About Our Project
In the ballad “Willie McBride”—also known as “No Man’s Land” and “The Green Fields of France"—Scottish-born songwriter Eric Bogle summed up the atrocities of war in these poignant lines: “The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand / To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man.” Numerous popular songs express similar sentiments, just as poets have frequently taken up the condemnation of war, perhaps most famously Wilfred Owen in “Dulce et Decorum Est,” and the Chinese poet Li Po in "Nefarious War."
To this conversation, editors Anne Coray, J. C. Todd, and Teresa Mei Chuc wish to add these voices: writers who recognize that the victims of war are not humans alone, but the flora and fauna populating areas of armed conflict. Sometimes the decimation of animals and plants occurs inadvertently, sometimes not. Air, water, and soil are often polluted, and the toll on the climate is immense.
Although impacts of war on the environment have occurred throughout history, people—particularly eco-minded people—are becoming increasingly aware of how war affects the non-human world, as well as the air we all breathe and the water that sustains all life. Our intent in this anthology is not to minimize the human toll of war, but to expand the dialogue.
War is sad. Undoubtedly, many submissions will come to us as laments. We welcome these poems as well as poems of stark witness, but we also welcome work that offers some glimpse of hope or redemption, whether that be nature’s ability to rebound, or a philosophical perspective that puts humanity’s warring ways and consequent environmental destruction in perspective. Our anthology seeks to bring together two genres: war poetry and ecopoetry. Hence our title, Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War.
All profits from the anthology will go to organizations that help refugees of war or support environmental restoration following war.
We look forward to reading your work.
—The Editors
In the ballad “Willie McBride”—also known as “No Man’s Land” and “The Green Fields of France"—Scottish-born songwriter Eric Bogle summed up the atrocities of war in these poignant lines: “The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand / To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man.” Numerous popular songs express similar sentiments, just as poets have frequently taken up the condemnation of war, perhaps most famously Wilfred Owen in “Dulce et Decorum Est,” and the Chinese poet Li Po in "Nefarious War."
To this conversation, editors Anne Coray, J. C. Todd, and Teresa Mei Chuc wish to add these voices: writers who recognize that the victims of war are not humans alone, but the flora and fauna populating areas of armed conflict. Sometimes the decimation of animals and plants occurs inadvertently, sometimes not. Air, water, and soil are often polluted, and the toll on the climate is immense.
Although impacts of war on the environment have occurred throughout history, people—particularly eco-minded people—are becoming increasingly aware of how war affects the non-human world, as well as the air we all breathe and the water that sustains all life. Our intent in this anthology is not to minimize the human toll of war, but to expand the dialogue.
War is sad. Undoubtedly, many submissions will come to us as laments. We welcome these poems as well as poems of stark witness, but we also welcome work that offers some glimpse of hope or redemption, whether that be nature’s ability to rebound, or a philosophical perspective that puts humanity’s warring ways and consequent environmental destruction in perspective. Our anthology seeks to bring together two genres: war poetry and ecopoetry. Hence our title, Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War.
All profits from the anthology will go to organizations that help refugees of war or support environmental restoration following war.
We look forward to reading your work.
—The Editors
