Review by: Patrick Langston
Decades later, poet's talent still shines:
New work by Hawkins festival's highlight so far
Friday, April 22, 2005
In the end, it's the poems that speak.
And they did, eloquently, when fugitive Ottawa poet William Hawkins launched his first book in three decades, Dancing Alone: Selected Poems from Broken Jaw Press, at the Ottawa International Writers Festival Spring Edition at Library and Archives Canada.
Predicted to be the festival's highlight (and to date it is), the event, like Hawkins's poems, ricocheted from funny to poignant to unexpectedly bracing.
Simmering beneath the evening's surface was nostalgia for the 1960s, when Hawkins was a prime mover on Ottawa's music and poetry scene before becoming an invisible Blue Line cabbie in the mid-'70s. But Wednesday's launch was just too much darn fun for any serious wallowing.
"I don't think Billy realized he had so many friends and admirers," said Perth author Roy MacSkimming, who wrote the introduction to Dancing Alone and kicked off the night with a few words about "a living Ottawa legend."
Those friends included Sandy Crawley, Sneezy Waters and Neville Wells. Now decidedly grey-haired, the three were members of the Children, a 1960s Ottawa band for which Hawkins wrote and sometimes sang.
A little ragged (they haven't performed together in several years) but superbly right, the trio played a dozen-odd tunes, mostly Hawkins originals, from the old days. Included were Louis Riel, about power and an indelible injustice, Gnostic Serenade, a meditation on our reach always exceeding our grasp, and Misunderstanding, a plea to get laid.
Hawkins, watching from the wings, "was really digging it," Waters reported later. So were the 300 or so folks in the audience, who required no prompting to jump in on either chorus or verse.
Bruce Cockburn, who once played with the Children, came sans guitar to the launch, choosing instead for his contribution to read the preface he wrote for Dancing Alone. It was Hawkins, he explained, who encouraged him to begin writing his own lyrics, rather than just setting Hawkins's poetry to music.
Audience anticipation high, the man himself finally appeared.
Hawkins, stoop-shouldered and low-key, read from the new book, which includes both new and older pieces but whose genesis, after Hawkins's extended vanishing act, has yet to be explained. The occasional sparkle in his eyes was the only indication of how much Hawkins was actually enjoying the whole affair.
Postage Stamp, King Kong Goes to Rotterdam ("I wrote this when Kent Street still had two-way traffic," he said), Spring Rain and a slew of others: Hawkins's spare, often dark yet affirming poems root around events large and small, from JFK's assassination to drinking in Mexican bars.
Sure, death is the ultimate victor they acknowledge, but why not taunt him with our small share of dignity and a little irreverence in the interim?
Hawkins, now 64, reads well.
Interspersing his poems with a few reminiscences of his pre-cabbie life, he allowed his work its own voice, keeping both inflection and gesture restrained.
The poems responded vigorously, especially Sunrise, the evening's closing piece. "I'm getting older now and I'm losing a lot of friends," Hawkins said as he introduced the poem. Its cautiously optimistic refrain, "Day break me a day of no regret," said all we needed to hear about Hawkins's present and future.
Ottawa International Writers Festival
© The Ottawa Citizen 2005
