Tom Wayman sees his Governor-General's nomination as a tribute to work-based writing. For almost thirty years, Calgary poet Tom Wayman has celebrated the language of everyday life and work. Now, he is celebrating his status as a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry. For Wayman, the recognition is cumulative, and it honours not only his poetry but also the theme of his work itself. "For three decades, a major focus of my poems and of my other literary endeavors-anthologies I have edited and books of essays I have written-has been daily work, the experience that shapes our lives both on and off the job," he comments. "I can't help but feel that my presence on the shortlist honours all the work-based writers who along with me over the years have struggled to show that daily work is as vital a part of the human story as the traditional themes of English-language poetry: nature, death, love." Released last fall, My Father's Cup deals with all of these themes, including the death of Wayman's parents. Other poems in the book are love poems, and still others explore what Wayman has learned about mortality living closer to the natural world in the Selkirk Mountains of the West Kootenays for the past 14 years. -- Harbour Publishing