Poetry goes nuclear: 3 recent books delve into present anxieties, finding beauty amid the terror

By Craig Billingham, Lecturer, Creative Writing, UNSW Sydney

It seemed to me for many years that thoughts of nuclear catastrophe were anachronistic. Was that ignorance and complacency on my part? Probably. After all, there were always rumblings about proliferation, Iran and North Korea, India and Pakistan and Israel. But they did not feel like existential threats to those of us living in Australia.

Am I alone in feeling this way? Was it less a question of the tyranny of distance than anaesthetising privilege? Terrorism, yes – domestic and international – but not nuclear catastrophe.

Three recent books of Australian poetry – Lisa…

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