Jeff Derksen, Future Works

  

Obsolete cold-war navydolphins write algorithms that design an
app to do the laundry foroveremployed people. 

Dung beetles,decommissioned from nature documentaries,
collectively lugoverweight luggage into the cargo bays of
discount Europeanairlines. 

The bats who took ashort-term contract to patrol a new condo
construction site atnight to thwart theft from “the midnight
lumberyard” are injuredwhen the beam they hang on to take
their break collapses. 

Metallica replaces theirdrummer with an octopus from Vigo,
Spain, who learned heavymetal on the sides of ships they
once riveted on the waterfront. 

Acrobatic barn swallowsdust the penthouses of oligarchs,
poetically catching eachmote in the air. 

Turf wars break outbetween European and Chinese praying
mantids; the deadlysquabbles end through negotiations by
unemployed European parliamentarianswho lost their jobs
when elected politicalpositions were opened to all species.
                   (“MORE THANHUMAN LABOUR”)

Verygood to see a copy of Future Works (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2025), thelatest poetry title by Jeff Derksen, a poet, critic and professor who currentlydivides his time between Vancouver and Vienna, Austria, and who emerged acrossthose heady days of 1970s and 80s language-exploration through and around The Kootenay School of Writing (originating in Nelson, British Columbia’s David ThompsonUniversity Centre, relocating to Vancouver when the government shut DavidThompson down in 1984), blending language experimentation with and throughsocial and political commentary. Following poetry titles including Until (1987), Down Time (Talonbooks, 1989), Dwell (Talonbooks, 1994), Transnational Muscle Cars (Talonbooks, 2003) and The Vestiges (2014) [see my review of such here], Derksen’s Future Works offers a heft of referencesand lines and commentaries stitched together as a rush of a shape, a coherentmass of accumulated texts that form the structure of his poems. “Ants closedown the North American banking system with / a highly coordinated strike on ATMs:over New Year’s Eve, / individual bills are carried out of the machines,” hewrites, as part of the extended opening poem, “MORE THAN HUMAN LABOUR,” “moved along/ predetermined routes, and stashed in complex underground / networks. Two antsare captured but refuse to five up their / comrades. In solidarity, they eateach other.” More power in union, one might say.

Publishedmore than a decade after his prior collection, Future Works is assembledwith an opening selection of poems that take up two-thirds or so of the book,as well as a second section of poems, titled “URBAN TREES.” There’s playfulnessto Derksen’s serious poems, one with a wry glance across what might otherwise seemserious, dark or even absurd. “I was working in a gas station,” the prose piece“MY SHORT NOVEL” begins, “a greenhouse, in delivery, in gardening, in editing,in teaching, in administration. The weather has a new name and it is no longeradorable.” The distance of time since his prior collection was published offersa slightly different perspective on his ongoing work, providing a reminder at justhow much the structure and poetics of Canadian (Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto,Edmonton, Calgary) poet ryan fitzpatrick’s work really has evolved and beeninfluenced by poets such as Jeff Derksen [see my review of ryan fitzpatrick’s latest collection here], both poets presenting moments and meaning through thecontext and collision of moments and references into and across each other; howideas of capital, labour, language and capitalism relate and interrelate acrosslayerings and collage of direct statements. “My hard edge paintings / are alist / of demands,” begins Derksen’s poem “MY HARD EDGE PAINTINGS, a poem subtitled“after Pierre Coupey,” “or plans where colour / rushes into / ourkinetic future / on a hard-to-observe land / to so-called light / upon in theshadows / under the cover / of canvas, an advance / like walking out / into thecity [.]” There is a curious way that Derksen’s approach engages ethics andperspective, offering an alternate way of realizing the lyric, one that speaksof late capitalism and global war zones, future climate catastrophes andcontemplative wit across what might otherwise appear as a collage ofreferences, laid end to end, built to produce something far larger and ongoing.“or the most beautiful thing / may be the space you make / it as you imagine it/ conceived built inhabited altered,” he writes, to close the poem “THE MOST BEAUTIFULTHING,” “by an encounter that swerves / to what is possible / an act an action/ an unscripted learning [.]”