Author: Derek Fenner Publisher: Bootstrap Press (2025) Under New Alchemy by Derek Fenner is a hybrid collection that blends poetry, visual art, and experimental narrative to explore themes of transformation, inheritance, loss, and reimagining. The title invokes both mysticism and material change, and the work itself mirrors that duality-melding the deeply personal with the mythic and elemental. Fenner draws on his experience as an artist and educator to construct a textual artifact that is both lyrical and reflective, often invoking fragments, diagrams, or references to arcane knowledge and everyday rituals. The book positions itself within a tradition of poetic alchemy-transmuting grief, memory, and culture into insight. Its form is experimental, often nonlinear, inviting readers to engage with the material in layered and intuitive ways. Like much of Fenner's work, Under New Alchemy resists singular interpretation and instead constructs a space where language and image collaborate in the act of meaning-making.
