Messages from the Embers: From Devastation to Hope, Australian Bushfire Anthology

Messages from the Embers brings together 118 poetic voices and visions into 138 poems that detail and articulate the devastating 2019-2020 bushfire crisis that devastated around 20,000 hectares of land around Australia, destroying thousands of homes and buildings. Adding to the human death toll, significant losses of life to domesticated animals and native fauna resulted from the fires. In this anthology, some writers address the broad political and social scope of the catastrophe, others take a microscope to the localised and domestic effects during a time when the fragility of every structure and living creature was magnified. Beginning with the origins of fire, to the burning to the ashen aftermath, this anthology is courageous in its expression and acknowledgement of the multilayered loss felt by so many. Within several of these poems is a resilient undercurrent of hopefulness, and a will to emerge from damage and drive a more perceptive way forward.