More Than Our Jobs: An Anthology

Boyd Holmes is an editor with Dundurn Press.

More Than Our Jobs is a collection of essays and poetry by 11 members of
the Vancouver Industrial Writers Union; all the writings explore life
among Canada’s working class. Editors Downie and Tranfield divide
their 95 selections into 9 sections: “Initiation,” “This Is What
It Seems Like,” “Off-Hours,” “Room for All,” “Workers of the
World Aroused,” “Allegiances,” “Choices,” “Neighbours,”
and “Incantation to Change Our Lives.” This is the second such
anthology from the Union; the first, Shop Talk, appeared in 1985.

All the authors in this anthology are unknown. Judging from the quality
of most of their contributions, there is a reason for that. The essays
and prose poems are alternately banal and pretentious, and the other
poems are stylistically slack, and sometimes unintentionally laughable
(“I love water! / I love concrete! / I love the work I did today!”).
There are, however, a few exceptions, particularly in the case of
Downie’s poetry (“The refrigerator hums / and I hear the ringing of
stars / out beyond Andromeda. // For every orbit winding down /
somewhere a new sun blushes into sight.”) Such occasional flashes of
excellence do not, however, sufficiently relieve the exhausting tedium
of reading this book.