The 2019 to 2020 Australian bushfire season burned vast areas, destroyed homes, killed wildlife, and filled cities with smoke. The fires were intensified by heat, drought, and climate conditions. Images of red skies, fleeing animals, and burned forests circulated globally.

Australian poets responded with elegy, anger, Indigenous fire knowledge, and renewed attention to Country. The fires sharpened poetic contrasts between ancient ecological practice, settler land management, climate grief, and the fragile beauty of eucalyptus, ash, and animal life.