“As Jeff Derksen approaches family and personal life, at home and abroad, his work comes down to earth, becomes more serious, more analytical, optimistic, precise, and fragile. The word tour economic; a life’s work, critique, focus, attending to, listening a living, an expression of insolitude among domestic monuments and affairs of state.” – Melanie Neilson

“Dwell provides just the right kind of fin de siècle topo map required to reconnoiter our present bearings. Derksen’s accurate delineation of narrative edge coloured by layers of diction’s own superfluousness is a rare and honest measure of a world that’s signed out. In language that’s resolute in its probe for meaningful coordinates, these poems ‘fulfill’ their own codes, absorb ‘all (our) private space.’ We’ll never get home without them.” – Fred Wah

“[A] canny text, astute and sharp. This a brilliant mind at work, dwelling in, dwelling on.”
– Books in Canada

“Dwell is a compassionate and humane book, the product (nice package) of a personality engaged in analysis of meaning-making. And I feel I’ve been reading the presence of a life in its pages … a breathing friction. It’s like listening to music in its privileging of experience over knowledge.” – Prairie Fire

“Dwell … offer[s] an unsimplified and penetrating look at our time and place, where meaning and significance alter and blend. Derksen invites his readers to take part in this process.” – Vox