I had a strange dream last night. I was a scientist studying zombies, not in the usual “run-for-your-life” sense, but as part of a research team working to understand them. My colleagues and I weren’t afraid of the zombies, nor were we particularly concerned about the infection they carried. Strangely, I never actually saw a single zombie in the dream. Instead, I spent the entire time scribbling on a clipboard, documenting zombie identification codes and tracking the percentages that indicated the disease was worsening.
The eerie part? We never discussed what any of it meant. There was no sense of urgency, no reflection on the state of the world, no hint of the moral questions bubbling under the surface. Yet, it occurred to me: poetry would absolutely talk about that. Poetry would dig into what these zombies really represent—our collective fears, our society’s fragmentation, the terror of losing humanity.
And that’s why we read poetry. We read it because, unlike my dream, poetry asks the hard questions and digs beneath the surface. It is about meaning—meaning in a world that often seems devoid of it. It’s about exploring the depths of human experience, even in times of uncertainty and chaos.
U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo recently spoke about how the current political and cultural turmoil in America has led more people to seek solace and understanding in poetry. In an interview with TIME magazine, she pointed out that during periods of division and crisis—whether political or environmental—people turn to poetry to find something beyond the noise. “We need something to counter the hate speech, the divisiveness,” she said, “and it’s possible with poetry.” Poetry becomes the space where we can explore the questions that matter, the ones that don’t have easy answers.
Harjo’s thoughts remind me of what I’ve been learning through my current project: reading 100 poetry books in a year. I’m a few months in now, and already, poetry has revealed so much about the world around me. In fact, poetry teaches us to listen—to the world, to history, to the air around us. It teaches us to study life, much like a geologist studies rocks or an astronomer watches the stars. Poetry invites us to examine everything, even the things that might scare us or make us uncomfortable.
One poet I’ve recently encountered, Bianca Lynne Spriggs, describes her poems as “years of accumulated internalized urgency to know.” I love the word urgency in that description. Poetry, in its essence, carries a sense of urgency—the urgency to understand the world, to make sense of the fleeting nature of time, and to capture moments before they slip away. Time, for all our manipulation of it, is something we ultimately know we can’t afford to waste.
And yet, there’s something that’s been missing from my reading so far. Out of the 25 books I’ve read in this project, none of them have addressed the one thing that’s been on my mind ever since I woke up from that strange zombie dream: why isn’t anyone writing zombie poems?
Think about it. Zombies have long been a cultural metaphor for so many things: the mindless march of consumerism, the breakdown of social norms, the fear of losing ourselves in the noise of modern life. Zombies are a symbol of something vital—something deeply human, even if it’s hiding beneath the rotting skin of fiction. So, why aren’t poets tapping into that?
Poetry has the power to unearth what’s hidden. It pulls back the layers of our emotions, our histories, and our collective traumas, forcing us to face what we might otherwise ignore. Grief, loss, power imbalances, the collapse of societal structures—these are all themes explored by poets again and again. So, why aren’t we confronting the zombie apocalypse in verse?
Sure, we’ve got the novels and movies. But poetry—poetry is where we can slow down and really feel the weight of these symbols. A zombie poem could explore the collapse of civilization, the individual’s fight to hold on to their humanity, or the grotesque blending of life and death. It could examine the fear of being consumed—by others, by a culture that no longer makes sense, or by our own internal decay. There’s something deeply poignant about that, don’t you think? The undead are not just monsters; they’re mirrors to our own fears and desires.
And if anything, poetry is perfectly equipped to handle that kind of existential confrontation. After all, it’s in poetry that we examine not only the beautiful but also the ugly, the horrific, and the strange. It’s the place where we can ask the uncomfortable questions: What if the zombies are us? What does it mean to be human in a world that is falling apart? What happens when we lose our ability to feel?
As I continue with my reading project, I’m excited to see what the next books will teach me about the world—its beauty, its violence, its tenderness, and its horrors. But I can’t help but wonder: is there someone out there writing the zombie poems I’m waiting for? What would they say? How would they confront our collective fear of the future, of losing ourselves to something we can’t control?
It’s an invitation I’m waiting for. An invitation to explore, to question, and to finally hear what the zombies might have to say if they could speak in verse.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s time for the zombie poem to rise.
