Longlisted for the 2008 ReLit Award for Poetry

High Speed Through Shoaling Water incorporates the beauty of the rural landscape with the strangeness of living in today's world. These deceptively simple poems cover rural life, social issues, love's vicissitudes, aging and the writing life. Throughout the book,
Wayman interweaves reflections on the landscape of world and work with musings on personal and communal history.

High Speed Through Shoaling Water is both celebratory and elegiac, personal and political--recording the passage of time, the events that mark the years and the biological force that bears all living things forward, whether they want to travel that way or not.

Tom Wayman's profile page

"Tom Wayman's book, high speed through shoaling water, is almost redolent with the warm sultry aroma of pine pitch and the sounds of the wind rustling the alder leaves...one dips in and out of its pages at random and, in doing so, finds gems lurking beneath the surface"
--Bronwen Welch, Victoria Times-Colonist

"This collection is a gem. I won't be putting it on my bookshelf any time soon. It'll be on my desk, or in my bag, or carried in sweaty hands pressed against my journal. It'll be damaged by travel, tattered and splashed with coffee, but it will be very well loved. Highly recommended."
--Thomas Trofimuk, Alberta Views

Praise for <i>High Speed Through Shoaling Water </i>

"high speed through shoaling water is a rich and varied collection, with enough gems to keep us reading and wanting more from Wayman, who has certainly reached a peak in his performance as a recognized Canadian poet."
--Gillian Harding-Russell, Prairiefire