As a teacher, I often talk with my students about current events and highlight how disasters can spiral. Wildfire seasons are worsening, storms are getting stronger, wars are starting and never-ending, and sometimes, my students express some despair in the face of such cycles. Though it’s not a cure-all for this anxiety, I encourage my students to try and create something from this existential worry. Rather than scrolling through all the bad things that cross our screens, creativity can help us imagine a better world to work towards. Poetry about disasters can help us see them through.
If there are two things I love, it’s persona poems and a sustained concept throughout a collection. Like Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith above, this book has both things.
A book of persona poems imagining the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan as a series of monsters battling against the 50 employees who remained on-site after the tsunami, the collection weaves seamlessly between languages and comic book-like sound effects that create a heroic narrative in a sparse style.
This collection is one I return to when I think of trying to combat apocalyptic despair; if 50 people can face down a fatal situation, then I can live through another, less catastrophic day.
Named a "Best Book of 2019" by the New York Public Library Finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry Society of Midland Authors Honoree in Poetry
In March 2011, a tsunami caused by an earthquake collided with nearby power plant Fukushima Daiichi, causing the only nuclear disaster in history to rival Chernobyl in scope. Those who stayed at the plant to stabilize the reactors, willing to sacrifice their lives, became known internationally as the Fukushima 50.
In tsunami vs. the fukushima 50, Lee Ann Roripaugh takes a piercing, witty, and ferocious look into the heart of the…
