Thematic consistency and technical inventiveness shine in this selection of Derk Wynand’s emotionally intelligent poetry.
Derk Wynand began to publish a cohesive body of work in the 1970s. Though his poems touch on aspects of daily life both public and private, Wynand is essentially a love poet dedicated to exploring all aspects of his theme: from initial attraction and sustained eroticism, the anxieties and constancies of gradually negotiated connection, the satisfying longueurs of fidelity, to the pleasures of the seemingly timeless domestic moment. A poet of sentiment rather than of sentimentality, he tests the mettle of his vocation in his nimble, unruffled handling of point of view and the poetic line. Whether Wynand sets his poetry in the snows of European folklore, the sunny climes of Portugal and Mexico or the rains of British Columbia, he adroitly maps the inscape of the human heart.
The Essential Poets Series presents the works of Canada’s most celebrated poets in a package that is beautiful, accessible and affordable. The Essential Derk Wynand is the twenty-first volume in the increasingly popular series.