Pressing Matters

Pressing Matters features haiku, senryu and haibun poems written in response to the coronavirus pandemic, accelerating changes in the natural environment due to climate change, and worldwide social unrest. Searching for answers to existential questions of loss and survival, the poems concern what it means to be human in a time of profound change and uncertainty. Many of the haibun--- poems that combine short prose and haiku---consider the urgent issues of economic uncertainty and insecurity, intolerance and racism, conflict and war. Other poems explore our dependence on nuclear energy and concentrated fossil fuels, and the degradation of the natural environment due to systematic human intervention. The collection concludes with poems about the COVID-19 pandemic and the life cycle. The poems express gratitude for the power of poetry and the visual arts to nudge our hearts and minds away from despair and complacency towards engagement and hope.