CoronaVerses: Poems from the Pandemic

by Janine Booth

This book is emerging in the UK at the very beginning of April 2020.

 

Coronavirus has already killed over two thousand people in this country and many thousands more around the world.

 

We are under orders to stay at home unless it is essential to go out.If we are key workers, we go out to work. If we are not, we show our solidarity to those who do and work from home if we can.We demand that our and others' incomes are maintained and our health protected. We volunteer with the local mutual aid groups that have filled the gaps left by a stripped-down welfare state anda slow reaction to the pandemic from the government.

 

And we write poems.Sad poems, funny poems, angry poems, touching poems.Formal poems, rhyming poems, free verse and rants.

 

On 18 March, poet Janine Booth set up the Facebook group poems from the pandemic,hoping to provide a forum to address the many issues and experiences that people were facing, but not expecting it to attract the volume of verse that it did.

 

All the poems in this book were posted in the group within its first week. So were hundreds more. We put together this anthology as an act of solidarity and a contribution to the fight against the virus.

Contributing

Attila the Stockbroker

Steve White

Ian Winter

Sez Thomasin

Mark Connors

Gill Lambert

Margaret Corvid

Fay Roberts

Merryn Williams

Hilary Walker

Rhoda Thomas

Leo CapellaSophie Gresswell

Bridie Breen

Barry Fentiman Hall

Joseph Redford

Laura Taylor

Pete Ramskill

Janine Booth

Gail Something-Else

Mark Marusic

Paul Blackburn

Megan Peel

Emma Dalmayne

Owen Collins

Rebecca Mallowan

Katie Greenbrown

Merry Cross

Tricia Elliott

Martin Hayes

Cathy Smith

James Denny

Gordon Zola

Cardinal Cox

Paul Dovey

Paul Waring

Ushiku Crisafulli

Melanie Branton

Lucy Joanne

Jan McCarthy

Herbie Herbs

Nick Toczek

Callum Brazzo

Alexandra Forshaw

Pete Yeandle

Elizabeth Faitarone

Randall L. Horton

Mary Kerr

Jason Travis

Ian Whiteley

Ron Graves

Patrick Kealeyand a composite poem convened by Jimmy Andrew

146 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 1, 2020

About the author

Marxist, trade unionist, socialist-feminist, author, poet, speaker, tutor, former RMT Executive member.

She was part of the ranting poetry movement in the 1980s, she performed poetry under the name The Big J.

Reviews

[Pippa Catterall · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an uneven but timely collection. Generally these are fairly short poems written as reflections on coronavirus and responses to the way it has been (mis)managed. Many of the authors are performance poets and it probably helps to read these works out loud to get the full effect of the anger many express. Some are more elegiac. All in some way capture the zeitgeist of these strange times we’re living through. I particularly liked the biting satire of Megan Peel’s ‘Because there were no women in the War Room’ and the Wilfrid Owen homage of Jason Travis’ ‘Passing Bells for those who die as cattle’. This is one of the best attempts I’ve seen to capture the hopes, fears and social distancing of 2020.