Fall '04 Edition
Canadian poet launches lecture series
April Toleratoler@dailyegyptian.com
As Tom Wayman introduced his poem, "Did I Miss Anything?" which is about students who frequently miss class, he jokingly described it as a "hate poem."
"In teaching there is a lot of love and a lot of hate," Wayman said in his Canadian accent. "This is a hate poem."
Canadian poet and self-dubbed "squire of Appledore," Wayman opened the Charles D. Tenney Distinguished Lecturer Series Tuesday with a reading from some of his well-known books.
More than two dozen people gathered in the Student Center Auditorium to listen to the poetry reading, which focused largely on the imprint people's jobs leave on their lives.
Wayman, received his master of fine arts in English and writing from the University of California in Irvine, and has published 13 collections of his poetry and numerous anthologies.
He started out working in journalism, but once he won a scholarship to attend graduate school, Wayman began taking poetry more seriously, he said. After receiving his master's degree, Wayman worked in numerous construction and demolition jobs. He said those jobs have heavily influenced his poetry.
"One of the concerns of my writing has been to focus on daily work and its absence from literature," Wayman said.
Wayman said people enjoy reading about the working world because it plays such a huge part of their lives.
"People, if they see their lives reflected, it makes them feel more important," Wayman said. One of the poems he read was, "Factory Time," which described the art of constantly checking the clock, anxiously counting down the minutes until work was over.
Frederick Williams, director of University Honors Program, said the vote to bring Wayman to campus was unanimous. He said he enjoys the poet's clever approach to writing.
"He is one of the most intelligent poets writing today," Williams said. "He is also one of the cleverest."
Wayman said most poetry and fiction neglect the mundane, everyday duties of people's working lives.
"It's pretty central in daily life for most people," Wayman said. "I felt there should be more of that in all the arts.
"The arts always claimed 'you should support us because we tell the human story.' But here's the center of life for most people that just wasn't even there."
Wayman said he has been able to work at various jobs in different locations throughout his life because he never chose family life, giving him more time to write.
Humor is a common theme throughout Wayman's poetry, and he says humor helps people cope.
Wayman has taught at numerous universities throughout the United States and said young writers tend not to read other people's work as much as they should. Instead, they end up trying to "consistently recreate the wheel."
"When someone wants to be a musician, they listen to lots of music and go to lots of concerts," Wayman said. "I think you learn any art by seeing what other people have done."
The lecture series is meant to honor the memory of Charles D. Tenney, who served as the University's vice president and provost from 1952 to 1971.
It has been a tradition for 19 years and gives honor students a chance to meet writers and hear their works read.
"They get to hear poetry read the way it was intended to be read," Williams said.
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