Hymn to the Prisoners of the Wasteland is an epic poem of sorts, a political poem of sorts, and there is an essay at the end of the book. But as Matthews makes clear he is "ill-suited to the activist, socially-engaged, cast of much contemporary artistic practice" and is "not a campaigner or a facilitator." Acting as "witness, resonator, and scavenger" and getting at the political "rather as one gets at the ore of a precious metal hidden deep within the earth, by conducting mining and refining operations" he offers it "as a prize not a burden, an eye-opening not a brain-binding, a surprise not a given." Drawing on a range of contemporary sources Matthews treats "words as raw materials to be extracted and worked for their unconstrained possibilities" and the results are inventive, evocative, visually complex, and intensely musical.