Under New Alchemy

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.

Derek Fenner is an artist, educator, poet, and researcher based in the Carolinas. He earned his MFA in Writing and Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. He is the author of more than half a dozen books, including Wild Schemes (Auguste Press, 2010), Hermeticities & Others (Bootstrap Press, 2016), and Gossamer Nevele Grimoire (Bird & Beckett Books, 2020). He co-edited Arcana: A Stephen Jonas Reader (City Lights Books, 2019). He is currently an assistant professor and the director of art education at the University of South Carolina Upstate. He lives in Western North Carolina with his son, Oliver.