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TOM SHEEHAN

THOMAS F. SHEEHAN   (1928 -     )   is the consummate local poet. Beginning with The Saugus Book (Francestown NH: Golden Quill Press 1984), and continuing with poems about, among other locations, Lynn Woods and Nahant, Sheehan has consistently written poetry about places in Essex County. He is a lifelong Saugus resident, a graduate of Boston College, and served as a war correspondent during the Korean War. Since his retirement from Raytheon in 1990, he has devoted himself to his writing, winning prizes for his short fiction and nonfiction and garnering eighteen Pushcart Prize nominations. He has also edited A Gathering of Memories: Saugus 1900 – 2000 and its sequel Time and the River. Master of many genres of writing, Tom Sheehan has for years used the Internet to effectively attract new readers to his work. To see, go to: www.press53.com. Recently Korean Echoes (poems) and The Westering (short stories) have become available from MilSpeak Books, a non-profit independent literary publisher of electronic books written by military people. To learn more, go to: www.milspeak.org.

In 2000, Tom Sheehan read "Cold Night Thoughts Beside an Empty Cave in the Lynn Woods" as part of the Celebration of the Poetry of the Lynn Woods cosponsored by the Lynn Museum, The Friends of the Lynn Woods and North Shore Community College.  The poem shows the deeply personal way Sheehan experiences the woods. It appears in a revised version as "Cold Night Thoughts Beside an Empty Cave" in his 2003 poetry collection This Rare Earth and Other Flights (Fallbrook CA: Lil Pot Press).

Hear and see Tom Sheehan recite his poem Sleeping Under Pines in Lynn Woods