Work, Words, and Wisdom: Tom Wayman on Poetry, Life, and the Kootenays

Welcome to NAUT FOR EVERYONE, hosted by the incomparable Sheri-D Wilson! In this thought-provoking episode, Sheri-D engages in a rich and entertaining conversation with Tom Wayman—iconic Canadian poet, storyteller, and chronicler of the working world.

🏔️ From his journey into rural life in the Kootenays to his reflections on creativity, humor, and daily work, Tom offers insights that resonate deeply. Together, Sheri-D and Tom explore:

• The authenticity of poetry and its role in navigating the human experience.
• The challenges and joys of moving from urban to rural life, as told in Tom’s memoir, The Road to Apple Door.
• Why memorizing poetry enriches the soul and fosters a deeper connection to language.
• Anecdotes about poetry readings, quirky government projects, and cultural moments in Canada.

This episode is a heartfelt and humorous exploration of creativity, resilience, and the transformative power of words.

✨ Don’t miss this engaging conversation with one of Canada’s most treasured literary figures!

🔗 Follow, subscribe, and share! Stay tuned for more fascinating guests and discussions that explore everything—and nothing.

#NautForEveryone #Podcast #TomWayman #SheriDWilson #Poetry #Creativity #Kootenays #WorkAndLife

Transcript

Sheri-D Wilson: 0:00

Two Today's guest is Tom Wayman. Tom Wayman is a great Canadian poet. He's an icon. He's a gem. He's been doing poetry both here and, you know, internationally since the 60s. He's one of these people that will guide you. If you read his books, if you read his books, you will find out so much. And also read about Apple door. He has this interesting place that he has created called Apple door, and it's really mystical, and it's really real. He has been Writer in Residence at University of Windsor, University of Alberta, Simon Fraser University, University of Winnipeg, University of Toronto. He's taught at U of C he's on many boards. He lives out in the Kootenays. He lives a beautiful life that he writes about and he writes about politics as well. His point of view is always interesting. He has 20 books of poetry. He has three books of short fiction, and he's in many anthologies. Check out his website. And today's guest, I'm honored to present Tom Wayman.

Tom Wayman: 1:24

You don't have an actual clapper. This is my

Sheri-D Wilson: 1:27

Clapper, and here we have Tom Wayman,

Tom Wayman: 1:38

there was a guy in the Courtney's I who had an interview show on on C on the co op radio, and he would make fun of my name, but his name is Jeff Pilsner, so as I kept pointing out to him, I'm not a good guy to if you have a name like Pilsner to make fun of what what's to make fun of? Well, I mean, playing with he's, you got to draw it out. Oh,

Sheri-D Wilson: 2:04

I was just doing it as a sound agit prop, because I remember, remember when, remember, of course, you remember when there was the we and no vote

Tom Wayman: 2:19

in Quebec. Oh, yes, yes. The

Sheri-D Wilson: 2:21

way, a no vote. And I was there right after that vote. And I guess the vote went different than the government thought it was going to go. It was much, and I was really high, and I was walking along the park along, and I was in Ottawa, and I was walking along, and everything was just so beautiful. And then I suddenly heard Margaret Atwood, and I was like, what's going on? What's going on, what is going on. And I started walking up the parliament and they had Margaret Atwood's face projected on the front of the parliament buildings, and it went like this, right up the pillar, and then, and then they had like Thompson highway, and Thompson's face was going all over the and it was huge, like a 3d projection. So now Wait, why? Why? I don't know. Okay, I never really understood it, except I knew that it had something to do with the government spending a lot of money to celebrate Canada in a new way, and then it didn't really work out, because the agit prop project kind of backfired on them, and I phoned the newspaper. I said, Where did that money, the funding for that agit prop projection on the front of the apartment building thing? Oh, nobody wanted to talk about it anyway. I always talk about it since then, because I felt like I knew something ahead of my time, but I probably done anyway, whatever. But then now, whenever I think of an amazing artist in Canada, I think of their name, and I think Tom Wayman, because I see your face projected on the front of the parliament buildings, it

Tom Wayman: 4:19

would probably crumble. Oh, I mean

Sheri-D Wilson: 4:23

the stones themselves. I think they did crumble. I think they are crumbling. Speaking of which,

Tom Wayman: 4:29

no, that's pretty that's a good story. I yeah, I had no idea that they went to those links. Sounds a bit like Big Brother. Yeah,

Sheri-D Wilson: 4:37

it was Big Brother, Big Sister and big sister, big faces, and they had these stands that were all set up for people to watch these faces, these ghostly faces with these big names, and they were projected in this way, and the stands were empty. I.

Tom Wayman: 5:00

You're talking to someone who at when the Olympics were in Montreal, each province sent the delegation, and I was in the arts delegation, I mean, as well, and I was in the BC One, and they had booked us in to read poems in the middle of a public park at 11pm so there was no one there, as you might imagine. That was kind of BC there. I think there were three poets, and we were supposed to entertain the grass and Canada geese and stuff with little slice of British Columbia

Sheri-D Wilson: 5:38

culture. Oh, the poets really good,

Tom Wayman: 5:41

and we got a trip to Montreal put up in a hotel, that trip back home. So how

Sheri-D Wilson: 5:46

can you, how can you hate that, but at the same time, it would be so good for people to hear the poetry? Well,

Tom Wayman: 5:54

yeah, or spend the money on something more worthwhile.

