Poetry & the Atomic Bomb – UK visit

Faculty member Dr Cassandra Atherton has been invited to Winchester (UK) to present a paper: ‘Re-imagining the atomic sublime: Prose Poetry, Hybridity, and Mariko Nagai’s Irradiated Cities’. Cassandra is renowned for her work on poetry and the atomic bomb, and this paper brings together her work on the long-term effects of the bombing and her work in prose poetry.

Cassandra’s paper analyses Mariko Nagai’s book of prose poetry and photographs, Irradiated Cities, as a response to Rob Wilson’s argument that the nuclear sublime is ‘one of the unimaginable, trans-material grounds of a global condition that, paradoxically, can and must be re- imagined, represented, and invoked to prevent this trauma of negativity from happening in post-Cold War history’ (1989: 1). She posits that in their simultaneous containment and release, prose poetry and hybridity best capture the rupture of nuclear warfare.

Cassandra’s work on the atomic bomb, radiation, and the Hiroshima maidens culminated in a 2017 Australia Council Grant to write a book of prose poetry based on their plight, Saving Face: The Hiroshima Maidens. The Hiroshima maidens are a group of women who were scarred by the bomb and taken to America for plastic surgery. She will travel as part of the International Poetry Studies Centre (IPSI) entourage, and will be talking about her book-in-progress, plus other projects on the atomic bomb and prose poetry.