Sun, Oct 20
|Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse
Honoring Tom Crawford, Be Broken to Be Whole: New and Selected Poems
A reading presented by writers and actors Dan Bohnhorst and Jonathan Harrell, who both knew Tom and admire his work.
Date, Time & Location
Oct 20, 2024, 4:30 PM MDT
Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse, 202 Galisteo St, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA
About the Event
This will be an in-store event and live streamed to Zoom, please register for Zoom here.
Order Be Broken to Be Whole (paperback, $20) by calling the store to order (505) 988-4226.
Be Broken to Be Whole is edited by Mary A. Judge with a foreword by David James Duncan.
Be Broken to Be Whole is a wide-ranging selection of one hundred poems from Tom’s nine published books, and includes work previously unpublished or only previously available in journals and anthologies. The poems chosen are playful, sad, and wise, exploring love and grief, revelation, relationships of all kinds, what is marvelous and what is not; the America we were told we lived in and the America that is. Many bird poems are included, as well as poems concerned with the natural world in peril. It is a book that’s mindful of the challenging times we’re living in today.
Tom’s writing expressed an exquisite attunement to all that was alive, and to another way of knowing. A refined sensibility honed by years of life experience, quiet reflection, and a healthy sense of humor. An Eastern sensibility threads through his work, influenced by Asian poetry and spiritual texts as well as years living in China and South Korea.
About Tom Crawford
Tom Crawford was the author of nine books of poetry, including Lauds, The Temple on Monday, and The Names of Birds. He was the recipient of the Pushcart Prize, the Foreword Book of the Year Award, and the Oregon Book Award for Poetry, among others, and Fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.
His work has been widely published in journals and anthologies – among them, Catamaran Literary Reader, Orion, Poetry East and Hubbub. Tom was a birder, a contemplative, an activist, and an enthusiast whose writing, infused with Eastern thought and a sense of mysticism, explored the natural world and our complex connection to it.
Born in Flint, Michigan, he grew up in the Kern Valley, California. He joined the Navy at 17, was educated at Sacramento State University, and lectured and taught at colleges and universities throughout the western U.S., in China, and for six years in South Korea. He spent many years living in the Pacific Northwest and was a resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico for 13 years.