Even for a laymen with poetry, I thought this was really great and a lot more accessible than some reviewers would have you believe. I guess it helps knowing a lot of cyberpunk and l33t speak, for the beginning, and just having consumed a lot of media/pop culture.

There is a birthing sequence at the start paralleling Ghost in the Shell that sort of sets up the parameters of the collection. What is the identity that runs the “programs”/poems. What is the lens, essentially. Each poem usually has a start line of code that says what this examines and there is a long list at the back of the book of references. So sometimes when it says it’s running a decolonial program of whatever, say Whitman, you can actually flip back and see the references and see how it’s subverting it and applying a different lens.

I think it’s really, really clever. Some of it went over my head and some of it felt a bit disjointed and outside of the initial theme. Like when it isn’t running a program and randomly has something else. But much of it feels cohesive and truly unique. Especially for cyberpunk, which is too often claimed as a white space with so many marginalized people working in the space back when it began, but still. Now. This only further proves that. It’s fertile ground, this sub genre.

I hope to one day get Misha’s book of indigenous cyberpunk poetry; I know it’s the first one, but seems pretty unobtainable every time I search for it. I bet that book and this book would be in an interesting conversation.