@Pstorals

@PSTORALS runs the pastoral tradition through the textures of the contemporary internet: a single sequence in five movements and an envoi where shepherd swains, lambs, and burbling brooks share the frame with Depop alerts, dropshipping, and crypto futures. Alex Lopez collages the diction of Marlowe and Wordsworth with platform vernacular, fashion vloggers, and continental theory, setting the text against doctored Old Master landscapes in which classical idylls are overlaid with denim, trainers, and server farms. The form is restless and maximalist, working through staggered lineation, bracketed interface commands, and passages of deliberate mojibake where corrupted encoding is made to read as lyric. Beneath the saturated surface runs an ecological dread of thawing permafrost, algal blooms, and forever chemicals, alongside a nostalgia for natures and memories never actually had. The pastoral invitation to come and live and be loved recurs with a sincerity the book neither ironises away nor lets settle, holding idyll and collapse in a single overexposed light.