CoronaVerses: Poems from the Pandemic (ePub)

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 and
a 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 CoronaVerses: 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 poets:

Attila the Stockbroker

Steve White

Ian Winter

Sez Thomasin

Mark Connors

Gill Lambert

Margaret Corvid

Fay Roberts

Merryn Williams

Hilary Walker

Rhoda Thomas

Leo Capella
Sophie 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 Kealey
and a composite poem convened by Jimmy Andrew