Sheri-D Wilson: 5:58

So you know, you just had a new book come up.

Tom Wayman: 6:02

Yeah, actually, I had, I two books out in April. I had a memoir about moving to South Asian, British Columbia, to the slogan, Valley and and then I had a book of poems that we that's sort of complimentary. It's, it's mostly set in that milieu in in the valley, and what?

Sheri-D Wilson: 6:23

What is the title of the memoir? The memoir

Tom Wayman: 6:25

is called the road to Apple door, or how I went back to the land without ever having lived there in the first place. That's good, yeah, well, it's meant to be light hearted. It's kind of the book. I wish I had been able to read in 1989 when I moved from the urban to the rural. So it's sort of a how not to book as well as a how to book in terms of moving people move from the urban to the rural, thinking it'll be just like urban life, but with more scenery. And of course, it isn't. It's it is, in its own way, a different culture, and it calls on you to have a different skill set, which, in my case, I learned the hard way, and that's what, that's what the book's about. But it's hopefully light hearted and funny as well. And and then the book of plumes is called, How can you live here? Which is what visitors have said. And so the book sort of attempts that, the book of plumes sort of attempts to answer that. And it's, it's and how can you, well, you'd have to read the book. I

Sheri-D Wilson: 7:39

will read the book. No, you didn't bring me one because you sold out. Yeah,

Tom Wayman: 7:43

I'll get, well, just on, on this little trip, but I'll get, I'll get you copies of both. Yeah,

Sheri-D Wilson: 7:48

because you know, I read, I literally read everything that you have ever written. Wow, and, and I highly recommend if you want to be a writer, it, that Tom Wayman is, is one of the people. You definitely read everything he has ever done, and you will learn a huge amount, because, you know, part of it is the poetry and the craft of the poetry, and the point of view, of course, the the degree of authenticity, which is really strong and and also for me, it's, it's the different approaches to poetry that you can take

Tom Wayman: 8:31

well. Thank you very much. It's you

Sheri-D Wilson: 8:34

know from improvisation, like from so when I think of your books, I think of opening the book and then first reading. This is how I approached this work,

Tom Wayman: 8:50

yeah, well, okay, so, so a couple things. Like, I believe that poems are text for speaking, right? So there's none, none of my poems are, are not speakable, if you know what I mean. Yes, they're

Sheri-D Wilson: 9:05

all oral. Yeah.

Tom Wayman: 9:07

And the second thing is that I try, and in, especially in the more I don't the last half dozen or so, to have prose introductions to each section so it gives people an idea of what I'm trying to do. They can then judge for themselves whether the poems live up to the expectation or intention. I guess is better said, and I know some people object to that. They think poems ought to just speak for themselves, but I still find it useful to be able to talk about what I'm doing, just given that so many people are turned off poetry in school, and they have us, they have a mental picture of how awful it is. And then I think explaining what you're doing doesn't. Hurt.

Sheri-D Wilson: 10:02

Well, I, I totally didn't take it from that okay, when I would read your work, I would read the intention, let's call it as a prompt to for me to learn something about poetry for myself. Maybe I'm just completely self centered, but I I didn't see it as as a prompt to judge your work, but more to inspire me to see the possibilities of poetry and and see the the for me, a possibility of approach Okay, and of how to enter into this way of seeing, or this way of speaking, or this, this delicate way of observing the world even

Tom Wayman: 10:59

Well, yeah, what You're what you're doing, is what, when I was teaching, we called reading as a writer like you're reading to to see what works and what doesn't work. And in another writers efforts. And I think that's that's super important. I mean, I do that too with other people. If I like it, why do I like it? If I'm bored by it, what's boring about it? It's just, I think not all portrait readers read as writers, they and so it, it's maybe them I'm trying to help understand what I'm doing with with the with the prose introductions,

Sheri-D Wilson: 11:40

also maybe even instruct them as to how to become a writer. Yeah,

Tom Wayman: 11:44

well, that that's it. I mean, I've certainly had people tell me, because this happened on on this last one that they said they they heard me. They were my poems on CBC, and said, Well, geez, if that's poetry, I can write poetry. And then began to do so, and now they've got books and so on. So maybe I'm the lowest common denominator.

Sheri-D Wilson: 12:09

Well, if you're the lowest common denominator, I can't imagine what the lowest common denominator is, because you know your work is. I would say, I would go so far is, and, you know, I don't throw these things around as divine, geez, okay, it's divine, and it's, it's just so for me, it's, it's personal, and yet it's universal. So you, you, you make the space of a poet, personal, but it has a universal view of the world.

