Paperwork: An Anthology

Most North Americans spend more than half of their waking hours at work, yet in our surrounding culture - television, movies, news media, schools, advertising and fine arts - there are few honest depictions of our daily working lives.

List of contents

CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION: Visible Consequences, Invisible Jobs

INVOCATION: "YOU CAN KEEP YOUR POETRY"
Bill Hastings Todd Jailer

CORNCOBS ON THE SLAG ROAD
Slab on Grade Clem Starck
Me and Maloney Clem Starck
Dismantling Clem Starck
Journeyman's Wages Clem Starck
Concrete Fever Kate Braid
Recipe for a Sidewalk Kate Braid
On the Edge Brad Barber
Connecticut Zen David McKain
Unlike Napoleon Joseph Maviglia
First Job Joseph Maviglia
Portuguese John Joseph Maviglia
Work Season Joseph Maviglia
Inverno (Winter) Joseph Maviglia
The Ghost in the Gears Howard White
Watching Wheels Jim McLean
By Moonlight Jim McLean
Klik Jim McLean
I Don't Write Poems for Railroaders Jim McLean
Throwing a Shoe Todd Jailer
Motto of the Line Crews Todd Jailer
I'm Driving Todd Jailer
In Loco Citato Timothy Russell
Walhalla, North Dakota William Borden
Rippin' With the "8" Frank Cross
On Hearing That Ezra Becker Was Killed While Plowing Craig Challender
Night Harvesting Richard Holinger
Harvest at Night Janet Kauffman
Hands Linda Hasselstrom
Salvage Grain David Lee
Racehogs David Lee
A Day of Mourning, 24 November '75 David Lee
The Hay Swather David Lee
The Farm David Lee
Some Things Work Stephen Lewandowski
I'm So Lonesome in the Saddle Since My Horse Died Sid Marty
Dangerous Work Peter Christensen
Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening Peter Christensen
Swamp King Sid Marty
Fire Storm on Mount Whymper Jim Green
We Come To Ask for Your Bones Mike O'Connor
The Finishing Peter Trower
Collision Course Peter Trower
Goosequill Snags Peter Trower
Trimming the Tree David McKain
Power Line Andrew Wreggitt
Slow Learner Bruce Hunier
Chiff Factor Bruce Hunier
Treeplanting in the Rain Jim Dodge
Convoy Tim McNulty
The Cooksweat and the Mechanic Dymphny Koenig-Clement
Recurring Nightmares Dymphny Koenig-Clement
Madonna Dymphny Koenig-Clement
Banting Today in Afternoon Heat Robert MacLean
Today a Wasp Crawled into My Bellybutton Robert MacLean
On My Tenth Anniversary as a Treeplanter Finn Wilcox
Dirt Work Stephen Lewandowski
They Dream of Being Gardeners Bruce Hunier
Billy No Longer the Kid Bruce Hunier
Tiresias II Howard White
West Coast Zoe Landale
The 1982 Purse Seine Roe Herring Fishery M.C. Warrior
Deep Lining Carolyn Borsman
Halibut Douglas Dobyns
Seppo Carolyn Borsman
Vancouver Harbor Carolyn Borsman
The Fisherman and the Logger Howard White

SOMETHING THEY CLAIM CAN'T BE MADE
First Day on a New Jobsite Susan Eisenberg
Through the Ceiling, Maiden Voyage Susan Eisenberg
'Girl' on the Crew Kate Braid
These Hips Kate Braid
Hanging In, Solo Susan Eisenberg
They Said Women Always Quit Donna Langston
Factory Girls Joni Miller
The Women's Committee Leona Gom
Waiting Leona Gom
Quilting Bee Sandy Shreve
Cavities Leona Gom

