The Order in Which We Do Things: The Poetry of Tom Wayman

by Tom Wayman, Owen Percy (Editor)

Tom Wayman’s poetry has been published around the world to great acclaim. Wayman is one of Canada’s most prolific and public poets, and his writing since the 1960s has been by turns angry, engaged, hopeful, tender, and hilarious. His voice and persona are his alone but simultaneously ours too. His recurring themes―work, mortality, love, lust, friendship, the natural world―make his work a poetry of human inevitabilities, a poetry that exults in the inevitability of seeing poetry in the everyday.

Wayman’s craft is poïesis (from the Ancient Greek “to make”)―making a change, making a difference, making a ruckus, making the most of our time. His working life has always been inextricable from his writing one; his poems offer an honest and candid consideration of the ideological underpinnings, practical realities, and subtle beauties of a life lived on job sites and picket lines, in union halls, classrooms, and book-stuffed offices, and on the page itself.

The Order in Which We Do Things is a collection of more than thirty of Wayman’s best poems, selected and introduced by Owen Percy. Percy’s introduction explores the genesis of Wayman’s print persona and contextualizes his politically engaged, conversational voice within the pantheon of its various publics. In his afterword, “Work and Silence,” Wayman reflects on his more than forty years in print as a work poet, and underlines poetry’s sustained power to engage readers, invite solidarity, and stoke the fires of critical resistance to the order in which we do things.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Tom Wayman has published nineteen poetry collections, edited six anthologies of poets writing about their employment, and published three collections of essays on labour arts. He has taught at the post-secondary level in the United States and Canada and co-founded the Vancouver Industrial Writers Union and the Vancouver Centre of the Kootenay School of Writing. Wayman has been the recipient of several significant literary awards over his career, most recently the 2013 Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry for his book Dirty Snow.

Reviews

[Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book carries an encouraging sentiment for all who have an interest in poetry. Wayman’s experience as a teacher of poetry shines through, as does his care for creating compelling work of his own. This combination makes the collection feel like a bit of a beautiful study of poetry — like maybe the underlyings of a manifesto for poetry. An enjoyable read and quite inspiring! My favs were: Garrison, Defective Parts of Speech: Official Errata, and Cup.

[Kari Burk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had no idea who Tom Wayman was but liked the look and feel of this book that was displayed on the new books shelf in our local library. His poems cover a wide range of subject matter that satisfied the wide range side of me. He can be quite the daredevil poet...for example " This Poem wants Gordon Shrum to Die" about a crappy company owner/employer not doing right by his employees. Myself, I worry about racking up bad karma in my life/ writing but thank goodness for Tom Wayman who moves confidently through constructing this ill wishing poem. Two other stand out poems, "Epithalamium for a Former Lover" is hilarious and, again, a kind of 'I don't give a shite, this poem must be written' piece of writing. I think my fave in the book was the poem 'Mt.Gimli Pashtun'. A pashtun is some kind of eastern Iranian mountain warrior and Mr.Gimli is a mountain peak in the Valhalla mountain range in the Kootenay's near where I live. Four pages of great forest, elements,seasons and mountain trekking description but also much more that the 'hiker' is experiencing. Just beautiful.