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After the river rose: Sumatra
M
DOI:10.1080/08893675.2026.2615650.png)
Abstract
En 中文
This poem examines the lived experience of flood disaster in Sumatra through a lyric narrative that foregrounds survival, memory, and collective resilience. Drawing on the imagery of water, mud, and disrupted domestic space, the poem portrays catastrophe not as a singular event but as a process that reorganizes relationships between body, landscape, and community. The river functions as both a material force and a symbolic agent, erasing boundaries while revealing ethical interdependence among survivors. Attention to sensory perception, touch, sound and breath reflects trauma's embodied nature and aligns with poetry therapy approaches that privilege somatic memory and narrative reconstruction. Recovery is framed as an ongoing practice of meaning-making, where survival emerges through communal bonds rather than physical structures. The work contributes to disaster narratives by integrating ecological vulnerability with human agency, offering poetry as a reflective medium for processing collective trauma and imagining continuity after rupture.
Keywords:
Collective trauma
ecopoetry
flood disaster
poetry therapy
survival and resilience
Journal
J
IF:
0.7
Papers:
36
Citations:
0
