Description
Tom Wayman has been writing and publishing the poetry of everyday life for over twenty years. This anniversary collection gathers the best of Wayman's published work from eleven previous volumes, along with some provocative new poems, in celebration of his commitment to honest, accessible writing with a sense of humour.
Although Wayman laments the disappearance of poetry as a popular art form, and its adoption as "an instument of torture" in educational institutions, "like a steadily-promoted deck officer on the Titanic" he has been having a darn good time as a writer. For years he has been considered the guru of the work poetry movement, and has held a number of blue-collar and white-collar jobs across Canada and the USA.
About the author
Excerpt: Did I Miss Anything?: Selected Poems 1973-1993 (by (author) Tom Wayman)
Unemployment
The chrome lid of the coffee pot
twists off, and the glass knob rinsed.
Lift out the assembly, dump
the grounds out. Wash the pot and
fill with water, put everything back with
fresh grounds and snap the top down.
Plug in again and wait.
Unemployment is also
a great snow deep around the house
choking the street, and the City.
Nothing moves. Newspaper photographs
show the traffic backed up for miles.
Going out to shovel the walk
I think how in a few days the sun will clear this.
No one will know I worked here.
This is like whatever I do.
How strange that so magnificent a thing as a body
with its twinges, its aches
should have all that chemistry, that bulk
the intricate electrical brain
subjected to something as tiny
as buying a postage stamp.
Or selling it.
Or waiting.
Wayman Ascending into the Middle Class
In the middle of a trans-Canada excursion
while he visits for a week with the parents of a friend
Wayman lies in a hammock through the hot August days.
Far behind him now are the horrible winter mornings
he got up in the dark and dragged his lunchbox off to work.
Here, as he sips a drink in the gently rocking couch
scarcely a thought crosses his mind about his old companions
still probably stumbling about complaining as they
hammer nails, steer tugboats
or chase logs through the bush a thousand miles away.
A light breeze springs up. Through half-closed eyes
Wayman contemplates flowers, and a leafy screen.
He begins to sway into sleep. The beer bottle
slips out of his languid grasp
and falls almost silently onto
the thick green lawn. Wayman sighs.
He feels himself float
in his hammock, and begin to drift upwards:
ascending, as he snores
into the middle class.
Other titles by
The Road to Appledore
Or How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place
How Can You Live Here?
Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back
Poems for a Dark Time
If You're Not Free at Work, Where Are You Free
Literature and Social Change
Helpless Angels
a book of music
The Shadows We Mistake for Love
Stories
The Order in Which We Do Things
The Poetry of Tom Wayman
Winter's Skin
Dirty Snow
