Locked Down
Susan Jane Sims [Editor]
208 poems, diary extracts and art; 279 pages
Price: £15
ISBN: 978-1-909404410
Publisher: Poetry Space Ltd
To order: www.poetryspace.co.uk
Reviewed by Neil Leadbeater
Just over five years has passed since the arrival of Covid-19 was officially announced in the UK. The UK was one of the worst affected countries throughout the whole of the pandemic. It upended everything and, as a consequence of that, those who survived are still living very much in its shadow. This anthology of poems, diary extracts and art bears witness to the events of 2020; events that have changed us all and have possibly changed forever the way we live our lives in the developed world. The contributions in this volume are from over a hundred people and they bear testament to the courage, resilience and resourcefulness of human nature when placed under extreme stress. It is a living record of what it was like to go through that time of lockdown and its aftermath. While each of these contributions is individual there is a sense in which it is also communal because it represents what was for everyone a shared experience.
Not surprisingly, in an anthology of this kind, many subjects overlap with each other but because of the way each has been interpreted there is no sense in which the content descends into mere repetition. Mechanisms for coping with this crisis, both positive and negative, are expressed in equal measure leading to a very balanced anthology.
Subjects covered major on the absence of close human contact, social distancing, the lifeline afforded to us by modern technology (WhatsApp, Skype and Zoom) as a means of keeping in contact with one another, life from the perspective of hospital staff, care home staff and other Key Workers, the consolation of prayer, reflections on the natural world, the opportunity to undertake new projects and the fresh realisation that life is a gift and that we should cherish its every moment.
In ‘St Mary’s Street Bakery, March 2020,’ Sarah Mnatzaganian employs some strikingly playful imagery when tackling the serious issue of social distancing:
We obey the pavement’s pink chalk stripes,
two metres apart. We play with our phones
to pass the time – or pitch a few words underarm,
like soft tennis balls, to the next in line.
Fear of contagion is at the forefront of Stuart Handysides’ poem ‘COVID-19, 25 February 2020’ which he sums up succinctly in the line ‘China sneezes; will we all fall down?’ Similar thoughts pervade Denise Bennett’s poems ‘Kindergarten I’ and ‘Kindergarten 2’ where the line ‘A-tishoo, a-tishoo, we all fall down’ appears in both poems. Interestingly, these are just two of only a handful of poems in the anthology that address children directly.
Words like ‘isolation,’ ‘distancing,’ ‘mask,’ ‘protective clothing,’ ‘testing,’ etc., that take on a new and urgent meaning, recur throughout this volume. Finding the right words for prayer is another language-focussed theme in Rosie Jackson’s poem ‘When Prayer Feels Unanswered’ which concludes with the thought that ‘Perhaps we’re not using the right vocabulary……Perhaps answers are yeast and rise very slowly.’
Victoria Gatehouse, in her poem ‘Hanami Sakura’ (cherry blossom viewing) inspired by an e-mail she received from Japan, takes us from Tokyo to Halifax to compare and contrast a number of things – life in lockdown and the fullness of nature in all its life-giving glory. Within these lines she also conveys something of the brevity and fragility of life. Her poem is a quiet reminder not to take life for granted, that in the grander scheme of things, our lives, too, are short:
On our one-walk-a-day
I lead the children past their school –
the silent playground, locked gates
the row of cherry trees
by the shelter where no buses wait.
The gutters are clogged with pink
The importance of Key Workers is brought out in a most original way in Anne Boileau’s prose piece ‘Hanging Out the Washing on Earth Day’:
I drew a portrait of a clothes peg this morning; it’s a more complex device than you might think and more necessary than you realise. How could you hang up sheets and pillow cases without a whole team of clothes pegs? Only now do those in power realise how indispensable are those least recognised workers, the worst paid, the invisible: bin men, carers, bus drivers, shop assistants, ambulance teams, sewage works operators. All these and many others provide the clothes pegs, and have now been reclassified as Key Workers.
In his poem ‘Lockdown Walks,’ Andrew Lawrence expresses the frustration of having to stay indoors and the yearning to be out and about once more in the realm of nature:
I gaze at far horizons
almost weeping at their inaccessibility.
…..
Will this ever be over?
Will I ever walk again,
freely,
to those distant hills?
Note how the word ‘freely’ is given a line all to itself. It is such an important word in this context.
In ‘Blue’ by Angi Holden, the poet explores the colour in a number of different contexts: blue skies, blue delphiniums and the flashing blue lights of ambulances amid an absence of clouds, aeroplanes and green grass. In this still-life setting, the only movement is to be found at the close: the ominous speed of a fleet of ambulances. Here is the poem, quoted in full:
It was the blue summer.
The sky cloudless,
unmarked by vapour trails;
the delphinium I’d always wanted
flourishing in my newly planted border;
the Buchanan tartan of the picnic rug
spread across the parched grass.
And racing up the hill each evening,
light seeping through closed curtains,
the pulse of ambulance beacons.
In conclusion, looking to the future, Aoife Doyle’s poem ‘Silence in the Time of COVID’ attempts to put the experience of lockdown into some sort of perspective:
One day we will look back in wonder,
and tell the stories of how
for just one short moment
our world stopped in its tracks
and there was awe and wonder in it all.
‘Awe’ is a carefully chosen word, drawing on its dual meaning of a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear and wonder.
The many and varied poems, prose diaries and artwork that make up this anthology lead us on a journey from despair and confusion through to resilience, renewal and creativity. Susan Jane Sims at Poetry Space Ltd should be congratulated for putting together such a fine, well-balanced anthology. The book is beautifully produced in a clear type font complemented by striking photographs and paintings throughout. Brief biographies of all the contributors are given at the end. |
