These poems grapple with climate catastrophe, precarious labour, and love. They draw on the full, rich weirdness of the human-made world, with its self-driving cars, official geese and open-plan offices modelled on heaven. A sequence of magical realist short fictions explore ‘essential work’; elsewhere Erik Kennedy wonders what it is like to work in the satellite insurance sector. Somehow he gets away with rhyming ‘guesses’ with ‘yeses’.
‘Kennedy’s frequently light tonal touch belies the difficulty of the linguistic manoeuvres it deftly performs.’ —Judges’ comments, 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards
