World Enough Writers Author: Thomas A. Thomas
Thomas A. Thomas, born in Illinois to a medical doctor mother and a ballet dancer father, spent a lot of time off by himself in the woods, prairies, and fields, day and night, in all seasons. From the age of two years, he would not see or hear from his father for another forty-two years. That’s a story for another time.
Thomas found his way to the honors program at the University of Michigan, where he completed a bachelor’s degree of his own design. At UM, he studied with Donald Hall, Gregory Orr, and workshopped some poems with Robert Bly. He won Minor and Major Hopwood Awards in Poetry, and his poem “Approaching Here” was choreographed and performed at UM.
Thomas also got a dream job as Detroit Correspondent for a rock ’n’ roll and jazz magazine out of St. Louis, called Concert News, interviewing members of many bands of the 1970s.
After a couple of years of madness in New York City, he found his way to the Pacific Northwest, where he has made his home since 1981. He is now delighted to be a board member for the Olympia Poetry Network and to be active in numerous online poetry and photography groups.
His poems, photos, and videos appear in print and online, most recently in MacQueen’s Quinterly and FemAsia Magazine, as well as in Verse Daily, Gyroscope Review, Blue Heron Review, Cirque Journal, Vox Populi Sphere, and The Banyan Review. He has been included in numerous anthologies in English and in translation to Spanish, Serbian, and Bengali. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for individual poems since 2022, and his collection My Heart Is Not Asleep, June 2024, was a Finalist in the Washington State Book Awards, 2025.
This collection of poems regards the broad experience of his life, before, during, and after losing his wife to early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
Poem from Reverence
I Want an Orchard
It should be someplace old and dry and only goats shall tend it, but it should be irresistibly beautiful, so a lover would not imagine disappointing me with a no or an I haven’t the time when I invite her to lunch under the cherry trees, in spring or in summer. There will be deep red in places, as she wishes. Perhaps tulips, poppies, gladiolus each in season, and if she says what her eyes and nostrils hunger for, and if it is roses, we will find them along a stone wall where goats rest in the shade of pear trees, and a perfect breath of air touches, and we shall be satisfied.
