Unstoppable Utopia (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781903090633)

Unstoppable Utopia is a collection of 12 poems that react to many of the contradictions of contemporary life: the connectivity and isolation, freedom and constriction, and cohesion and fracture. The first section, Work, features 6 interconnected poems exploring a work night out via 6 different perspectives. We find the narrator of Work Up in the midst of a panic attack, while the narrator of Work Away is quietly coming to terms with the meaningless of work. But each narrator is preoccupied with what it means to be forced into daily interactions with others for the sake of earning money, with all the complexity and personal compromises that entails. In the second section, Life, the quiet contemplation is in stark contrast to the chaos of the previous section. These 6 independent poems contain themes of aging, isolation, longing, resistance, and acceptance in a pandemic-ravaged world. In Plastics, the narrator laments their living conditions within a species on the brink of annihilation, and in Plague Times a Proustian reflection on age and memory is channeled through '90s sci-fi TV shows and social distancing.