It has been nearly a decade since I launched Hellicane as a crowdsourced, poetic response to the pain and suffering, the rebuilding and rebirth, connected to Hurricane Katrina. While new poems are not being added to the site, Hellicane lives on for future generations to learn from and experience.
The site -- with all the poems from scores of poets around the world that are part of it -- has been inducted into the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, a unique project started in 2005 by George Mason University’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and the University of New Orleans, in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History and other partners. It uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the stories and digital record of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I am so proud of all the poets who contributed to Hellicane to know that our creation has found a permanent home connected to such prestigious institutions.
I'm also proud to report that the poem that started it all -- my work, Is This My Country? -- has been published in a special illustrated format in the Louisiana Anthology/Anthologie Louisianaise at Louisiana Tech University, a Tier 1 national research university located in Ruston, north-central Louisiana.