Tom Wayman: 12:46

Well, if, okay, well, thank you. If, if that is true, it's because I think of models. You know when, when I started to write, it was, it was writers say, American writers like Kenneth Rexroth or Robert Bly or Denise Levertov, all of whom you know, I would say, Were Dubai, I feel like, and certainly amazing models. And then in Canada, people like Al Purdy or Bernie Dorothy Livesey again, trying to translate the world into words in a way that had both kind of an awareness of nature and awareness of history and awareness of politics and awareness of people in all their kind of work glory. And so that's, I guess those have been my models that try to find with a little charity. Well, since thrown in for

Sheri-D Wilson: 13:56

energy, I think work model, okay, I let's you brought it up, and I'll just go with that, because a lot of your a lot of your work, a lot of your poems, have to do with and and I know that you teach this as well of how to express the work that You do in poems. Yeah,

Tom Wayman: 14:21

well, it was I had begun. I'd begun writing about about jobs I had because, like, I had gone to, I'd gone to university at UBC, and then I got, I want some money. I was supposed to go on a career in newspapering. I was trained as a newspaper guy, and we worked on the Vancouver Sun every summer for and then on the student paper every winter. So I was supposed to just go and do that, but I won some money to study creative writing, and then that changed my life, because I thought, well, this is way more fun. I. The newspaper, mostly because you could cover a wider range of events, like working on the sun. It was basically crime, fires, service, collection, speeches, that sort of thing. It wasn't, wasn't the whole spectrum of humanity, whereas, obviously literature does cover that. And then when I got back to Canada, it was a recession, and so I began to work

Sheri-D Wilson: 15:24

manual jobs from California. When you came back from California, yeah,

Tom Wayman: 15:27

actually, yeah, I taught for you in Colorado, yeah. And it was a pretty wild year, so they didn't renew my contract, as they politely put put it. And so I came back and and when I was working manual jobs and thinking about those, I began to write about them, and then looked around to see who else was writing about daily work, and found this huge hole in our literature. And then began to think about why that might be, and encourage other people to fill in the hole, as it were, again, one of the models was that was exactly what women were doing, if you think about it, with with the with the rise of feminist writing, that here was supposed to be the literature of humanity. It just didn't include the experiences of women and and so so this was like a shadow of that didn't, didn't include the experiences of work, either. And so ever since then, I've, I've been fascinated by that and and so it remains an interest. There's a new generation of those writers who are that I encountered anyway, that are trying to link issues of the environment with daily work. And I think that's good, because I actually don't think you can save the planet without rethinking what happens on jobs and who has power who doesn't at the workplace. So it's, it's exciting to see, see that roll on, yeah. And

Sheri-D Wilson: 17:11

I think of Hillary peaches, new book, yes, and her experiences as you know, what is it?

Tom Wayman: 17:20

Boilermaker, yeah, or Cape Brede braid as a carpenter. The women at trades. Thing has always involved self expression and so. So poetry is a natural connection with that. There's a woman in Oakland, California, Sue Doro, who for many years has run a magazine about women in trades called pride in a paycheck. This is the old meaning of pride, meaning being proud of having these new skills. Yes, but in every issue, she has work memoir and work poetry, and at these conferences of women in trades, there's a thing like women built California, women built whatever state, and then there's women build America. She always has a little writing workshop, thing called blue jean pocket writers workshop, and uses prompts and examples. It just gets people writing about it. So and so do herself. She was a machinist, of course, the first woman machinist on a railway in Milwaukee, you know, doing things like these gigantic railway wheels, you know, have to be all fine tuned and stuff and but, again, I mean, you'd really like her. She and her husband had a comedy team before they became machinists and stuff like that. Also, they've never lost a sense of humor and perspective and a real interest in people, which I think is important too.

Sheri-D Wilson: 18:56

And is that, is that important to poetry? Pardon? Is that important to poetry and interest in people? Oh, yeah,

Tom Wayman: 19:03

of course, yes. I think of all writing that we're really capturing, I think, directly or indirectly, how human beings are coping with being alive and how to cope,

Sheri-D Wilson: 19:22

because poets do observe these things, spend more time maybe thinking about how to cope and how to navigate, and what you can do with your Thinking to change your thinking in order to bring change to not only your own environment, but the environment of other people.

Tom Wayman: 19:46

Yes, and I've always said Our advantage is that there's no money in poetry. So no, no, so we're never we can't be corrupted, right? Because no one's gonna make a bark off of us. Of what we say, Yeah, and that turns out to be a unique vantage point. Like, for example, I like the cross country ski and there's a national organization of Canadian cross country ski clubs. And if they have a magazine, and if you pick it up, it's all about buying this and buying that, you're supposed to have, like, a $600 outfit to get out on a pair of slippery slats and fall over and, like, even that gets, gets kind of corrupted into into money. And the the fun of it, which is basically being out in the winter woods and enjoying that suddenly, you know you have to, you have to buy this to look right, or this piece of equipment. There's nothing like that in poetry. No one cares what you look like or it's, it's your observation and thinking, and then the trans transming that into words that that isn't is important.

