Work Is Done When We Are Dead

The Work Is Done When We Are Dead, Jade Wallace’s sophomore poetry collection, considers work in all its many forms, with a particular interest in types of labour that are unpaid, underappreciated, or even entirely unrecognized. Wallace’s poems, by turns frantic and playful, lyric and experimental, probe at how the diffuse responsibilities we have to ourselves and one another might all be interpreted as kinds of labour, and ask whether that is a fruitful framework for our lives. The Work Is Done When We Are Dead is a collection that is as poetically indulgent as it is urgently existential.

Jade Wallace is a poet, novelist, and literary critic whose books include: two poetry collections, most recently The Work Is Done When We Are Dead (Guernica Editions, 2026); a genderless novel, ANOMIA (Palimpsest Press, 2024); and, three collaborative poetry collections under the name MA|DE, most recently ZZOO (Palimpsest Press, 2025).