The Black Saturday bushfire disaster: found poetry for arts-based knowledge translation in disaster risk and climate change communication

Abstract

This research uses the arts-based research method of found poetry, the creation of poem-like prose from existing text, to share the lived experience of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfire disaster in Australia which killed 173 people. After outlining the processes, this paper applies found poetry to an existing text: Peg Fraser’s book, Black Saturday. Five found poems are shared, each conveying a different element of the disaster experience: “Armageddon,” “Go–GET OUT,” “Bushfire Chook,” “Resisting the Poetry Tree,” and “Lucky”. Compared to normal prose, there is an authentic and vulnerable vibrancy to the language of these found poems, which offer unexpected visceral insight into the bushfire experience–the fear, the heat, the confusion, the anger, and the loss. Poetry, which resonates and draws people in emotionally, has significant potential as arts-based knowledge translation in disaster risk and climate change communication.