In a frenzy of duty, service, long shifts.Ĭity airports heave with a throng of tourism –Įach department gate an exit. Nurses, doctors, registrars skittle towards pins Sacred hearts in the palms of its metal soul.Įach cubicle a tiny blood clot hiding drama, With this flippin’ ‘social bubble’ Catch a Virusįor better days ahead What if it’s just Nature?Ĭraved tourists to taste the city’s sweetest wares Recordings of these are included with the following contributions where we have them.

Some of the other contributions were read at a Zoom session in Ledbury’s online Festival in July 2020. This poem was later made into a short film that is now on YouTube Thank you to everyone for their contribution. I have found these poems extremely resonant, and I hope you will too. Other ways of thinking about, or seeing, what is happening in this present time. Nonetheless, in reading these poems, I find reflections on, and insight into, my own experiences. I am aware, as many people are, that for people and places in the world, the challenges are huge and sometimes extremely harrowing, compared to my own. Though of course everyone’s individual experience of this situation is unique. These poems were written during Lockdown and the Coronavirus pandemic, at a time when it seemed the whole country, and in fact the whole world was going through the same crisis.

They read alongside poets who submitted to Ledbury Poetry Festival’s online call out. The event featured a fascinating selection of Lockdown inspired poems, including poets commissioned by LPF, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sarala Estruch, Suzannah Evans, Elaine Beckett and Kim Moore. On Sunday 5 July 2020 there was a Poetry of the Lockdown event as part of Ledbury Poetry Festival Online. She lives in Carrboro, N.C.Thank you to everyone who has submitted Lockdown poems. She is working on a memoir entitled The Year I Didn’t Kill Myself, and a novel, T he Alderman of the Graveyard. Her poems have been published in numerous magazines and journals including the New York Times, POETRY, Boston Review, and Kenyon Review, and The New Yorker. Conners Prize from The Paris Review, and a residency from the Civitella di Ranieri Foundation, among others. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship from Stanford University, a Rona Jaffe Woman Writer’s Award, a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, TX, the Bernard F. Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart, Apocalyptic Swing (a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize) and Rocket Fantastic, winner of the 2018 Audre Lorde Poetry Prize. Associate Professor / Walker Percy Fellowġ996, BA (Concentration Creative Writing and Art History), Sarah Lawrence College Bio

Rocket fantastic poems