Plastic: A Poem -- Matthew Rice, Paperback
$15.95
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Set during a single twelve-hour night shift in an injection molding factory, plastic is a book-length poem exploring the life of the industrial worker turned poet Bringing together memoir, ekphrasis, and satire, plastic is based on Matthew Rice's experience working in a plastic molding factory for ten years. Illustrating alienated twenty-first-century Irish labor in poetic form, plastic engages with the inflictions and implications of a "post-industrial," "post-Troubles" society, all while weaving in depictions of factory work from literature, film, and the visual arts. Time-stamped to highlight the claustrophobia of the worker's experience, Rice meditates on masculinity, sectarianism, and intergenerational trauma. But at its core is a poem about feeling a calling while being submerged in the world of menial labor--making plastic airplane parts by night, making poetry by day. Invoking the brevity of Seamus Heaney, plastic is an expansive and imaginative poem that offers the working class a grace, dignity, and truth not often found in contemporary literature.
Plastic: A Poem -- Matthew Rice, Paperback
$15.95
Author: Matthew Rice
Publisher: Soft Skull
Published: 1/13/2026
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.25 lbs
Size: 8.2" H x 5.4" L x 0.4" W
ISBN: 9781593768034