Dear Vaccine
Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic
Richard Carmona author Mike DeWine author Naomi Shihab Nye editor David Hassler editor Tyler Meier editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Kent State University Press
Published:30th Apr '22
Should be back in stock very soon
People from around the world reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine through poetry
When so much in our lives ground to a halt in the spring of 2020, no one knew how long the COVID-19 pandemic would last. After long months of shutdowns, social distancing, and worry, the first coronavirus vaccines were released in December 2020.
In March 2021, the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University and the University of Arizona Poetry Center launched the website for the Global Vaccine Poem project, inviting anyone to share experiences of the pandemic and vaccination through poetry. Dear Vaccine features selections from over 2,000 poetry submissions to the project, which come from all 50 states and 118 different countries.
Internationally acclaimed author Naomi Shihab Nye, in her introduction, highlights the human dimensions found across the responses. Richard Carmona, the 17th Surgeon General of the United States, provides a foreword that contextualizes the global scope of the problem, as well as the political and public health dimensions.
Making use of poetry's powerful tools to connect us across division, Dear Vaccine reminds us that medical advances alone are not enough to solve the vexing challenges of the pandemic; the arts—and poetry—have a profound and critical role to play.
"In the midst of all this division around the world, something to bring us together." —PBS NewsHour
"Dear Vaccine offers a snapshot in time so that readers of the future can glimpse what it was like to anticipate and receive protection from a killer virus during a global pandemic." —Mike DeWine, governor of Ohio
"What would you say to the vaccine if it could hear you? Dear Vaccine is an absolute treasure trove of personal, poetic responses. We are living through history, I've said to my children. People in the future will read about this time in books. Lucky for us, and lucky for them, one of those books will be this one. May the hope inside these pages be contagious." —Maggie Smith, author of Goldenrod and Keep Moving
"Dear Vaccine, the genius of David Hassler, Tyler Meier, and Naomi Shihab Nye, gave us permission to put into words that which weighed on our hearts during the global pandemic. The messages of grief, endurance, and hope from all around the world can be found in this timely book of poetry written by the people who lived it and have poems to tell." —Donna S. Collins, executive director, Ohio Arts Council
"Dear Vaccine is both address and adoration for the medical breakthrough that has liberated much of the world from unending lockdowns. Its bittersweet and sincere letter-poems personalize the notion that, regardless of age, condition, or location, that which makes us human also makes us vulnerable. It is as if the virus knows where to find us: classrooms, coffee shops, theaters, even our own living rooms. Even the briefest of lines reflects how far many had drifted from life's small pleasures only to pine for them once they were taken away. The frustration of airport security. The silence of museums. Broken into six sections—based on isolation, gratitude, grief, vaccine clinic, nostalgia, and possibility—this anthology encompasses the range of emotions we all experienced as the pandemic swept across the planet in waves. In Dear Vaccine, we are unified by loss yet comforted by both science and art." —Arlan Hess, City Books, Pittsburgh
ISBN: 9781606354391
Dimensions: 203mm x 140mm x 19mm
Weight: 140g
220 pages