Monday, November 12, 2007

OPEN TEXT READING: JEFF DERKSEN

Sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts
& the Creative Writing Concentration at Capilano College



The Fall 2007 OPEN TEXT series at Capilano College continues on November 19th, 2007 with a reading by Vancouver poet and critic Jeff Derksen.

LIBRARY 195 @ 12:30
2055 Purcell Way

North Vancouver

JEFF DERKSEN's first book Downtime (Talon, 1991), received the Dorothy Livesay B.C. Poetry Prize. Other works include Until (Tsunami, 1987), Dwell (Talonbooks, 1993), and Transnational Muscle Cars (Talonbooks, 2003). A founder of the Kootenay School of Writing in Vancouver, Derksen is also a highly regarded critic of globalization, culture and urbanization. He teaches writing and literature at Simon Fraser University.


"Phatic Weather"

I just want
the connection to be
inked in or intruded
on. So I can enter

an individual history
of my group.

The truck driving
beside the bus
appears not to move, mimicking
a model of one culture
viewing another.

Here the light
of heavy industry
doesn't mar the river
as much as it now
makes it.

New. Compensation's body
is a green image, arms
filled with lumber. But production's
miracle is its occurrence, oiling
a century. Our role
is the crisis. Sliding
so I can clarify
a centralized management

in this continuous present
of product, "excess," resource.

A company's head office
puts down roots: "Caring Hands
Extended out to Our Multicultural
Community." The question

of "also" is contextual.


-- from "Dwell" (Talon, 1993)


For info:
Roger Farr
rfarr@capcollege.bc.ca
604.986.1911 (2554)