Sheri-D Wilson: 20:59

I totally agree with that. It's and it is a form of alchemy, as you say, transmuting, transmutating. It is a form of of of alchemy and and there is definitely no money in it. I when I think of that, I think of Anne Waldman's book, The the Outrider, where she talks about why to become a writer, and please, if you think that you're going to make lots of money, and it's going to be this great mind bending career move in which you will make money, and maybe you will, you know, nowadays, you maybe have more of an opportunity To make money than than in your generation, my generation like however, it's not the thing that propels people into poetry and and then also keeps them there, because it's the love of words, ideas, sounds, perceptions and transformations. Yeah, definitely, and and I, and I think also discovery, because as I get older, I I find these new things are continually opening and possibilities of ways to see and express that, and I get, I can't believe there's still so much to explore. Like there's way more than and as you get older, there's more to explore. It's not like you're like you get somewhere because you get nowhere. Not only do you have no money, not only is it going to be that shitty thing, but it's gonna be you arrive nowhere.

Tom Wayman: 22:47

Well, it's also like, the longer you live, the less you know is kind of the idea, yeah. I mean, yeah, when you're younger, you know everything. And then as you grow older, you slowly realize you know less,

Sheri-D Wilson: 23:00

yeah. And then you go, you pull one you read one book like Blavatsky or something, and you suddenly go, oh my god, oh my god. There's a whole new world just opened up that I didn't even know about. And why didn't I don't why who kept this secret from me?

Tom Wayman: 23:21

No, and it's true with poetry. Like I constantly find poets I didn't know about who've been having a career of their own and doing things that Well, this looks really interesting. So it is exactly as you say, a continual a continual discovery. But even inside the dictionary, like now, I've taken, excuse me, to checking certain words that I've always used. I think, Gee, I wonder if I'm using those right and and I've double checking them. And sometimes I find that there's shades of meaning that I thought it shaded this way, and it actually doesn't. And so I have to find it a different word. And so that's new, to discover big parts of the dictionary that previously I was sure I knew, but now not so sure.

Sheri-D Wilson: 24:16

There's that in the simple words, and then for me, there are, in the last 510 years, the words that have been left behind, words that express perfectly what I want to express, and are not being used at all anymore, words that are very interesting in sound and meaning. Like we were talking about honor with ability to tatabis, you know, this word that Shakespeare just created and and it means being in the state of honor. And I was like. Wow. I just love the whole concept of that word that got left behind that we don't use anymore, or no. And I mean, I could go on and on now on that level,

Tom Wayman: 25:11

well, other words get taken over by advertising campaigns, and then you can't use them. That's the thing. Oh, my discover, like Apple, yeah, or I was driving over here behind there's a Nissan has an electric vehicle called the leaf. And I thought, Geez, what a shame, because the word leaf appears in Watson or

Sheri-D Wilson: 25:33

a new car called lucid. I was like, Are you kidding me?

Tom Wayman: 25:38

Yeah, well,

Sheri-D Wilson: 25:40

I wish they called the car void.

Tom Wayman: 25:43

It's part of a living language. Those to give it its due, yes, that some words fall away, and new words show up, or or you have to make do with and

Sheri-D Wilson: 25:54

words do transform, yes, yeah. And it's unfortunate when they get when they become something that they aren't. So

Tom Wayman: 26:01

it's not, it's not different than an artist working with color. I often think so, you know, they they can, they can generate new colors. They can avoid certain colors because another artist is has overused them or whatever. So I think almost any art form, it is exactly what you said, a constant process of discovery and learning, and that's, in a way, what makes it fun.

Sheri-D Wilson: 26:32

I agree with that, so I do want to ask you a question. Okay, I don't think I've asked you a question yet, so I I do want to ask a question, and the question is, who are your influences and your and or mentors when you were younger? Well,

