From the Backcover:
Where Genesis Begins is a collaboration of two of Newfoundland’s foremost artists: Tom Dawe, a profoundly visual poet, and Gerald Squires, a profoundly poetic painter. The book contains thirty-seven poems by Dawe, twenty-nine of which have not been published before, and seventy-one artworks by Squires.
The book opens with an essay by Martina Seifert of Queen’s University in Belfast and closes with an afterword by poet, novelist, and essayist Stan Dragland.
“To have the quiet wisdom carried in Tom Dawe’s finely crafted poems in complex conversation with Gerald Squires’ powerfully inscaped paintings: the overtones are endless.” -Don McKay, two-time winner of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry
Sample Poem, “Thoreau”
I thought of you today
in that hush
after a woodpecker
somewhere across the swamp
had stopped drumming
leaving woods and fields
no longer what they were.
You who claimed
that all sound
even our speech
is the beginning
of pregnant silence.
You listening to the rhythm
of your own drummer
long after the flicker
had flown.
You in the ticking
of your mother’s clock
carved wooden grandfather
behind her in the hall
when as a child
she used to get out of bed
after midnight
secretly
sitting on a summer doorstep
savouring the world’s silences
and growing up
in the lilt of warm evenings
falling in love
with quietude
along Concord’s Virginia Road
when lowing of distant cattle
carried brooks and meadows
and landscapes altered
in the strains of Joe Merriam
local farmer
not as familiar anymore
whistling to his horses
in the dark.
years after in your cabin
on Walden Pond
you listening
to a faint steam whistle
becoming a bumblebee
inside a flower
and an unknown flute player
far off in the dusk
expanding the remoteness
of the universe
another Krishna
piping the planet
into place again.
You always receptive
to the world’s harp strings
right where you were.
Your pulse in time
with beetle click
and cricket chant.
You wakeful local night
more meaningful
than any long journey.
About Tom Dawe:
High school teacher and university English professor, visual artist, editor, fictionist, dramatist, and childrens’ author, Tom Dawe, is most revered for his insightful, moving poetry. He was also one of the founding members of Breakwater Books Ltd. and TickleAce magazine. Dawe has won numerous awards, and was recently inductied into Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council Hall of Honour. His work has been studied around the world, and Rewriting Newfoundland Mythology: The Works of Tom Dawe, a book by Martina Seifert, was published in Germany and Massachusetts in 2002.
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