Surfacing Ecological Disaster: Poets for Living Waters and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Considering the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Spill, the largest environmental disaster in American history, this article examines the elemental intermixing of oil and water via the chemical agent Corexit, the substantial effects submerging oil into the water column had on ocean life, and the aesthetic translation of this environmental destruction by the poetry platform Poets for Living Waters. Functioning as a communal expression of grief, of remembrance, and a demand for change, Poets for Living Waters brings together the work of hundreds of authors, figuratively raising oil’s toxic specter to the surface by challenging America’s failure to protect ocean ecosystems through an elementally-attentive poetics that highlights the characteristic traits of both water and oil and the deadly effects that occur when these two elements intermix.