PIECE BY PIECE YOU DELIVER YOURSELF
Adjustment 1: Shifting Piles Lesléa Newman
Secretary 1 Mickey Bickerstaff
Meditation on a Typo Catherine Shaw
Resignation Catherine Shaw
Secretary Miriam Goodman
Xerox Miriam Goodman
Cafeteria Miriam Goodman
Sanctuary Catherine Shaw
Companion Sandy Shreve
Computer Lab Miriam Goodman
Death of a Computer Operator Richard Grossman
Manuai Action 1 Pam Tranfield
Have You Ever Considered... Susan Meurer
Back in the Shop Susan Meurer
Once When I Was a Bank Clerk Glen Sorestad
Tech Writer Roger Taus
The Book Truck Sandy Shreve
Elm Nick Muska
Forklift Poem/Winter Nick Muska
Why It's Called a Warehouse Nick Muska
Two Years Nick Muska
What Happened Nick Muska
Friendly World of Receiving Ronald Kurt
Productivity Ronald Kurt
Layoff Ronald Kurt
Dispatcher Sawdust Ken Rivard
from When the Moving Company is Scholarly: 4. Ken Rivard
Mistake Ken Rivard
Hearth of Darkness Calvin Wharton
Sisters of the Garden Gerald Hill
Ice Gerald Hill
Waitress Alissa Levine
There's Something Wrong with my Soup Mark McCawley
Busboy and Waitress: Cashing Out Jim Daniels
Adieu Marjorie Marks
Deli Suzan Milburn
Public Relations: Delayed Train Erin Mouré
Not a Train Erin Mouré
I Don't Panic Stop for (Ding) Bells Brian Pratt
Schedules Brian Pratt
To Prove Him Wrong Brian Pratt
Teardrops on the Road Brian Pratt
Roller Coaster Brian Pratt
Their Dispatch David Beaver
Our Dispatch David Beaver
The Brotherhood David Beaver
The Postman Sadhu Binning
Tools of my Trade Sue Silvermarie
Federal Offense Sue Silvermarie
After All Sue Silvermarie
Standards Sue Silvermarie
from Ever Took Me Seriously as a CPR Cop Ken Rivard
Flying the Night Freight Robert Garrison
Working Alone Andrew Vaisius
Joyce Josephson Kirsten Emmou
No Fear of Blood Kirsten Emmou
Junkie/Mother Kirsten Emmon
Job Description Alicia Priest
Working While Others Sleep Alicia Priest
The Unconscious Patient Alicia Priest
Seeing Lazarus Alicia Priest
Reading the Entrails Glen Downie
Grieving Glen Downie
Louise Glen Downie
Prosthetics Glen Downie
Mr. Petrie Phil Hall
Answers Kirsten Emmott
Newborn Zoe Landale
Ravaged: A Love Poem Mary di Michele
"Who Looks After Your Kids?" Kirsten Emmott
Fear of Failure Dale Zieroth
The Death of the Violin Dale Zieroth
Grade Nine Evelyn Grayson
On Being Teacher Rep in the Student Swimathon Robert Currie
from The Chalkboard Poems: The Magnates Glen Sorestad
from The Chalkboard Poems. The Carp Glen Sorestad
from The Chalkboard Poems: Moonfighter Glen Sorestad
from The Chalkboard Poems: Efficiency Expert Glen Sorestad
College Ron Miles
Students Tom Wayman
Marking Tom Wayman
Show Jim Daniels
For Kirsten Emmott, Doctor & Poet Phil Hall
The Aging Flight Instructor Braces - Not Unnoticeably - for a Bad Landing by an Energetic Student Bob Garrison
Door to Door for a Tenant's Union David McKain

THE WORK OF LOOKING FOR WORK
Warningsigns Susan Eisenberg
from Job Wrung Poems: 4. Penny Pixler
E-Way Counter Leon E. Chamberlain
Endako Shutdown Andrew Wreggitt
The Work of Looking for Work M.R. Appell
Nobody's Heroes M.R. Appell
Getting It Up M.R. Appell
The Panama Canal Clem Starck
The Myth of the Self-Made Man Zoï¿¿ Landale
Lay of the Long-Lived Leftovers Zoï¿¿ Landale
Mea Culpa Zoï¿¿ Landale
Lotteries Jamie Pearson
Job Placement Board Pam Tranfield

