After the Hatching Oven explores chickens: their evolution as a domesticated species; their place in history, pop culture and industrial agriculture; their exploitation and their liberation. Alexander takes us deep into the world of this common species, examining every conceivable angle: chicken politics, antics, pretenses and pleasures. These poems delight in the mastery of language and intensity by which Alexander has thought his way into the very cells of his subjects through riffs on Ted Hughes' Crow, a Burger King ad campaign and a public health advisory for bird flu, as well as self-translations.