Lockdown Poetry: The Covid Long Haul edited by Rose Lucas, Liquid Amber Press, 2021

In 2020, our lives began to shift in ways we never imagined. The ground beneath us was no longer solid. The world we knew became unfamiliar almost overnight. Since then, the virus that has swept our planet has left no human life unchanged.

In the kaleidoscope of experiences that the pandemic has brought us, one word will never be forgotten: lockdown.

How does our inner world change when our outer world becomes so small? What does it feel like to be cut off from our loved ones? Or to be cocooned with them every waking moment? What happens when our fears are left to ruminate within the walls of our home?

These questions and more are woven throughout Lockdown Poetry: The Covid Long Haul.

This collection was born out of a live poetry reading night, which I was fortunate to attend. Held by Liquid Amber Press exactly one year after Melbourne went into its second 112-day lockdown, the evening was open to both Australian and international poets and guests. The anthology that came out of that event houses the voices of 21 poets – both established and emerging – who each contributed one to two poems each.

All poems reflect on the shared experience of life in lockdown, yet no two are alike. Reading this collection was like dipping into a river with many different currents running alongside each other.

Many of the poems of course speak of the fear we felt during lockdown. In ‘Isolation makes me’, