God Mode

Synopsis

A vast system crash in the virus garden. Matthew Haigh’s second collection is a single, electrifying sequence on chronic kidney disease, dialysis, transplant and the body re-entering the world. With the cut-up wit and pop-cultural intensity that made Death Magazine a Polari-longlisted debut – now grafted onto something graver and more interior – God Mode tracks an illness through hospital wards, faux-medical letters, surgical theatres and the haunted spaces of online life. It is a queer survival narrative, a body horror, a prayer book for the age of the algorithm. A book about being saved, and what is lost in the saving.

Praise for Previous Work

‘(On Death Magazine) Exquisitely crafted, elegant and dark dark dark. Poems that nudge me to up my game.’ —James Knight

‘(On Death Magazine) Funny, sharp, touching and completely itself. I wholeheartedly recommend it.’ —Mark Waldron

‘(On Death Magazine) Matthew Haigh’s poetic voice, full of edge and depth, is contemporary and captivating, and Death Magazine is certainly a book not to be missed.’ —Astra Papachristodoulou

‘(On Death Magazine) These blackly humorous poems give an incisive yet touching look at what it means to be human in a post-human age.’ —Book, Bell & Candle