Contributed papers at a writers' workshop held in Calcutta, West Bengal.

ABOUT THE BOOK Dawn On My Mind is a collection of poems through which the author seeks to hold a reasoning with you, the reader. Williams shares his thoughts about life and living in a way that is simple, generous and honest. The range of subjects that he broaches is diverse; nature, life, humour, romance are a few and the pieces are captivating from start to finish. The use of literary devices is quite successful as they creatively express what is on his mind. The simple style but deep message that each poem conveys, work well, as they do not lend themselves to over-interpretation. Part One, titled, Thoughts of Power, helps you reaffirm your purpose for living. Part Two, called Perspectives, is quite thought-provoking with a clever play on words which stimulates you to derive an understanding based on your own perspective on the subject(s). This section includes Dawn On My Mind, the must-read title poem. Truth be told, the ideas, Williams admits, are not new but they are cleverly expressed and will make you go, wow!

This long-overdue collection, which gathers together more than two hundred poems written over a span of six decades, along with an extended biographical analysis by Fred Whitehead, permits a comprehensive assessment of the work of a man Thomas McGrath described as "one of the very best of the revolutionary poets." Don Gordon made his name in the 1930s as a passionate and outspoken political poet, his work being published in the most prestigious American journals. In spite of his growing literary reputation he was called before the Un-American Activities Committee of the U.S. House or Representatives in September, 1951. Due to his openly communist views and his reluctance to give the committee names of fellow radical writers, Gordon was blacklisted from employment in the film industry. He devoted his time to writing poems, despite the difficulty of finding a wide audience for them. Many of Gordon's poems are suffused with themes of revolution and political activism, but this collection showcases the breadth of the subjects he addressed in his sixty years of writing, expressed with a rigorous aesthetic sensibility in a style that incorporates diverse influences, including modernism and surrealism. "Don Gordon is great," Meridel LeSueur wrote, "because he shows the vigorous and wondrous strength of the people." With this complete collection of his poems, readers can at last experience the full range of this vigorous and challenging writer.

The volume offers a full sampling of Pratt's poems chosen both for their representativeness and for their intrinsic value.