Article

Tom Marshall

Published Online February 10, 2008

Last Edited March 7, 2014

Tom Marshall, poet, critic (b at Niagara Falls, Ont 9 Apr 1938). With David HELWIG, Marshall was at the centre of a group of writers active in Kingston, Ontario, where he began teaching at Queen's University in 1964.

Marshall, Tom

Tom Marshall, poet, critic (b at Niagara Falls, Ont 9 Apr 1938). With David HELWIG, Marshall was at the centre of a group of writers active in Kingston, Ontario, where he began teaching at Queen's University in 1964. As a poet, he is known for 4 linked collections (published between 1969 and 1976) of philosophical, meditative verse. The Silences of Fire (1969) is perhaps the best known of these, though all of them are neatly represented in a fifth book, The Elements (1980). He is also the author of 2 novels, Rosemary Gaal (1978), a satire of academic and literary life, and Adele at the End of the Day (1987), as well as other works. Most important critically are The Psychic Mariner: A Reading of the Poems of D.H. Lawrence (1970) and Harsh and Lovely Land (1979), an incisive, insightful survey of contemporary Canadian poets and poetry.