Human Resources

Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, this debut collection is a sobering and perceptive exploration of technology's impact on connection, power, and poetry. "There's a fly in the house I can't kill. / I won't know if it's real until I kill it." Eerie and emblematic, the opening lines of Human Resources unfold into an inventory of contemporary anxieties: How much of our lives is designed for us? How are we at once the most connected we've ever been to one another and the most isolated? And have we reached a stage in our quest for "a better future" that we've lost sight of our basic humanity? In a world where the tech industry endeavors to solve our every organic problem, Stevenson, sharp and measured, tackles the glaring power disparity of its male-dominated spaces. She is at once fearless and always conscious of fear's proximity--where one speaker overhears a boss boasting of "[building] his ship / out of women," another walks punishingly up a hill, "the way a man would." Another is told to prioritize beauty in designing a female bot, because "the more beautiful, the more humane" all while "boys will be / bad meat, and girls / thrown behind dumpsters." A cool wind--both chilling and fortifying--rushes through these poems, delivering an indictment of the minds programming our futures as well as a call for a different understanding of what serves the collective good. Something more mindful and human, Stevenson writes: "I want to say better."