My Father's Cup

Shortlisted for the 2003 Governor General''s Award for Poetry.

For almost thirty years, poet Tom Wayman has celebrated the language of everyday life and work. Praised for his wit, sensuality and conversational style, Wayman can weave the mundane with the mysterious and shed new light on both.

In his latest collection, My Father''s Cup, Wayman examines the conflicting emotions that arise when a parent dies, when faith withers, when awareness of one''s own mortality grows. But this book is as light as it is serious, and Wayman''s fans will be pleased to see that the "guru of the work poetry movement" continues to dissect aspects of our work-obsessed culture with insight and humour.

As a careful observer of people, nature and relationships, Wayman has a seemingly effortless ability to take his readers scrambling up steep mountains, through union negotiations, to funerals and into lovers'' bedrooms. He also has a rare gift for weaving science and philosophy into engaging poems, sharing epiphanies while posing intriguing questions.