DEAR FOREMAN
Steel Edges Calvin Wharton
The Horn Blow Jeff Tagami
from Factory: II Antler
from Factory: IV Antler
The Coil Winder Sue Dora
Earl's Poems: 1 and 3 Sue Doro
You Can't Go Back to Work in the Middle of a Card Game Sue Doro
Doris's Poem Sue Doro
Factory Education Jim Daniels
Timers Jim Daniels
Signing Jim Daniels
Killbuck: A Poem for Grinders Richard Stansberger
The Sound: Factory System Poem Tom Wayman
Walking Papers Andrew Wreggitt
God Helps Those Jeff Poniewas
A-7 Crib Leon E. Chamberlain
Visions Leon E. Chamberlain
Song, Endako Andrew Wreggitt
Dear Foreman John Morton
Slime Warning John Morton
Boiler Lancer John Morton
Pin-boy John Morton
The Sintering Plant John Morton
Graveyard Shift Peter Trower
In Toto Timothy Russell Wiredraw Jeff Friedman
Asbestos Susan Eisenberg
Choice Cut-Up Chicken David Everest
How to Dress a Salmon Michael B. Turner
The Washers'Il Wash It Michael B. Turner
7:59 A.M. Michael B. Turner
Rat Hole Calvin Wharton
In July '86 I Gave Notice at my Proofreading Job in Toronto. . . Phil Hall
Herring Season David Conn
Welders' Time David Conn
Some Kind of Bonus David Conn
Song of the Hammer David Conn
False Creek David Conn

CALLING YOU ON MY BREAK
Class Conscious Kate Braid
Midnight Date Jim Daniels
Nightwatch M.C. Warrior
Billy Lyn Ferlo
Empty Bed Blues Kirsten Emmou
Trying to Turn a Bad Thing into Good Sue Doro
Post Mortem Sandy Shreve
Ext. 282 Phil Hall
Earth Clings to the Roots Pat Erwin
Salyer Perspective Leona Gom
Stolen Sunday Sue Silvermarie
Time and a Half Todd Jailer
As in the Beginning Mary di Michele
My Young Brother Don Howard White
Youngest in Canada Andrew Wreggitt

WHEN THEY PUSH THE BUTTONS TO RISE
My Job Michael B. Turner
Traitor Jim McLean
How Clayton Got to be Foreman Bruce Severy
This is my New Job Chip Goodrich
The Administrator's Office Jean Flanagan
Committee Theory Richard Grossman
The Corner Office Richard Grossman
Climbing Richard Grossman
Business Tao Richard Grossman
Speaking in Tongues R.W. Sandford
Day One: 9:15 A.M. R. W. Sandford
Day Three: Application Class Two From Prison R.W. Sandford
Day Three: Training R. W. Sandford
Day Ten: A Resignation Letter R.W. Sandford
Graig's Talk Erin Mouré
Broadview Erin Mouré
The Department Head Gerald Hill
Management Gerald Hill

LESS LIKE ANTS
Worker Classificaton: Material Handler Glen Downie
Paper, Scissors, Stone Tom Wayman
Ontario Equal Pay Rally & Celebration Gwen Hauser
E = MC2 (Pay Day) Gwen Hauser
The Big Theft Tom Wayman
Closure Susan Meurer
Health and Safety Susan Meurer
To a Worker Never Known Susan Meurer
Grievance Procedure Sandy Shreve
The Grievance Rhona McAdam
Sorry I'm Late Pam Tranfield
Politics of View Siephen Lewandowski
Has Anyone Seen the Working Class? Howard White
The Unofficial Report Dale Hall
At the Grand Opening Brett Enemark
In the Brief Intervals Between their Struggles Our People Dream Erin Mouré
The Truckdriver Howard White
O The Lions of Fire. . . Roger Taus
Blue Collar Goodbyes Sue Doro
Margaret's Party Jeni Miller
Icon in Rye Bruce Hunter
Retake the City Robert Carson
It's All Our Fault AI Grierson
The Way I Figure It Antler
Written After Learning Slaves in Ancient Greece and Rome had 115 Holidays a Year Antler
Zero-Hour Day Zero-Day Workweek Antler
And You Know It Sadhu Binning
Rhetoric Dale Zieroth
Our Negotiator Speaks to Theirs Dale Zieroth
Caught in the News Dale Zieroth
November Leona Gom
CONTRIBUTORS

