Echoes of Struggle and Hope: Connecticut Poet Laureates on the Opioid Crisis
Legislative Office Building
Hartford
August 25, 2025
When I told my friend that I was going to the Legislative Office Building in Hartford to hear poetry about the opioid crisis, she said, “I thought that was over?”
No, it is very much still going on. More than 50,000 Americans lost their lives last year to opioid overdoses. While that’s much lower than the 83,000 who died in 2023, that still represents 50,000 individual people who have left behind family, friends and communities.
Remembering the humanity of overdose victims was the theme of the event Echoes of Struggle and Hope: Connecticut Poet Laureates on the Opioid Crisis, hosted by State Sen. Dr. Saud Anwar. The senator, who has made combating the opioid crisis one of his signature initiatives, brought together poet laureates from across the state to share their stories of loss due to opioids.
“Statistics can tell us the scale of the problem, but poetry reminds us of the humanity behind each number,” Dr. Anwar said. “It helps us feel the weight of the parents’ grief, the ache of stigma, and the resilience of recovery. Stigma remains one of our most stubborn barriers to effective policy. Too often, those struggling are seen as statistics or stereotypes, rather than neighbors and family members.”
The ache of stigma could be felt in the sprawling hearing room as poets from Manchester, Southington, Scotland (the Connecticut town, not the country), Clinton and Hartford put their pain to verse.
Julia Paul, the poet laureate emerita from Manchester, shared a crushingly sad poem titled My Son Kneeling in Rubble. Her eldest son, Brendan, died from an opioid overdose. The poem recounts what she imagines were his last hours on earth:
His stomach an empty takeout container, lungs twitching roadkill
That his arms were already broken wings, that the needles had stippled his flesh
That he was pouring out through those tiny holes
He could imagine himself in every puddle and every puddle was an ocean he couldn’t swim across,
That floating face up was no longer an option
Who is more terrified in this position: Brendan, the young man who knew he was already lost? Or Julia, who perhaps knew it too? There’s no greater helplessness than when your own child is in pain and you can’t help them, and the grief of that knowledge permeates Julia’s poetry.
Manchester is the home of another powerful poet, Nadia Sims, who is the current poet laureate for the town. Her poem, Grip, was just as sad as Julia’s, but focused on the triumphant life of her aunt Diane until her sudden death by celebrating her as the greatest hair braider in all of Hartford:
Her hands taught me to be still, to endure, to keep my head straight, to never let my head be so tender it couldn’t see things through
You see, her hands showed who she was. She was too strong
Too strong to give up
Too strong to say no
Too strong to stop
Too strong to let go
She never would let go of her family. She never would let go of her dreams
She never would let go of her cravings, of her drugs, of her needs
and she died on the floor, fingers blue, still gripping
still holding, still clutching the drug, still chasing a different reality
Nadia said she wants people to remember her aunt as a person, not an addict. Whenever she tells people how her aunt died, she said, it’s as if everything she was gets swept away. The stigma rears its ugly head, and another human being gets reduced to a statistic.
Art has the power to move us, to comfort us, to remind us. Yes, there is still an epidemic of death and loss decimating communities and families. The poets who shared their pain did so to make sure that we remember that human beings are dying, and it’s our responsibility to do something about it.
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