I recently wrote that people tend to remember the years of their lives by the disasters that took place during specific years. Thus, for many, 2011 is the year of the Fukushima nuclear disaster that followed the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.
Quite a few anthologies of short stories and poems were soon after published with proceeds going to various Japan relief-related charities. Even I had (unsuccessfully) submitted a short story to Stories for Sendai. An Anthology (CreateSpace, 2011) edited by J.C. Martin and Michelle Davidson Argyle.
And now I ran across a poem by jack byrne [sic], an Irish poet interested in Oriental poetry, who published in Static Poetry IV (compiled by Chris Bartholomew, Static Movement, 2011, p. 117) a gogyokha about Fukushima:
“Fukushima
The demon is loose
in its invisible form
to infect all innocents
it will evade capture
for a thousand years.”
It is a nice summary of what a nuclear disaster means and the negative impact it has on human life.
