Nhatt Nichols reads from her poem "This Party of the Soft Things"
Nhatt Nichols reads from her poem This Party of the Soft Things a graphic poem about how the world is going to be changing after human beings disappear from the planet.
The poem is based on the book “The World Without Us” by Alan Weisman, a nonfiction book that explores the question: if human beings disappeared instantaneously from the Earth, what would happen?
Nichols poem takes on this idea in words and illustrations.
“It is a heavily-researched comic poem,” Nichols said. “I started thinking about what was going to happen if we’d actually taken it too far and we’ve destroyed the planet for human life. I know this sounds depressing. It’s not a depressing story at all. I feel like it’s really hopeful to know that if humans disappeared tomorrow, we haven’t taken things so far that the world can’t recover from it in a lot of ways. Some things are probably gone forever, but there’s a lot of things that are going to recover and there’s a lot of beauty that could continue, that we haven’t actually pushed everything beyond all sustainable life – at this point.”
Nichols grew up on a mountaintop in the Okanogan Highlands. Raised among survivalists, she developed the ability to observe the world around her from the perspective of an outsider, always looking back in. She is now a poet and graphic journalist living and working on the Olympic Peninsula. She is the author and illustrator of the comic book Boats, Bears, and Bad Life Choices: The Race to Alaska, and This Party of the Soft Things.