Tom Wayman: 26:59

I was very, lucky in that my father was a great reader of poetry, and in our house, growing up, he he, like he had, he liked to declaim certain 19th century Canadian poets, Wilfred Campbell, along the line of Smokey hills, crimson forest stains, and all day long, the Bucha calls throughout the autumn land, and he loved a e Houseman his whole life. It frankly to heaven. The beacons burn. The showers have seen its plane from north and south. The signs go forth and beacons burn again. Look left, look right. The hills are bright. The days are bright between because there's 50 years tonight that God has saved the queen. It's a, it's a poem about the about the 50th anniversary of Victoria, taking the the throne. But it it turns into quite a anti imperialist thing by the end it he says, he says, this art the saviors mean God, as in, God Save the Queen. The Saviors do not the saviors come not home tonight, themselves, they could not save it dawns in Asia, Tombstone show and Shropshire names are read, and the diet and the Nile spills its overflow beside the severance dead, we pledge in peace by town and farm the area. I don't want to go on and on, but it, it's just, it turns into quite a his last word is, get you the sons, your father's God, and God will save the queen. Like, like, yeah. So anyway, my dad, my dad liked that, and then both he and my mother had been active in the Toronto left, which included a lot of poets or people around poetry, Dorothy, lifecy, Miriam Waddington, Earl Bernie's wife, Esther, was a social worker, the way my mum was. This is very beginnings of social work in Canada. So they're all kind of pioneers of that. They all knew each other, so our house was always filled with contemporary poetry. I, you know, he had some of the first books of poems by this young guy, Leonard Cohen. And so I grew up with that thinking kind of that was normal like that. The poetry was a big part of everyone's, everyone's life. And then when, when I went to UBC, I they, it was full of poets. So Earl Burney, I took, I took writing seminars with Earl Burney. And you know, he knew my parents because of his wife, Esther, he brought al Purdy. And I've never. You know, to read. And I'd never heard Purdy, and he had Irving late in the end, and then Purdy was pretty sorry, or Bernie was having a big fight with, with an academic poet who, who, or Daniels, who also published poems widely, so you got your first sense of poetry wars. And then Bernie was also going head to head with Warren Tolman, who, you know, brought up the San Francisco poets of Black Mountain poets. And so as a young person, this was all really interesting, that there were many, many schools of poetry that they there were literary gangs and literary muggings, and it made it all pretty exciting. And then I did, like I say, instead of going on directly to the sun, I won this scholarship to go to graduate school in Southern California, and all the people, all my peers, knew about a whole lot of American poets that I had never heard of, Phil Levine, the whole group out of Iowa, Donald justice, and so on, and then, and and that was a world, you know, where they they fought with or didn't like the San Francisco people or the New York writers, right the New York School, and so it stayed interesting. But the two years I was in California during grad school, University of California had endless months of money, so we had a visiting writer every week, and it was some of them were incredible. We had David Garnett, whose mother did all the translations from Russian of the classics. And, you know, we talked about growing up in that world. We had a guy called Saul malach, who was the book review editor of Newsweek, which at the time was big. And he said to us, there are no there are no bookstores outside New York City. Everybody gasp. Asked him, What an what a bookstore was? He said it's where you can get uncut versions of French novels, meaning the pages are cut. Oh, my God. So you know that real New York deal, like, here I am in California, wherever that is. And so it was, it was all, it was all pretty exciting. And then, and then you asked about mentors, well, Bly, Robert, Bly came in and very flamboyant guy in those days. He wore this long sarapi, he'd say, and he did. He was big on translations, or bringing into North American writing, this whole world that now people are familiar with. But in those days, you know, a foreign writer was from England, sort of things. And so there's Bly I'm going to it's a translation of Garcia Lord, get in New York, you know, the big surrealist port New York thing, and then he's gonna go to, he's gonna go to Cuba. He's gonna go be back in the Spanish language. It says by waving his answer on back in the Spanish language culture, I'm going to Santiago in a carriage of Black Water. I'm going to Santiago. And he did the whole thing. And my mind was kind of blowing. Wow, you can do that with poetry. It. Remember, I hadn't seen you yet, so I didn't know you could do all this.

Sheri-D Wilson: 33:27

Oh, you know, that's what Ginsburg did for me. Okay, I actually when I he was reading plutonium, and unfortunately it was at Naropa, and unfortunately there was no seats left, so I had to sit close to him, and he was doing plutonium, and I passed out. I literally fell off my chair onto the ground and peed myself because I, because I passed out like it was so overwhelming to my whole being that I, I passed out. You know, like poets have a lot of energy, some, some do, yes, well, the ones that don't, I don't really go for, but, you know, I go for the energetic. I go for people who have the soul I that I can, that I can perceive,

Tom Wayman: 34:22

yeah, I actually know what you mean, because the two in my life that where I'm around, I've been around them and felt what the Beatles called, you know, another kind of mind. And one was fly, and the other was Gary Snyder, believe it. Oh yeah, Gary. And I mean it, there was just some aura, or, I don't know what you call it, but you were clearly, or I felt I was clearly in the presence of something else than an ordinary even though they were, they're both very personable. Yeah, had their own Yeah,

Sheri-D Wilson: 34:58

down to earth and everything. Like. That, but there's something, there's a vibration there, or like, like you say in aura, like, there's something going on. But I think that's true of of many poets that I meet, the ones that don't have that other thing I listen to, but I I'm not a fan of when you when you write, you must have that, because when I read your work, although most of the time with you, I read your work because I don't go and I don't get to see you, because you live far away, and so I don't get to see you, and then I'll be out of town when you're there, and I've only seen you read twice. And the I would see you read a lot more if I lived in the Kootenays or close to you. Your work has that vibration, even if it's like, if I'm reading it

Tom Wayman: 36:03

well, well, thank you.

Sheri-D Wilson: 36:04

So I get to go there like it's, the thing is, it's like, it's not, it's not just being in the presence, the physical presence, but there's something in the vibration of the actual words. It's almost like sacred words, or sacred sounds, or sounds from a cosmic other place and and it does take you.

Tom Wayman: 36:25

Yeah, no. One of the poets that I've discovered late in life is Joseph Stroud from Santa Santa Cruz in California. He's got a cabin in the Sierras, so he spends certain amount of time in the mountains, as well as in the urban he's got a wonderful poem about going for a walk with a 600 year old dead Chinese poet. He's going on and on to the guy about poetry, and then he pauses, and the Chinese, the dead Chinese guy, says, Jim, let's go back to your place and drink some wine, which I thought was just great. So he's got that kind of, you know, quirky, interesting. The poems don't go where you think they're gonna go, and that that opens up worlds when that, when that happens, yeah, I think, at least for me, it is, and it's not like I think he's the world's greatest poet, but it's just someone I can learn from that, that, as you see, I've never heard him read. I was, I was gonna go in here and read in Portland, just when the pandemic hit, he was, he was reading in Portland with, with another poet that I do have a correspondence with down there. And so I was gonna go here. And both, I was real excited. But then the border shot that they've never, it's never. I've never had the chance again so far. But like you, I was curious to see what, what he was like. And yeah, in person, whether, whether that communicated, or whether it's just in the words, but yeah,

Sheri-D Wilson: 37:54

it generally communicates and and that said, when I read another poet, I do not read silent. I read out loud. I always read poetry out loud, like it doesn't matter who I'm reading, because without reading it out loud, I do not get the actual rhythm, I do not get the tone, I don't get the drone, I don't get the the underlying, I don't even see between the lines as much. Maybe it's just me, but I always read poetry

Tom Wayman: 38:30

out loud. Yeah, no, absolutely.

