Tom Dawe: Newfoundland's poet laureate

I love poetry, and when done well, it reaches the places that no other literary form can.  But on the written page, even the best poems miss something: the voice of the author.

Here in Newfoundland, this point is demonstrated wonderfully by the work of Tom Dawe.  Reading his poems is thoroughly enjoyable, but to hear him read them is another thing entirely.  The words come alive, the phrases crackle with the energy of his delivery, his bright mind and sharp eye glimmer and sparkle, and everyone in the room is bewitched.

I first heard Tom reading his works at the 2010 Sparks Literary Festival and I immediately went out and purchased his anthology Where Genesis Begins.  I made sure, however, that it was a copy with an accompanying cd, so that I could hear the poems as he meant them to be heard.

This evening, however, I was lucky enough to be at one of Marlene Creates' Boreal Poetry Garden events, where Tom gave a reading in the intimate environs of Marlene's garage. There were 20-odd of us in the room, and we listened with silent reverie as he read poems of the hermit he knows who won't sell his swamp to developers because (quite correctly) a marsh is perfectly well-developed already, and of salmon, and alders, and asters, each one beautiful and thoughtful and delivered with a joy that kept his audience entranced.

Tom is the St John's poet laureate, but to my mind, he is far greater than that.  He should be Newfoundland's poet laureate, and is the sort of writer-performer that the rest of the English-speaking world should be lauding, praising, and most importantly, listening to.  There are precious few of his kind to be found.