It’s abut humanity. Vision is the theme of #NationalPoetryDay 20-20 and our co-editor Fay finds solace and joy and sadness in poetry and prose written in the time of coronavirus
Poetry
Willie Hunter 1940-2020
‘He suffered from depression, remarking once that ‘I’ve written books and poems to self-medicate my depression’. Poetry as medicine for dementia and depression is why the passing of Willie Hunter footballer, poet and ambassador is a loss to poetry as well as those that knew him.’
If you didn’t laugh
“I wanted to upset everybody, including myself. Half the problem with the world is that half the people take themselves too seriously. The other half don’t take themselves seriously enough.”
Making music – and poetry
Reading poetry in the pandemic is waxing, as people turn to verse for solace amidst their grief or for expressions of their own anger at needless suffering and death. We are not supposed to call the struggle to contain, suppress and/or beat the coronavirus a war yet it is to war poets people often reach […]
Strictly street dancing: a poem for a pandemic
Coronavirus brings powerful new poignancy to a remarkable poetry collection gathered by Edinburgh’s former Makar, Christine De Luca to celebrate “those who daily undertake some of the lesser-seen jobs in our city…night bus drivers, lollipop ladies, binmen…now on the ‘frontline’
Being 90: a poem for a pandemic
‘Perversely, in the wars evoked by politicians it was the flaming of youth untimely snuffed out. Such thoughts emerge from a new poem, written before the pandemic, the reflections of a man in his tenth decade, walking by the river near his home. And wondering…’
Address to a coronavirus
“…the hale podium of panjandrums/ wha think they ken hoo tae run things…” including from their beds of isolation…with nods to Burns and the English Bard
Love in the time of COVID19
‘We will need to be the Phoenix that rises from the flames – may our plumage be kindness, astuteness, carefulness and long-sightedness. These would be golden feathers indeed.’
A gleam of starlight from the window: poetry for a pandemic
Poems and songs for Earth Hour on Friday March 27 (ICYMI)…”In our time of isolation, whether enforced or voluntary, there’s something comforting in that notion of stars clustering together for so very much longer than human life on earth.”
The tipping point
A song for Extinction Rebellion: ‘If enough of us give our voices then the pressure builds on the systems of power to take notice and accelerate change for the better.’