The Work is Done when we are Dead by Jade Wallace (Guernica Editions 2026)
Work poems. They still seem (or seem more) like a niche concern in the world of Canadian poetry, despite the efforts in British Columbia at least of Tom Wayman who, according to BC Bookworld: "... became a co-founder and prominent member of the Vancouver Industrial Writers’ Union (1979-1993), a group that staged many readings throughout the 1980s at La Quena Coffee House...in East Vancouver. [Wayman] was variously employed at journalism, construction and demolition, while also being a high school marker, a factory assemblyman and a college teacher. (Other members of VIWU included Kate Braid, David Conn, Glen Downie, Kirsten Emmott, Al Grierson, Phil Hall, Zoe Landale, Erin Moure, Sandy Shreve, Pam Tranfield, M.C. Warrior, and Calvin Wharton)." The only other poet I can currently think of whose poetry has engaged with the working world is Edmontonian Alice Major with her mythified The Office Tower Tales from 2008 in which readers meet, " receptionist Aphrodite, Shehera...