Reviewed by Ann Dixon


“Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War,” edited by Anne Coray, J. C. Todd and Teresa Mei Chuc. 2026, Scarlet Tanager Books. 230 p.


War is a tough topic to contemplate, much less write and read about. Yet that is exactly what Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War sets out to do in an unusual way: by focusing on the effects of armed conflict on the natural world. Edited by Homer writer Anne Coray with poets J. C. Todd and Teresa Mei Chuc, the poems in this anthology address wars that span the globe across centuries, accompanied by brief commentaries that provide context and information.


It’s an ambitious undertaking that could not be more timely. I began reading Convergence the day before the United States and Israel started bombing Iran. Suddenly, yet another war, amid the on-going strife in Sudan, devastation in Gaza and attacks on Ukraine, not to mention the bombing of alleged “drug boats” and recent incursion into Venezuela. It’s almost too much to take in.


Convergence tackles the problem of overwhelm in several ways. By focusing on lesser-known repercussions of war, it broadens awareness and makes new connections for readers which, while painful to comprehend, shape the case for a common theme. To be clear, in her “Introduction,” Coray affirms that this approach is not meant to diminish in any way the horrendous suffering that war inflicts on humans, but to “expand the dialogue.”


The format of Convergence offers multiple modes of comprehension. The poems open our hearts and minds through the use of very specific language, images, and sensory details so we can bear to absorb the disturbing information they convey. The brief commentary that accompanies each poem then expands our understanding with further context.


The scope of the book provides perspective with its wide range over time, geography, and variety of contributors. I counted 90 poems by 63 poets, including Alaskans Anne Coray, Gretchen Diemer, Marybeth Holleman, Nancy Lord, and Vivian Faith Prescott. While most contributors are from the United States, others hail from Nigeria, Wales, Japan, Egypt, Bosnia, Turkey, New Zealand, and Venezuela. A number of poems were written by military veterans and other first-person witnesses to war.


Additional material offers even more information. A foreword by author and cetologist Scott McVay, “On the Poetry,” is followed by Alaskan conservation biologist and retired professor Rick Steiner’s brief foreword, “On Global Consequences,” as well as the introduction by Coray. The book concludes with discussion questions and writing prompts aimed at both teens and adults. Finally, Steiner concludes the book with “Tallying the Costs: A Summary of Major Environmental Impacts of War,” a useful compilation that organizes the issues into manageable chunks. (Thank you for that!)


The poems are roughly chronological, beginning with Thom Schramm’s “Legionary Camp at Carnuntum” about the Marcomannic Wars (167-180 CE) and concluding with “A Rose for Gaza” by Lynn White, referencing that contemporary devastation. In between are poems about conflicts familiar to most of us, both historical and recent, as well as some I had never heard of or barely recall. All left their destructive marks.


Some poems bear personal witness, such as Richard Levine’s “Just Another Name,” in which he contrasts the symbolism of poppies from World War I as tokens of remembrance and peace with a very different association from the Vietnam War: the scourge of heroin.


Other poems involved research, such as Coray’s “For Love of Oak,” wherein she recounts the felling of 6,000 oak trees to build the warship HMS Victory in 1758, a project emblematic of England’s rampant deforestation of Ireland to support Elizabethan wars.


Several poems are imagined from the point of view of other beings, such as Pulkita Anand’s “Snail” and Özga Lena’s moving “Undertaker,” about the scavenging marabou stork of Tigray. In her comments Lena asks “…who is the everyday monster?” Is it the stork that cleans the battlefield of corpses or us, the perpetrators of war? Another, written in the voice of a gingko tree that survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, is Marybeth Holleman’s “Shukkei-en Ginkgo Speaks: A Haibun.” The poem offers resiliance, maybe even hope, as the gingko proclaims,

“when the black rains end,

beneath burns, spring’s green fists hold

fall’s golden halo.”


Two of the many impactful poems in the collection that stay with me concern elephants. “Lament: A Shadorna” by Vernita Hall portrays a tragic phenomenon caused by the Mozambican Civil War. Hall explains in her comments “…so many elephants were slaughtered by armies to fund their fighting via the sale of ivory that a single generation has produced an unprecedented rapid change in the evolution of the species.” The rate of tuskless female elephants born in Gorongosa National Park jumped from 18 to 51 percent, presumably as a survival strategy via natural selection. It remains to be seen if the strategy is successful.


Camille T. Dungy’s Sanctuary tenderly describes the process at an animal sanctuary of fitting a prosthetic leg on an elephant whose limb was blown off by a landmine. The poem is both poignant and hopeful as it carries the sadness of this animal’s human-caused suffering alongside some human reparation, however inadequate and rare.


As James Janko, a Vietnam veteran and author of several poems in the collection says, “War is always an assault on the earth.” In Vivian Faith Prescott’s poem, “When in Doubt, Bomb,” that earth is very close to home: the Gulf of Alaska, where the Northern Edge war games allow for “incidental takes” of twelve million fish and marine mammals over a five-year period.


Ultimately, the poems in Convergence remind us that war is not only about human lives lost and dollars spent; it is ecocide, with repercussions that persist for decades, even centuries, and affect all beings. Life on planet Earth is interconnected and what we do to ecosystems, we do to ourselves, as well. Convergence dares us to not look away but to pay attention, care, and, hopefully, act.