Panoptic
Here is crystallized experience and formal inventiveness from a poet whose work embodies maturity and vitality. He approaches his subject matter from diverse vantage points, employing a variety of lenses to encompass broad vistas, from the Canadian West to travels abroad to the world of work. Though largely autobiographical, there are frequent departures from the first person. Roughly chronological in the order of its sections, Panoptic offers thoughtful accounts of the poet’s early life, and with humour, wit and searching insight goes on to delve into relationships, explore identity and confront mortality.
About The Author
Reviews of this Book
Poignant, intimate, funny, deeply thoughtful and embedded in nature, Tom Gannon Hamilton’s finely crafted poems seek belonging and a sense of place across cultures and within his own life ways, “chasing traces into the cultural sunset” from pre-history to now.
– Ann Elizabeth Carson, author, poet, artist
Maestro Hamilton composes poems with the same musicality, virtuosity and fidelity that he brings to the violin he feels wed to. Like an eagle scanning both earth and sky, he surveys the physical and spiritual landscapes of his life and invites us to share his piercing panoptic vision.
– Donna Langevin, poet and playwright
Tom Gannon Hamilton’s ear naturally merges speech rhythms with metaphor. His poems are musical forms, rich with a conspicuous humanity that cultivates respect for persons, traditions, and the natural world. The poems in Panoptic are magical, shifting shape with every rereading.
– Stanley Fefferman, Professor Emeritus and poet
Thomas Gannon Hamilton’s poetry speaks directly to readers. It trusts them and assumes their understanding. It is compelling because the trust behind his words doesn’t hesitate or over-explain. Sitting on the border between cultures, one still dominant, the other long-lived and natural, he reveals a world that few readers have seen with anything close to understanding.
– Sharon Berg, Big Pond Rumours Press