Sheri-D Wilson: 38:34

And if they're a good writer, I should be able to orate their work as they would.

Tom Wayman: 38:41

Yeah, you probably have more energy. Well, you know what I mean? Like, not, not, not. Everybody's a good performer of their own work, even if it's got all that. Yeah, that's true. If you think of of, well, no, I won't go there. Okay, okay, I

Sheri-D Wilson: 39:03

will ask you one more question. Sure, this is poems by heart. Now, the question is kind of convoluted. Maybe I'm working on it. It's it's sort of the idea that we as young people, perhaps we memorize poems you've already illustrated two of those poems, or two segments of the same poem out loud that you or rated. Is there a poem that you memorized when you were young? That was you had to know in your body,

Tom Wayman: 39:46

not not when I was young, at a certain point, I began to memorize Yeats I went into the Hazel wood because a fire was in my head. I cut and peeled the Hazel wand and hooked the berry to a thread. And when moths were on the wing and moth like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream and caught a little silver trout. And when I laid it on the bank and gone to blow my fire flame, then something rustled on the shore and someone called me by my name, it had become a glimmering girl with Apple Blossom in her hair who called me by my name and ran and vanished in the brightening air. Though I'm old from wandering through quiet lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she is gone and know her mouth and hold her hand and walk through long green, dappled grass and pluck till time and times are done, the silver apples of the moon, the Golden Apples of the sun. So I thought, Wow, that sounds a lot better aloud than it does on the page, right? That's part of of Yeats is, you know, the Celtic Twilight stuff, which people mock, because what's in the anthologies is all the later stuff, right? Which is fine, you know, sailing to Byzantium, blah, blah, blah. But I was kind of, it somehow seemed important to me, because my work's not very romantic to to memorize these, these wonderful, romantic boom. Somehow it, it, it centered me. And somehow when I write, even if it's some political rant or something, I like to think that the music in Yeats can kind of percolate in somehow I know he himself is a horrible guy and wrote anthems for the Irish fascists, the blue shirts and all this stuff, but somehow we could that was one part of his life. And

Sheri-D Wilson: 42:05

I go with the Yates, that ray that that like read in the basement of the Atlantis, like I go with the Yeats of the Golden Dawn, and I go with the Yeats of the spiritual enlightenment and and, you know, sometimes you get on the wrong side of history, whatever, however, the Yeats that I love and the and the Yeats that I love in that poem is about the discovery of the spirit within himself. And, yes, the the the idea of being struck by the lightning bolt of otherness knowledge and that, that, that silver trout that you can catch,

Tom Wayman: 42:58

yeah, yes, with just a berry, it's just a berry. Yeah? No, there's lots of, lots of things to think about, the Golden

Sheri-D Wilson: 43:06

Sun and what that means,

Tom Wayman: 43:09

but, but also, for me, personally, the music of it, because, because often my work is not particularly musical, and I wanted more, more music in there. That's why, unlike lots of people, I was glad when they gave the Nobel Prize to his bodness there.

Sheri-D Wilson: 43:27

Yeah, I was so happy about the bogness. But,

Tom Wayman: 43:31

but, yeah, because, especially because, you know, there is a very cerebral line of poetry, you know, incomprehensible to most mortals, that gets pushed in the academy that really has no music, zero music and and the fear is that somehow you'll be sucked into that direction, whereas if you keep the AIDS rattling around in your brain, I think there's less chance

Sheri-D Wilson: 43:59

of, well, yeah, or it was my 30s, year to heaven. Woke to my hearing from armor and neighborhood, yes. I mean, you just go, yeah. I know you don't like Dylan Thomas, but how can you not love the music and the sound of the music of the words yes and I'm I know it's anti Academy of me, but I love the music of poetry, and that's partly why I write poetry, because of the music of the soul. And we have music in our souls. We each have a song, and that's what I'm trying to get at with with the poems that we memorize reflect the music and the the the and and the tremor of our souls that's sitting there waiting to sing, plus

Tom Wayman: 44:53

it staves off Alzheimer's,

Sheri-D Wilson: 44:58

plus it stays off. Yes, yes. Memorize poems, yes, keep your mind

Tom Wayman: 45:04

intact as you get older, that becomes just a little bit more of an issue. Yeah.

