Description

Seagull Books, hardcover

Publication Date:June 14, 2022

Publisher Marketing:Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, this debut collection is a sobering and perceptive exploration of technologys impact on connection, power, and poetry.

Theres a fly in the house I cant kill. / I wont know if its real until I kill it. Eerie and emblematic, the opening lines ofHuman Resourcesunfold into an inventory of contemporary anxieties: How much of our lives is designed for us? How are we at once the most connected weve ever been to one another and the most isolated? And have we reached a stage in our quest for a better future that weve lost sight of our basic humanity?

In a world where the tech industry endeavors to solve our every organic problem, Stevenson, sharp and measured, tackles the glaring power disparity of its male-dominated spaces. She is at once fearless and always conscious of fears proximitywhere one speaker overhears a boss boasting of [building] his ship / out of women, another walks punishingly up a hill, the way a man would. Another is told to prioritize beauty in designing a female bot, because the more beautiful, the more humane all while boys will be / bad meat, and girls / thrown behind dumpsters.

A cool windboth chilling and fortifyingrushes through these poems, delivering an indictment of the minds programming our futures as well as a call for a different understanding of what serves the collective good. Something more mindful and human, Stevenson writes: I want to saybetter.