In addition, Hawkins became known for hosting and participating in poetry readings by major Canadian poets of the time, including Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, Louis Dudek, Raymond Souster, Gwendolyn MacEwan, Jacques Godbout and John Robert Colombo.

In addition to Hawkins, band members included Sneezy Waters, Sandy Crawley and Neville Wells and, in later versions, Bruce Cockburn, David Wiffen and Richard Patterson.

[2] The band developed a local prominence as resident performers at Le Hibou Coffee House, in which Glatt had an economic interest and which Hawkins and his then wife later managed.

While they never released a record,[4] within months of their formation The Children were playing Maple Leaf Gardens, in Toronto, as an opening act for The Lovin' Spoonful.

His songs were also covered by other artists, such as Tom Rush, who recorded a version of "Gnostic Serenade" on his Wrong End of the Rainbow album (1970).

After a period of time in the Donwood Institute in the early 1970s, for treatment for alcohol abuse, Hawkins largely withdrew from songwriting and published poetry.

The artists contributing to the tribute album included Bruce Cockburn, Sandy Crawley, Mike Evin, Terry Gillespie, Murray McLauchlan, Lynn Miles, Ana Miura, Bill Stevenson, Ian Tamblyn, Brent Titcomb, Suzie Vinnick, Sneezy Waters, Anne Davison and Neville Wells.

This was the first publication of the poems as a separate book; they had previously been included in a 1980 anthology edited by Patrick White, poet and founder of Anthos Press.

In 2015, Chaudière Books published The Collected Poems of William Hawkins, edited and with a comprehensive introduction by Cameron Anstee.