Sheri-D Wilson: 45:08

And then you start me, you do

Tom Wayman: 45:10

think about it, yeah. Like even you want to, you want to, because you

Sheri-D Wilson: 45:13

do sort of lose your mind as you get older. Well, I feel like I lose my mind in certain ways, and I gain my mind in another way, which is fine with me, but it would be, yeah, staving off Alzheimer's is a good idea. Memorizing poems, good idea,

Tom Wayman: 45:33

yeah, but it's just you would start off by saying, in your youth, and and we, you know, we often were a sign memory, but because it was assigned and not coming from us. Then, of course, he resisted that, or I did anyway, that that kind of memory, memorizing words, you know, I would watch my dad recite things, and it was clear it was out of a love for those poems. Not Not, not an assignment. Yeah, I

Sheri-D Wilson: 46:00

never did it as an assignment. If someone gave me the assignment to memorize something, I would only memorize what I wanted. But I've always been like that, you know, I've always had that glitch, which hasn't made me popular in certain ways, but I Yeah, the poems I memorized were always what I felt I had to know, yeah, yeah, in my soul and carry with me all my life, because you're going to carry it all your life with you, and it's going to inform you. And if you memorize it older, maybe it's like what Leonard Cohen said. You know that the greatest loves you'll have are the ones you find an older age.

Tom Wayman: 46:42

I didn't know, he said, but he ought to know. But no, I think too. There's a way, like sometimes, if I'm nervous before giving a reading, then I'll just, in my mind, recite a poem that I like, and then somehow that that's calming. It's like there's many uses to to that kind of, you know, memorizing, yeah, it's not much in fashion. I think, because people see it as an assignment, you must do this, and whether you like the piece or not, but, but I think if, if it's self directed, somehow it really does enlarge your life memorizing these things, I agree, and I'm kind of a Piper at that. I I spent a summer working at CBC in Toronto. I was a sort of writer in residence on the show and, and the studio director Gary Katz, who was also in the in the winter, he was zasky Studio director on FM that show. And, and Gary had, I would say, honest to God, maybe 40 or 50 poems by memory. And he did it. I love. He wasn't a writer. His big passion was collecting all Life magazines, but, but he just, he just liked to do it and it, I often found it humbling, because, you know, I was supposed to be the writer in residence, but Gary knew far more, in his own way, about about words and how they worked, and was more in love with words than than I was so

Sheri-D Wilson: 48:28

something to observe, yeah, and it's something to observe that especially with young artists, because the tendency is to only memorize your own work. And I really am an advocate of memorizing others and and older poems and poems from different languages and different cultures. Like, I really, really like the idea of of all that churning up inside of your soul. Yes, so and it can take you places that you never thought, not just places you want to go, but places someone else wants to go,

Tom Wayman: 49:04

which is, yes, the whole thing, it's an opening and I would be terrified to memorize my own things, because I would feel I was closing myself in, whereas these open up, you know, places I haven't gone, or worlds I haven't encountered.

Sheri-D Wilson: 49:22

What's up now? What's coming up with you now? What are you going to do now? Well,

Tom Wayman: 49:28

okay, so in 2020 a good friend from graduate school, California poet Dennis sila died of a sudden brain bleed, and he was literally working on his poems and fell over sideways. And that was it, good

Sheri-D Wilson: 49:45

way to go, I guess.

Tom Wayman: 49:48

Anyway, a year or so before that time, he had asked me to put together a selected of his he was someone who couldn't eat. He'd done a number of books of poems, you know, with small presses. And then he'd done some non fiction books with big New York houses. He did a book of rock album covers as art. And he did a book of of 1950 science fiction movies that had been remade. So science fiction gold, you know, classics with a with an essay on each one linking them to certain 1950s themes. So how the appearance of aliens matched the kind of McCarthy idea that, you know, we were surrounded by aliens and anyway, but he really couldn't stand being rejected, so he wanted me to put together the book and have me undergo all the rejections of before it found a home. And so I'm working on that finally now. So four years after he died, I finally got my desk cleared. And so that's really interesting, because it's, it's going through, you know, poem by poem by poem, sort of 50 years of him as a writer, trying to, trying to both find what appeals to me in his writing, because we had somewhat different esthetics, but also, but also staying true to his esthetic as as much as as as possible. He He believed in kind of constellations. He called them where you get interested in so he has a book called 100 comedians. He got interested in the comedian because he thought it was a perfect metaphor for similes and metaphors. It's something that's like something else the comedian changes to be like a leaf or to be like a branch. And so he worked on that as a constellation and, and, oh, he got into pomegranates. And he's got a bunch of points about pomegranates. And then his grandparents are from Egypt. And he got into the 22nd dynasty, the Pharaonic dynasty, because that was the one in which smuggling cats out of Egypt was a capital crime that would be executed for it, because the cat represented the technology they realized for keeping the rats out of the granaries. So it was necessary, you know, to preserve grain to get rid of them. So you couldn't, you couldn't. And then he loved it that the people that did smother the cats were Phoenician papyrus traders. So it links up with the with writing, right? Like, whoa. So he left all these, all these connections and stuff. It's not as a constellation. Yeah, it's not my way of doing things. But again, it's opening up by paying this close attention. You know, is this a poem that's worth putting in a Selected Poems, because in the States, the SELECTED BONES is only about 50 bones. So if you had it for 50 years, and we're talking one point here, so you really, I really have to, you know, weigh every everything, and it's, it's fun, but it's also a learning process for me. Wow,

Sheri-D Wilson: 53:05

that's very, very exciting. I that's very exciting. I like the idea of constellations. I like the idea of maybe calling them obsessions. I know I get in obsessed by certain things, and then I go down these rabbit holes, and i i and then the rabbit hole leads to another rabbit hole leads to another rabbit hole. And like I could go from rabbit hole to rabbit hole.

