Young Dawkins is an American-born poet who now lives in Hobart, Tasmania, with his wife and son. His work has been published internationally. He was the 2011 Scottish Slam Poetry Champion and represented that country in the 2011 World Cup of Poetry in Paris, France. Slow Walk Home maps an exploration into the essence of belonging, finally arriving at the rich understanding that home and happiness are destinations we ultimately discover within ourselves and the ones we love.

 

‘Young Dawkins’ work is in the tradition of the Beat poets who used poetry to bear witness to life experience, up-close and raw. These poems testify that he is “one of the people” in that these are poems of humanity in all of its gory glory. These are songs of an intercontinental road trip that braids the eternal elements of a life lived deliberately and passionately: Love and longing, music and misery, regret and respect, endings and arrivals. Arriving home. Stumbling home. Soaring home.’

 

—Tammi J Truax

Portsmouth (USA) Poet Laureate 2019–2021

 

‘A poignant and clever collection both spectral and visceral. Reading the book is like sitting down on a sunny porch looking through a family photo album; seasons change from homes passed through and the poet mixes the picture of the moment with a deeper metaphysic about the universal, something that is illuminated as existing within the mundane and everyday. These pages hold magic because of this tactic, inherent storytelling flair and marination over time.’

 

—Janette Ayachi

 

‘Some of these poems demand to be read aloud, toes tapping – they pulse with life. Others desire solitude, delicious silence—a quiet reading in “the lowering light”. These are poems of people and places, tales to be told, “terrible secrets” to be shared. They are, by turns, unflinching and tender. These poems, “both soft and urgent”, ache, yet are “renewed by fire”, music, language and love.’

 

—Stephanie Conn

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