JUMP DIRECTLY TO APOCALYPSE POEMS (updated March 2024)
I’ve always been drawn to novels, movies and TV series about end times, apocalypse and dystopia. For entertainment purposes, I’m not especially picky about the cause; zombies, climate, capitalism, viruses or patriarchy all interest me as the kinds of devastating forces capable of bringing civilization to its knees.
But how do poets handle these themes?
Poets are sensitive creatures who observe, among other things, the signs and signals of individual and collective despair. We process what it means to be in a world that fails so many. We write poetry of witness, eco poetry, political poetry and confessional poetry — modes of writing that lend themselves to stark, meaningful interpretations of what it means to be on the precipice.
Poets know there are plenty of ways for the world (or the world as we know it) to end. We also know that Frost’s “Fire and Ice” doesn’t quite cut it, though it’s on this list.
To answer my question about how poets write about literal and existential risks to life on Earth, I started collecting “apocalypse poems,” a term I used broadly. My list is below. Many of its poems address end times head on. Others are less explicit but have (in my assessment) apocalypse vibes. They are “end-of-the-world adjacent,” using apocalyptic or dystopian settings as a backdrop or simply gesturing at demise and so I’ve allowed their metaphors to work within this list of apocalypse poems.
In these poems, poets speak to what may be coming and flirt with a kind of inevitability fueled by our complicity and impotence. They issue warnings that beg questions: Can we be saved? Do we want to be saved? Who’s driving the bus? What’s worth saving? Are we willing? What does it mean to survive?
As I gathered examples, I learned it isn’t all doom and gloom. Some apocalypse poems (or poems about our survival) include a measure of light and tenderness. I decided to share these, as well, and you can jump to the “sidecar of hope” (my term of endearment for this second list) here.
Apocalypse Poems List
- “Exciting the Canvas” by Kaveh Akbar
- “apocalypse (22.a)” by Anastacia-Renee
- “The New Zombie” by Rae Armantrout
- “Poem Featuring an Apocalypse” by Rebecca Aronson
- “Poem I Would Send Into Space” by Rebecca Aronson
- “when we thought the world would end, I didn’t think it would be like this” by Fatimah Asghar
- “Mars Rover Appears to Catch ‘Dark Beast’ Roaming the Surface” by Sarah Audsley
- “Bonneville” by Jacqueline Balderrama
- “Zombie” by Hadara Bar-Nadav
- “#9 Dream: The Zombie Apocalypse” by Rusty Barnes
- “Self-portrait of the artist as a Zombie” by Bryan Byrdlong
- “Become the Lion” by Traci Brimhall in Our Lady of Ruins
- “Prelude to a Revolution” by Traci Brimhall (also from Our Lady of Ruins)
- “Shelter in Place” by Traci Brimhall
- “You’ve heard this before, the only way out is through” by Kayleb Rae Candrilli
- “Anthropocene” by DeeSoul Carson
- “Birthday Poem” by Paul Hlava Ceballos
- “Zombie Apocalypse Now: The Making Of” by Cathy Linh Che
- “Chernobyl Necklace” by Teresa Mei Chuc (2nd poem on the page)
- “Future Ruins” by Andrew Collard
- “Why Have Children When the World Is Ending” by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
- “Revolutionary Letter #3” by Diane di Prima
- “My Eighteen-Month-Old Daughter Talks to the Rain as the Amazon Burns” by Dante Di Stefano
- “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” by Chelsea Dingman
- “T-Rex” by Lynne Ellis
- “The Dream Won’t Come True” by Kathy Fagan
- “In Plague Season I Think of Jonah” by Leah Falk
- “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost
- “Things I Forgot to Tell You About the End of the World” by Jeanine Hall Gailey
- “Galactic Lament” by Natalie Giarratano
- “Whirlwind” by Beth Gordon
- “For the Red-Brown Cow Whose Eyes I Caught from the Backseat of My Mother’s Chevy Nova, 1993” by Mara Lee Grayson
- “On NPR This Afternoon” by Jillian Hanson (2nd poem on the page)
- “Perhaps the World Ends Here” by Joy Harjo
- “Wetland” by francine j. harris
- “Let Them Not Say” by Jane Hirshfield
- “End of Days Advice from an Ex-zombie” by Michael Derrick Hudson
- “In the Beginning There Were Fires” by Saba Keramati
- “The Apocalypse Tapestry” by Esther Lin
- “Mastodon” by Claire Jean Kim
- “It Was the Year Without” by Jory Mickelson
- “A Gender Reveal Party Starts a California Wildfire and, a Week Later, the Smoke Finally Reaches the Foothills of Northeast Ohio on the Day We Get to See the Sonogram of Our Son for the First Time” by Matt Mitchell
- “Plague Song” by Nicholas Montemarano
- “Plague Choreography” by Nicholas Montemarano (2nd poem on the page)
- “News of the World” by Christopher Brean Murray
- “Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now” by Matthew Olzmann
- “Self-Portrait in the Time of Disaster” by Deborah Paredez
- “Becoming at sea” by Alycia Pirmohamed
- “Future Food” by Robin LaMer Rahija
- “The Summer After the Spring All the American Apparels Closed” by Thomas Renjilian
- “Among the Wreckage” by Laura Ruby
- “the universe will end & kali will still be here,” by Raena Shirali
- “The Point of Articulation” by Car Simione
- “It was All Fucked to Hell Before it Even Fucking Started” by Anthony Sutton (2nd poem on the page)
- “To Live in the Zombie Apocalypse” by Burlee Vang
- “Planned Obsolescence” by Ashley Wang
- “Cassandra” by Sasha West
- “Zombie Thanksgiving” by Lesley Wheeler
- “Field Notes on Living, Perpetually, on the Brink of Tragedy” by Rachael Lin Wheeler
- “Foreclosure” by Joe Wilkins (3rd poem on the page)
Poems of Hope & Tenderness Amid Devastation (or How It May Be Possible to Survive)
- “The Thing Is” by Ellen Bass
- “Fledgling” by Traci Brimhall
- “Vive, Vive” by Traci Brimhall
- “Poem with an Embedded Line by Susan Cohen” by Barbara Crooker
- “testify” by Eve L. Ewing
- “After Wildfires” by Yvonne Higgins
- “Trying” by Ada Limon
- “Aquarium” by Katharine Ogle
- “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” by Adam Zagajewski
I’m happy to continue adding to this collection of apocalypse poems. Got a fave that I’ve missed? Let me know!
Also, be sure to check out other popular lists published at this blog:
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