Pamela Wax on “Still Radioactive in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone”

The genesis of this poem speaks to the role of associative thinking, happenstance, and research in my writing. Right after receiving my friend’s positive medical news, I bumped into another friend on the street. I relayed my excitement and said, “It’s like a miracle.” She responded, “It is a miracle.” Immediately, I said to her, “I’m going to write a poem about that.” I knew that a poem just about that medical miracle, however, was surefire Hallmark. I needed nuance. I needed science. That’s where my fascination with nature’s resiliency in unlikely environmental disaster zones came in.

And that’s where my delight that the world rallied around Ukraine against Russia came in, making a connection to Chernobyl, in particular. The poem ultimately became a layering of those three different miracles—medical, environmental, geopolitical/humanitarian—with the addition of the daily cosmic miracle of sunlight.

While my first book of poetry, Walking the Labyrinth (Main Street Rag, 2022), has a couple of poems about environmental issues, it is primarily a book about my moving through grief following my brother’s death by suicide. My forthcoming chapbook, Starter Mothers (Finishing Line Press), has a few environmental poems in it, as well. However, the collection I’m working on now will have climate grief front and center, and this poem will be there!