Here is truth that we need to hear and confront in this viral age. Gordon Munro finds it in new work by Ben Okri and Marianne Faithfull
poetry
Doses of compassion from the doctor-poet
“If it is our mission…to alleviate suffering as well as to preserve life …”
The crystal-clear words of doctor-poet Gael Turnbull feel like a timely gift in our time of need.
On the threshold: songs and poems for a Covid-safe Christmas
Covid has closed the doors at least for now. But, there’s death-defying joy in Michael Marra’s song, a lockdown escape to be played loud and long. Here’s Frida Kahlo cutting an intoxicatingly exotic dash dancing to Perdido among the locals in the singer’s favourite bar.
Love and light: poetry and prose in the time of coronavirus
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
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’
Remembering Edwin Morgan at 100
Edwin Morgan became Scotland’s first makar in 2004: a tribute to him on his centenary from his biographer. ‘He was an acrobat of words and identities. Perhaps his own identity as a gay man, risking censure or imprisonment through most of his life, encouraged that ability to shape-shift.’
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
Your country needs EU – a journey led by poets
Morning. Mourning? Brexit done? ‘It’s more like getting breakfast done, it starts again the very next day.’ We take a Sceptical journey led by poets.