from Apollinaire and Blaise Cendrars to the present day. Bowering writes perceptively about his encounters with texts, and writers, including David Bromige, Judith Fitzgerald, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Kroetsch, Michael Ondaatje, Joe Rosenblatt, and every book he read in 1967, Canada's centennial year. Running through Writing and Reading is the theme of reading -- and paying attention -- and its centrality to any writing practice."--.