About the author

Tom Wayman was born in Ontario in 1945, but has spent most of his life in British Columbia. He has worked at a number of jobs, both blue and white-collar, across Canada and the U.S., and has helped bring into being a new movement of poetry in these countries--the incorporation of the actual conditions and effects of daily work. His poetry has been awarded the Canadian Authors' Association medal for poetry, the A.J.M. Smith Prize, first prize in the USA Bicentennial Poetry Awards competition, and the Acorn-Plantos Award; in 2003 he was shortlisted for the Governor-General's Literary Award. He has published more than a dozen collections of poems, six poetry anthologies, three collections of essays and three books of prose fiction. He has taught widely at the post-secondary level in Canada and the U.S., most recently (2002-2010) at the University of Calgary. Since 1989 he has been the Squire of "Appledore," his estate in the Selkirk Mountains of southeastern BC.

Summary

Paperwork, a provocative sampling of the best new work writing in North America, breaks this taboo. These poems are written by people who build houses and machines, catch fish, take care of children, manage companies, work hard at looking for work, and much more. The writing is funny and tough and sad and angry, and the poems come from insiders - men and women who work for a living.

Praise for Going for Coffee, Tom Wayman's first anthology of work poetry (1981):

"Going for Coffee has a freshness that kept me going through it ... The poems are funny, or horrifying, or just as truthful in some unsuspected way."
-Robert Fulford, Toronto Star

"For me, the work writing fills a large gap in literacy education ... it provides the richness of the human experience in the language of working people, and does so in a rich array of voices - exultant, sorrowful, angry, wry."
-Stephanie Smith, former director, Reading for Life Adult Literacy Program, Watsonville, California

Foreword

Visible Consequences, Invisible Jobs

We live in a society that hides from itself the basis of its existence. North American culture - high and low, popular or elitist - presents almost nowhere the realities of daily work. This collection of poems thus is a light turned on what our society wraps in darkness: the humour, sadness, joy, anger and all the other emotions that accompany our participation in the workforce.

Our jobs form the central and governing core of our lives. Our daily work - be it blue or white collar, paid or unpaid - determines or strongly influences our standard of living, who our friends are, how much time and energy we have left to spend off the job. Our employment determines or strongly influences where we live and what our attitudes are to an enormous range of events, people, objects, environments. No other activity in daily life has more personal consequences for us than the work we do (or are looking for).

Our jobs also re-create each day every aspect of our society. Because we go to work, our fellow citizens are provided with food, shelter and clothing. Through our employment, people are educated and entertained, methods of transportation are organized, children are raised, and much, much more. But an accurate depiction of what occurs in the workforce is overlooked and ignored by virtually every aspect of the surrounding culture. An honest examination of daily work is missing from our movies and television, news media, schools, advertising, fine arts.

Something considered taboo must be happening at the centre of our life - and so at the heart of our society - if our culture is willing to depict endlessly the consequences of our jobs, but not to portray the jobs themselves. For example, our literature, in book after book, anthology after anthology, presents a literary portrait of a nation, a society, in which nobody works. One possible explanation for this strange fact is that during twelve years of public education, almost no time is devoted to an account of the history and present conditions of employment in North America. What happens to human beings on the job is not considered a topic for major consideration by our school curriculums, even though working is the activity that eventually will occupy most of the waking lives of every student. For example, as Paperwork was in preparation in the fall of 1989, I was sent two new literature textbooks aimed at high schools. Both were organized thematically; one, Themes on the Journey (Nelson), identifies what its editor considers the sixteen major themes of "the human journey." These themes include love, death, nature, as well as art, national identity, war. Work is never mentioned. The second collection, Themes for All Times (Jesperson Press), identifies seven themes as representing human life "for all times": relationships, faith and belief, conflict, survival, freedom and equality, dealing with today, facing tomorrow. Again, nowhere in this text is daily work worthy of mention, let alone study.

