Louise Morey Bowman

by George Dance

Louise Morey Bowman (January 17, 1882 - September 28, 1944) was a modernist Canadian poet.

Life
Louise Morey was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec. Her father was Chief Inspector of the Eastern Townships Bank. She was educated by tutors and then at Dana Hall in Wellsley, Massachusetts.

In 1909 she marrried Archibald Abercrombie Bowman, an electrical engineer, and the couple settled in Toronto.

Louise Morey Bowman's first book of poetry, Moonlight and Common Day, was published in 1922. It was reviewed positively in Poetry by Harriet Monroe, who applauded Bowman's "modern and individual imagination." A second book, Dream Tapestries, followed in 1924.

Morey also wrote fiction, and published stories in Chatelaine, the Canadian Mercury, and Best American Short Stories.

The Bowmans moved to Montreal in 1926. The city's mountain inspired her long poem,, "The Mountain that Watched."

In 1927, Poetry published Bowman's "Waxworks," a series of poems "inspired by jazz rhythms."

In 1937, she served as president of the Montreal branch of the Canadian Authors Association.

Her third book of poetry, Characters in Cadence, was published in 1938 "and almost completely ignored."

When Bowman died in Montreal in 1944, the Montreal Star praised her as "“one of the most authentic of the younger lyric poets of this Dominion,” and “a writer of rare sincerity, who possessed both vision and a keen sense of beauty.”

Writing
In her 200 volume Hidden Rooms: Early Canadian Women Poets, Wanda Campbell says of her: "Though now completely ignored, Bowman is intriguing not only for her subject matter, which touches on a variety of feminist subjects including representations of women in art, mythology, and modern society, but also for her technique, which ranges from the haiku to the long poem."

Recognition
Bowman was awarded Quebec's Prix David for her second book, 1924's Dream Tapestries.

Publications

 * Moonlight and Common Day. Toronto: Macmillan, 1922.
 * Dream Tapestries. Toronto: Macmillan, 1924.
 * Characters in Cadence. Toronto: Macmillan, 1938.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy Brock University.