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David Joseph Dowker was in his 70th year when he died on 5SE in North York General on March 24, 2025, subsequent to a fall. The staff wanted to know if I was family, and I would say, without emphasis, that I was his ‘oldest surviving friend’. The 17th was the day they called me and put the phone in Dave’s hand. They knew he was dying, although it seems now that Dave did not.
The most skilled poet I ever knew had been reduced to monosyllables, and he could no longer enunciate. The phone cut out after two minutes. It was clear that would be our last contact; it was a blessing to know it was coming, for I was as prepared as I could be.
He had a premier sound system and collected music. Everywhere he lived, the floor would groan under the weight of his book collection, which was gobsmacking in its breadth and erudition.
I saw Amy Clampitt read at Harbourfront because of him. I read Paul Blackburn because of him, and wrote my first long poem, ‘In Colours Unsuspected’ for Blackburn, because of Dave. Dave wrote like a Tolkien dwarf hammering out one precise blow a day; I’m prolix. Dave, without saying much, pruned words and fixed my line lengths and modelled consistency in punctuation. He encouraged me to read things aloud. His unflagging support and refined criticism helped me to progress as a writer.
The last time I visited was in 2017, the year the beautiful, kind and accomplished Joanne Volk died abruptly of cancer, after being misdiagnosed for a year. He was profoundly depressed after losing his life-partner, and immobilized by it. He himself was diagnosed with a blood disorder, which was a contributing factor in his death, and he endured treatment and malaise with fortitude and few complaints.
In later life he was published by Book*hug and his work appeared in various journals.
If you’ve read this far, you’re likely a poet. Please make a will and think about what you want to have happen with your works – your creative legacy – and your books – the ideas which allowed you to make such a legacy – after you die. And if you have pets, make provision for them too, because re-homing Pippin from 3200 km away was a challenge.
There’s a photo from the 90s from Now Magazine showing poets at a reading in Toronto. The poet reading has his pants around his ankles; Dave, holding a beer, has his back to the camera.
Brain pan hammered into a pure sound. Thrust
into the big and baffling without benefit of
a parachute. Who charts the scatter pattern?
Present carbon configuration fragile but necessary.
Postulate a homunculus at the base of the spine
or a dormant virus whose period of hibernation
ends at death.
David Joseph Dowker, from ‘Machine Language’
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Born in western Mi'kma'ki in 1958, settled in S'ólh Téméxw since 1996, Allegra Sloman works across a broad range of word forms, including written correspondence with friends and family, delivering homilies for Unitarian services, ranting, poetry, an online word generator called the 'thousand sided dice', a conlang called ‘bih-bah’ based on the sounds basketballs make going through hoops, SF tetralogies, bluesky skeets, open letters, teaching a cat English (30 words and counting), songwriting (folk, filk, setting Yeats to music), stand-up comedy, essays, a weekly newsletter, half a million words of fanfic, parody, and short stories.