Tom Wayman: 53:27

Well, Dennis loved that, that way of doing, but he didn't want to call it up sessions. He actually, like he did, he he studied at Fresno State College, as it was in those days, with the port Phil Levine. And he so he had a really good basis of that, but he went to Arizona State to study psychology, so he was aware of those words like obsession being not good. But anyway, he didn't want to go on with the with psychology, because he said he realized if someone came in with a problem, he'd probably say to them, Hey, you're sick, get out of my office. So he switched to crater very where he could, we could follow these things, but he was very careful, you know, not, not to put pejorative, you know, because there's something pejorative about that word, whereas constellations, yes, Guy and, and yet, it's the same. It's exactly what you said, following your interest, really or intense interest.

Sheri-D Wilson: 54:25

Well, for me, it's obsessions. I he might not like the word, but I don't have a problem with the word, because for me, I do get completely and utterly overtaken, and that's what I mean by it, like it's more like obsessed, like overtaken, and I'm gone. I'm gone down the rabbit hole. Some people might not like the rabbit hole, but that's where I am. And I'm like, I the dots between. I like the the idea of constellations. I might use that from from here on in because I do love collect. You know, kind of. Connecting those dots, those dots of rabbit holes. We

Tom Wayman: 55:05

used to go on when I went to California. Often we'd go on these road trips. And I remember once we're driving on the freeway, there's a, you know, you get behind a truck, and it's like a billboard, right? So we're cruising along like that, and suddenly Dennis just gets all excited, because up at the top of the back of the truck, it said, everything means something. He thought this was like paradise, like here the world is speaking to us stuff. But he is kind of interesting. What trucker would put that on the back? And so you knew you were dealing with an interesting guy. Well,

Sheri-D Wilson: 55:41

I remember, I was driving in Scotland. I was by myself, and I I was going there because I was, I was grieving the loss of my father, and I wanted to go to those stones in Lewes. And I went to the the killing ish stones to speak with my dad and to do some grieving there. And then I was driving around, and I didn't know what I was going to do this day or that day or any day, and I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do today. I don't even know where to go. I'm just going to drive along this road. I don't even know what direction I'm going, and right then this orange truck with Wilson written on it goes right in front of me. I was like, oh. And I followed the truck, and I ended up in this really interesting town that I never would have gone to otherwise, and I went immediately to the museum, and that's where I met this woman who told me all these stories about the Wilsons and how, how they were the how The Canadian government came over to to Scotland and promised all these people, all this new life, and then the people came over to Canada, and they were put on a farm, and it was 80 bazillion below, and then they couldn't leave Canada, because there was no way to get back to Scotland. And and I just thought there was an interesting story and and how it related to my family anyway,

Tom Wayman: 57:25

but that yeah, the concept of a truck that says, Well, yeah, it's like, yeah, like Life is like the universe talked here,

Sheri-D Wilson: 57:33

and it is filled with signs and poetry all around, if you stop to see it. When

Tom Wayman: 57:40

Dennis is unpublished. He did a novel about two weeks in Oscar Wilde's life, during Wild's first visit to America, where he's kind of like The Rolling Stones. He's a big deal, but there's two weeks and they're not sure where he was. And so Dennis imagines where he was. But all through the all through that book, he invents sort of wildly insane. But the one that stuck with me, he said he has wild say maps are for people who don't know where they're going. And your thing with the Wilson truck seems a perfect example if you're not following a map but you knew where to go.

Sheri-D Wilson: 58:16

Yeah. Like, get lost. Yeah. Like, really get lost. I really believe in getting lost in life and and sometimes when I was in places like Paris, I was by myself, and I I knew I had a place to stay, but then I got lost in Paris, and I ended up staying in a inn, somewhere that wasn't where I was supposed to be, because I just never made it home. I know you can find, when you're lost, you find so much.

Tom Wayman: 58:49

Well, yeah, I guess so I'm pretty tight, tight ass guy, so but, but I admire people who can, who can do that. It's hard for me.

Sheri-D Wilson: 59:03

We're all we're all different here, yeah, well, I think that we just had a great interview with Tom Wayman, and I thank Tom for sharing this time with me. I really do appreciate, I appreciate it a great deal that you would come here, and we're in Vancouver, he was, he just was here for two days. So I was lucky to be able to segue this into time to you. Time with you. Well,

Tom Wayman: 59:33

thank you. I feel honored that you want to include me in this wonderful series well, it's going to

Sheri-D Wilson: 59:41

be a fun podcast, and I think that the people that I've invited are kind of special so far and so thank you. Well, thank you.

Tom Wayman: 59:51

No thank you.

Sheri-D Wilson: 59:56

Later, agitator, in a while. Bibliophile.