The Shutdown Sequence

Weighing personal loss against collective ecological sorrow, The Shutdown Sequence confronts the impact of human activity on the people and places we call home.

In tech, a "graceful shutdown" refers to the controlled process of stopping a system in an orderly way, allowing it to finish all active tasks before it terminates. As we witness the intensifying anthropogenic impacts on habitats, ecosystems, biodiversity, and climate stability, a graceful shutdown seems less and less likely. The natural order of things has been disrupted. A silent countdown has begun. So, in a time of crisis, how do we withstand an onslaught of bad news and resist being swept away by never-ending doomscrolling?

In The Shutdown Sequence, award-winning poet Steve McOrmond considers the unavoidable rhythms and sequences, both natural and artificial, that govern our lives. In his playful poems, termites commute to work in the dark as we do, and the ghost of Philip Larkin muses about the whereabouts of his porno collection. A son shepherds a father with dementia through his long bewilderment and terror; meanwhile, junk mail piles up on the porches of boarded-up bungalows awaiting reincarnation as upscale condos.

Irreverent yet urgent, The Shutdown Sequence rides the surface tension between hope and despair, boldly turning toward (and not away from) the contradictions and crises of our unprecedented times. Through his poems, McOrmond clings to the belief that, as Gandhi asserts, "Everything we do is futile, but we must do it anyway."