Pete Trower
illustrations by Jack Wise

There Are Many Ways is a previously unpublished collaboration of poems and drawings by two of British Columbia’s finest artists, poet Peter Trower and visual artist, Jack Wise.

Peter Trower is a poet of enormous skill and resonance who writes across the spectrum of human experience –– from the street-life incantations of Hitting the Bricks, the poems about logging in Chainsaws in the Cathedral, to the lyrical love poems of A Ship Called Destiny. The late Jack Wise is among the most revered of B.C. artists. His mandala-like paintings and explorations of Eastern techniques have formed an impressive body of work that is both visionary and mystical, yet rooted in the world. In There Are Many Ways Jack Wise’s early surreal pen and ink compositions are a fascinating complement to the thundering lines of poet Peter Trower. Originally conceived by Wise and Trower as a successor to their earlier collaboration, Moving Through the Mystery, this volume contains many previously unpublished early poems as well as drawings by Jack Wise created especially for this series. Themes of landscape, love and memory come alive in the many epiphanies of There Are Many Ways, as Trower explores, along with Jack Wise’s accompanying drawings, the unifying nature of vision and myth rooted deep in the soil.

Peter Trower worked as a logger for twenty years and is the author of nine books of poetry and three novels. His collection of logging poems Chainsaws in the Cathedral: Collected Woods Poems was selected for the BC Millenium Book Award. In 2002 he was awarded the B.C. Gas Lifetime Achievement Award for his work. He lives in Gibson’s, B.C.

Jack Wise was born on April 27, 1928 in Iowa, but he has been associated, as an artist, with B.C. most of his artistic life. His work has been represented in most of the galleries of the world, including a major retrospective at the Greater Victoria Art Gallery. Jack Wise died at the age of 68 in November of 1996. He left an immense and impressive body of work that is rooted in his great spiritual education and understanding.