Plastic: A Poem

Plastic: A Poem - Paperback

$15.95
$15.95
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Plastic: A Poem
  • Plastic: A Poem
Plastic: A Poem - Paperback

Plastic: A Poem - Paperback

by Matthew Rice
$15.95
$15.95

Book Overview

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.
ISBN9781593768034
Author Matthew Rice
PublisherSoft Skull
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedJanuary 2026
LanguageENG- English
Pages256
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

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More by Matthew Rice

Plastic: A Poem

Plastic: A Poem - Paperback

Plastic: A Poem - Paperback

By Matthew Rice

About Matthew Rice

Matthew Rice is a writer and illustrator who thought he knew lots about British architecture until he started to write and illustrate this book. His message to readers is, if you want to understand a building, sit in front of it and draw it. You might also have seen his work in Country Life, on his own calendar or on much of his wife Emma Bridgewater's pottery. He lives in Oxford and Norfolk.

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