Dancing Alone: Selected Poems
by William Hawkins
Category: Poetry

The poems in Dancing Alone are drawn from the six small-press classics, all out of print, that William Hawkins published between 1964 and 1974 plus some new poems. A contemporary of George Bowering, Victor Coleman and Michael Ondaatje, Hawkins appeared in Raymond Souster's landmark anthology New Wave Canada and in Oxford's Modern Canadian Verse, where editor A.J.M. Smith positioned him between Margaret Atwood and Gwendolyn MacEwen. Readers will discover in Hawkins' work an inimitably haunting poetic voice. Hawkins was also the central figure of a richly creative Ottawa-based music scene. His fugitive pickup bands included Bruce Cockburn, David Wiffen, Colleen Peterson, Amos Garrett, Darius Brubeck and Sneezy Waters. Hawkins calls himself "a semi-retired hard rocker and high roller."