This almost pathological avoidance of looking at everyday jobs is just as evident in popular culture. Any trip around the TV dial will reveal a complete absence of anything resembling true depictions of daily employment. Where jobs are shown, such as hospital work or police work, these portrayals are fantasies, romanticizations, trivializations. Police work is not like Hill Street Blues or Miami Vice, any more than medical employment is like General Hospital or St. Elsewhere. This can be verified in only a few minutes of conversation with an actual nurse, doctor, lawyer, detective or uniformed officer.

We expect less than honesty from advertising, and we are not disappointed in our expectations when the source of advertised products is supposedly presented. My favourite is "The Land of Dairy Queen," the apparent origin of the tasty ice cream snacks. Here images of mounds of chocolate and ice cream obscure entirely the realities of cocoa production in the Third World and minimum wage service jobs here at home. How much more pleasant to imagine a magical origin for the objects sold to us, than to see clearly where things come from.

Avoiding a consciousness of how human beings really spend their lives is not just an interesting sociological or artistic phenomenon. The pervasive taboo against a portrayal of our daily work tangibly hurts us.

As a college teacher, I ask my students how many of them, before they selected their course of studies, talked at length to someone doing the job that is the student's career goal. Often half or more of my students have never done this. The taboo against an accurate look at daily work has thus put them in some peril: they are expending considerable time, money, and effort preparing themselves for a job about which they have only the shakiest or most romantic impression. More immediately, our high school students graduate (or they drop out) largely ignorant of what labour laws and regulations protect them in the workforce, and what opportunities and shortcomings are offered by unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, and similar work-related programs. Again, the potential for pain is great. Young people can fall prey to unscrupulous employers by accepting wages, conditions and hours that violate legal standards. Or, where young employees sense that laws are being broken, they are uncertain how to seek redress.

Whether we are young or old, the taboo hurts us by the cultural silence that smothers what happens to us every day on the job. In this eerie quiet, we each feel isolated, uncertain whether we are the only person who responds to our employment as we do. We counter this isolation with "shop talk," gossip about our specific workplace with our immediate peers. But overall, the silence helps keep us from a collective discussion and understanding of the effects our work has on us, and exploring how we might together fundamentally improve our working lives.

As well, the taboo ensures that our culture perceives our contribution to society as insignificant. For the culture of any society establishes a system of values. What is talked about and otherwise portrayed in art, education, entertainment is seen as having value. What a society is silent about is implicitly understood to be without importance or merit. As long as the supermarket tabloids suggest that we worry about the state of Burt and Loni's relationship, rather than consider, say, alternate means of organizing our own daily lives, we are likely to regard ourselves and what happens to us as less important than those figures and events the surrounding culture insists repeatedly are the proper subjects of our attention and concern. For instance, the deaths of seven astronauts are viewed as an international tragedy, and so they are. But why are the deaths of seven miners in a cave-in any less a tragedy? Don't the miners also leave behind spouses, children, unfulfilled hopes and dreams? Why are some individuals so overvalued and the contribution of the majority of us so undervalued?

This situation saps our willingness to act to change our lives for the better. After all, if we're not the important men and women in society, if our contribution to the community is culturally regarded as worthless, why should we speak out or act collectively to improve our lives? And this lack of self-confidence hurts us, because it strikes at the root of democracy. As the social critic Bob Black puts it: "Once you drain the vitality from people at work, they'll likely submit to hierarchy in politics, culture, and everything else."

