Read more
The poems collected in "The Face of Jack Munro" may be set on the Canadian Prairies, in the Kootenay region of southeastern BC, or in Vancouver during the 1983 Solidarity public sector general strike. But the humour, concern for the individual, and biting social commentary found throughout this collection are exactly what readers of Tom Wayman have learned to expect. "If we gave Wayman a chance to change the world, I think it would be safe in his hands. He came out of the radical sixties a radical, though I think it's more accurate and less type-casting to call him a man of common sense. The social consciousness, hatred of inequality, is the bones. So is the vision." -Stan Draglund, "Canadian Literature"
About the author
Tom Wayman was born in Ontario in 1945, but has spent most of his life in British Columbia. He has worked at a number of jobs, both blue and white-collar, across Canada and the U.S., and has helped bring into being a new movement of poetry in these countries--the incorporation of the actual conditions and effects of daily work. His poetry has been awarded the Canadian Authors' Association medal for poetry, the A.J.M. Smith Prize, first prize in the USA Bicentennial Poetry Awards competition, and the Acorn-Plantos Award; in 2003 he was shortlisted for the Governor-General's Literary Award. He has published more than a dozen collections of poems, six poetry anthologies, three collections of essays and three books of prose fiction. He has taught widely at the post-secondary level in Canada and the U.S., most recently (2002-2010) at the University of Calgary. Since 1989 he has been the Squire of "Appledore," his estate in the Selkirk Mountains of southeastern BC.
Summary
The poems collected in The Face of Jack Munro may be set on the Canadian Prairies, in the Kootenay region of southeastern BC, or in Vancouver during the 1983 Solidarity public sector general strike. But the humour, concern for the individual, and biting social commentary found throughout this collection are exactly what readers of Tom Wayman have learned to expect.
"If we gave Wayman a chance to change the world, I think it would be safe in his hands. He came out of the radical sixties a radical, though I think it's more accurate and less type-casting to call him a man of common sense. The social consciousness, hatred of inequality, is the bones. So is the vision."
-Stan Draglund, Canadian Literature
