– Ok, in the Pandemic. We’re still here. But, things are moving along. As I write this, 60% of Canadians have received at least their first Covid vaccine shot. That brings hope for our future.
Like many writers, sometimes I’ve written fiction, sometimes I’ve written non-fiction.
And sometimes I write poetry.
This past month I’ve been working on three poems about the pandemic. A group of local writers and poets are assembling an anthology of poems focussed on the subject of living in the time of pestilence. I am honoured to have been invited to contribute to this project, and look forward very much to discovering the diverse experiences and voices I know will be included in the book.
The one thing about poetry – it’s all about the feels. That first time your heart got broken. When your hometown team got much farther in the finals than anyone expected (hey, 1. Canadian, and 2. Poetry speaks to all the feels.
Plague Time
So far my first poem relating life in Plague Time describes all the maddening paradoxes, the conflicting tension lines of social media and the news that twists and turns and circles round again with conflicting versions of information – never mind truth. Of feeling powerless, overwhelmed, afraid, angry, crazy, betrayed, bereaved.
It’s not that those feelings are wrong. So much has been twisted out of shape, broken off. But we have a tremendous capacity for repair. Looking at the memories of the past year in that poem, despite everything, I still feel hope – through all the broken communications, the twisted wiring, those will be memories of a darker time. But need not be our future. I still have two more poems to write. Hemingway wrote in a ‘Farewell to Arms’ about being ‘strong at the broken places’.
I feel that one day that’s where we will find ourselves.