The poems of this collection, though they were written individually for many different reasons, together break the taboo against a depiction of our real lives and affirm the vital importance of what the majority of us do all day. Using humour, outrage, poignancy and sorrow, the poems celebrate how our work contributes to creating the society in which we all live, and how our jobs shape our individual lives. If film stars, sports idols and politicians were to vanish tomorrow, the world would still be fed, clothed, housed, etc. because of our efforts. This is not the message that bombards us daily from TV screens, billboards, books, magazines, art exhibits, classrooms. But it is a truth that Paperwork proves beyond doubt.

The poems of Paperwork, though, are not intended to be an exhaustive or comprehensive look at the new work writing that has begun to appear across North America. Instead, like its predecessor anthology Going For Coffee (Harbour Publishing, 1981), Paperwork offers a sampling of what I consider the best of the new poetry about jobs and the working life. As with any anthology, then, the selection reflects the strengths and weaknesses of its editor's judgment. My major criterion for including a poem in Paperwork - besides literary accomplishment - is that the poem present an insider's view of the workplace. I am convinced that an outsider's vision of a jobsite or other work situation, however sympathetic, lacks the accuracy that the insider brings to the writing. And accuracy is essential to clear thinking - and writing - about daily employment and its human consequences.

Because Paperwork shows us jobs with an insider's eye, we find here both extensive use of detail (often detail that only an insider could know) and comedy (since jokes remain a major way the human race gains perspective about its difficulties). A further examination of these and other facets of the emerging work literature can be found in my Inside Job: Essays on the New Work Writing (Harbour, 1983).

The poems in Paperwork are grouped into eight sections. "Corncobs on the Slag Road" gathers poems concerned with outdoor work; "Something They Claim Can't Be Made" presents poems on women in the paid workforce; "Piece by Piece You Deliver Yourself" offers poems on service work; and the fourth section, "The Work of Looking for Work," deals with unemployment.

"Dear Foreman," the fifth section, is about production work indoors. This is followed by "Calling You on my Break," which contains poems on how jobs affect human relations. The poems of "When They Push the Buttons to Rise" look at work mainly from a managerial perspective, or describe an employee's direct response to that perspective. The final section, "Less Like Ants," focusses on ways we assess and sometimes resist the limitations our work imposes on us. This section, and Paperwork, closes with two poems from the 1983 public sector general strike in B.C. For it is during a general strike, as at no other time, that it becomes absolutely evident that without our work society ceases to function. Not all the words and images of managers or elected officials, nor the fantasies created by advertising or entertainment, can define the world during such an event. Our value and importance are unquestioned.

By their very nature, however, poems resist the set categories I have established here. For example, there are poems about women in paid employment throughout the collection. Assessments of a specific job and/or a working life appear in many sections also. Even my indoor/outdoor distinction is not an exact one: building construction begins outside, for instance, but by the time the last tradespeople are employed, the work is primarily indoors.

So, despite my attempts to slot these poems according to their major topics, this writing insists that it is multidimensional. Exactly like the human beings who wrote the poems, and the men and women about whom they speak, these poems defy easy generalization and refuse to be narrowly defined. This is part of their power as art and as people. When we look at them, we see as in a mirror our true selves, our real lives. This is not an experience we are used to. We may be exhilarated or depressed, amused or scornful, respectful or enraged at the sight. But until we observe accurately who we are and where we are, we cannot move forward to better our lives. We can shift from one consumer or political fantasy to the next, but that is not the same thing as improving our common existence. It is the gift of these marvellous poems that they show us both our actual present and a door into the future.

Tom Wayman
"Appledore"
Winlaw, BC

Product details

• Assisted by: Tom Wayman (Editor)
• Publisher: Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.12.2022
• EAN: 9781550170429
• ISBN: 978-1-55017-042-9
• No. of pages: 334
• Dimensions: 129 mm x 217 mm x 23 mm
• Weight: 426 g
• Subject: Fiction > Poetry, drama