Below each submission you can find a short explanation of the work written by the creator.
Megan Schlanker
Archaeology, University of York
I've been following along with the escapril poetry challenge this month, and some of the prompts have inspired me to write about the current situation. It's hard to stay positive right now but I'm trying my best.
Ruth Kelly
Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York
[Ruth's poem has been removed at her request]
This poem reflects a sense of uncertainty as what I had expected for the next few years seems increasingly unlikely to happen. Over the past weeks I have spent more time in the garden, hearing children play and watching things grow. I adapt the meter, rhyme and alliteration of the children’s rhyme Ring a Ring o’ Rosie, which is now popularly associated with the plague, although evidence on when the rhyme originated and when it acquired that association is sketchy. The final lines refer to butterflies and mice, but also to early summer flowers: siberian iris (flight of butterflies) and myosotis (mouse-ear, or forget-me-not).
Ming Lin
Education, University of York
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L is reading this line “World is suddener than we fancy it” from a poem. She rested her chin on her hands when she heard the football strike the wall. She drew back the curtain and saw her friends T and M. T, an English boy, always has a football with him. She went out of the room and they chatted happily together. One day in January, L was weighed down by the news about the situation of COVID-19 in her home country China and locked herself in her room. She heard the sound of knocking at the window and she went out of the room. T showed L the screen of his phone and pointed to the name of a song ‘We Love You’. M, an Italian boy, said ‘Don’t worry, there is medicine’. In March, Italy became the place which had the largest number of COVID-19 cases apart from China. The Chinese government sent a lot of protective and medical equipment to help people get through this crisis in Italy. One day, T knocked at the window and asked L to come out. They had a hug and said goodbye. Nowadays, L can see a football lying undisturbed in the grass in the sunshine through her window.
It is a true story during this unprecedented time. It shows the detriment COVID-19 brings to normal daily life and the kindness and love people use to respond to it.
Kyveli Lignou-Tsamantani
History of Art, University of York
A Man with a Dog
COVID-19: daily briefings on suffering and death. Yet, how was the situation for all those of us who were lucky enough to not get sick? Repetition and monotony were the key parts.
At the beginning of the lockdown, everyday life became very challenging: the process of finishing a PhD, the loneliness of living alone during the lockdown, being afraid for the health of my loved ones who live abroad, and a constant refresh of news pages flooded with suffering. A difficult combination that many people found themselves in. Some days were better than others – those bad ‘non-days’. Yet, paying attention to the small things was giving me comfort; small exercises of ‘observing’ the mundane through my window, were leading to little moments of creativity. That is how this ‘textual image’ was written. A ‘textual image’ of monotony; a neutral exchange of gazes that was carrying with it the safety of some kind of stability. The stability of repetition.
TOM MCLEISH
Physics, University of York
SARS-CoV-2
Within the ever branching Tree of Life
Elemental splinters slither, writhe and slough
When winds contort dendritic fields of strife
Their hidden shards are gusted bough to bough
Invisible worms that fly by night, and range,
Submerged beneath th’abyssal scales of life
Enveloped in unseen bubbles, spiked and strange,
Deploy their intricate, invasive knife.
Yet neither they, nor hope, remain in flight
The slender human switch which hosts that dread
Is gifted also with creator’s sight
And love of nature’s love will find their bed.
Our centuries of science help us see
But must deny ourselves to make us free
The poem was a response to a reflection the connectedness we have with the virus through the tree of life, and how that larger perspective might help us think about it. I write in both the sciences and humanities, so this sonnet was also a partner to the computational biophysics work that I have also been engaged with.