Tom Wayman

Tom Wayman Poems

Tom Wayman Biography

Thomas Ethan Wayman (born 13 August 1945) is a Canadian author. Born in Hawkesbury, Ontario, Wayman has lived most of his life in British Columbia. He studied at the University of British Columbia (BA 1966), and the University of California, Irvine (MFA 1968), and has been employed at a number of blue-collar and white-collar jobs in Canada and the U.S., although mainly he taught at the postsecondary level. Much of his academic career was spent in the B.C. community college system. As well, he is a co-founder of two alternative B.C. post-secondary creative writing schools: the Vancouver centre of the Kootenay School of Writing (1984-87) and the writing department of Nelson, B.C.'s Kootenay School of the Arts (1991-2002). He holds Associate Professor Emeritus of English status from the University of Calgary, where he taught 2002-2010. In 2007 he was the Fulbright Visiting Chair in creative writing at Arizona State University, and has also taught at Colorado State University and Wayne State University. He has been writer-in-residence at the University of Windsor, University of Alberta, Simon Fraser University, University of Winnipeg and University of Toronto. For decades, Wayman has had a particular interest in people writing about their own workplace experiences, including how their jobs affect their lives off work. Besides editing a number of anthologies of work poems, and publishing critical essays on the various dimensions of work-based literature, he was a co-founder of the Vancouver Industrial Writers' Union (1979-1993), a work-writing circle, and has participated in a number of labor arts ventures. In 2015 Wayman was named by the Vancouver Public Library a Vancouver Literary Landmark, with a plaque on the city's Commercial Drive commemorating his contribution to Vancouver's literary heritage based on his championing of work writing in the 1970s and 1980s. He is a director of the Calgary Spoken Word Festival Society (board president 2003-2012), and of Nelson's Kootenay Literary Society (secretary since 2011), where he serves on the education committee and the Elephant Mountain Literary Festival organizing committee. Since 1989 Wayman has been the Squire of "Appledore," his estate in the Selkirk Mountains of southeastern B.C.)

The Best Poem Of Tom Wayman

Routines

After a while the body doesn't want to work.
When the alarm clock rings in the morning
the body refuses to get up. 'You go to work if you're so
keen,'
it says. 'Me, I'm going back to sleep.'
I have to nudge it in the ribs to get it out of bed.
If I had my way I'd just leave you here, I tell it
as it stands blinking. But I need you to carry your end of
the load.

I take the body into the bathroom
intending to start the day as usual with a healthy dump.
But the body refuses to perform.
Come on, come on, I say between my teeth.
Produce, damn you. It's getting late.
'Listen, this is all your idea,' the body says.
'If you want some turds so badly you provide 'em.
I'd just as soon be back in bed.'
I give up, flush, wash and go make breakfast.
Pretty soon I'm at work. All goes smoothly enough
until the first break. I open my lunchpail
and start to munch on some cookies and milk.
'Cut that out,' the body says, burping loudly.
'It's only a couple of hours since breakfast.
And two hours from this will be lunch, and two hours after
that
will be the afternoon break. I'm not a machine
you can force-feed every two hours.
And it was the same yesterday, too....'
I hurriedly stuff an apple in its mouth to shut it up.

By four o'clock the body is tired
and even more surly. It will hardly speak to me
as I drive home. I bathe it, let it lounge around.
After supper it regains some of its good spirits.
But as soon as I get ready for bed it starts to make trouble.
Look, I tell it, I've explained this over and over.
I know it's only ten o'clock but we have to be up in eight
hours.
If you don't get enough rest, you'll be dragging around all
day
tomorrow again, cranky and irritable.
'I don't care,' the body says. 'It's too early.
When do I get to have any fun? If you want to sleep
go right ahead. I'm going to lie here wide awake
until I feel good and ready to pass out.'

It is hours before I manage to convince it to fall asleep.
And only a few hours after that the alarm clock sounds again.
'Must be for you,' the body murmurs. 'You answer it.'
The body rolls over. Furious, and without saying a word,
I grab one of its feet and begin to yank it toward the edge
of
the bed.

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