On 21 October 1966, a coal waste tip collapsed onto the village of Aberfan in Wales. The landslide engulfed Pantglas Junior School and nearby houses, killing 144 people, most of them children. The disaster exposed the deadly consequences of industrial spoil placed above a living community.

Aberfan became one of the deepest wounds in modern Welsh poetry and song, joining coal, childhood, grief, and official negligence. Later writers including Owen Sheers and many Welsh-language poets returned to the black tip as a symbol of a landscape made dangerous by industry.