This unstoppable force of water is a major theme of poet Martha Serpas' latest work, "The Dirty Side of the Storm," selections of which she shared Thursday with more than 60 students and faculty members at the Haggerty Museum of Art. ,”

Even before hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged the Gulf Coast in 2005, the waters of the Mississippi were slowly but steadily swallowing the land.

This unstoppable force of water is a major theme of poet Martha Serpas' latest work, "The Dirty Side of the Storm," selections of which she shared Thursday with more than 60 students and faculty members at the Haggerty Museum of Art.

A Louisiana native whose hometown is the second-largest Cajun settlement in the United States, Serpas' poems reflect a unique blend of culture, ecology, Catholicism and politics.

Serpas began with "Poem Found," the sole piece in the collection written after Katrina: ".And God said, 'Let there be a dome in the midst/ of the waters' and into the dome God put/ the poor, the addicts, the blind, and the oppressed./ God put the unsightly sick and the crying young/ into the dome and the dry land did not appear."

College of Arts & Sciences senior Kevin Wieklinski attended the reading for his contemporary American literature class. He said he loved the poem's phrasing, which was reminiscent of the biblical story of creation, as well as the poem's vivid imagery.

"It showed the impact of Katrina on New Orleans, and you could connect the poem to photographs of the hurricane," Wieklinski said.

The poem also stood out to College of Arts & Sciences freshman Megan Janni, who attended the reading for her honors English class. She also found interesting the poem's similarity to the book of Genesis and its references to Katrina.

"I enjoyed the reading more than I thought," she said. "I like to see how she expressed her life through words."

Serpas, a professor at the University of Tampa, read seven other selections from "The Dirty Side of the Storm," including the poem for which the collection is named. She said the right, or "dirty," side of the hurricane is what throws off water and is in fact more destructive than the wind.

She read another special selection for the many students in attendance.

"I suspect a lot of you are renters," Serpas said by way of introduction for the poem "To the Landlady": "At least you are female or that word "lord"/ would come in, confusing me with its claims/ of divinity. You can't lady it over me,/ or can you? Lord, Lord, we should own nothing,/ like you, God, who has given all away."

Associate Professor of English Clifton Spargo introduced Serpas, with whom he has been friends since they both pursued their graduate studies at Yale Divinity School. He said he loves how the themes of Catholicism, ecology and politics intersect in her poems, as well as the poems' post-Katrina timeliness and application to what students have seen in news coverage of the disaster.

"We've all been shaped with an awareness of natural disaster since Katrina struck," Spargo said.

Serpas said she has often heard people ask why those displaced by Katrina and other natural disasters don't just rebuild their lives away from where disaster is likely to strike again. But she understands what it is like to be attached to one's home.

"(My culture) is a culture that you cannot separate from the land," Serpas said.

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