Honoring Miners With Poetry

This past weekend, 30 Chinese miners were killed in a gas burst in Tonghua coal mine in Chongqing. Yesterday, 61 dead miners were pulled from the abandoned shaft they’d been illegally mining in Johannesburg, South Africa. When twelve men lost their lives in a coal mine in Sago, West Virginia three years ago, their deaths were made even more tragic by the fleeting hope that they had survived. The press corps swarmed Sago for days before moving on for another story.

Writer and activist Mark Nowak picks up the miners' tale. His new book Coal Mountain Elementary brings together memories, testimonies, newspaper stories, photographs and poetry to connect the lives and deaths of people toiling underground from all corners of the globe.

(Photo by Mark Nowak)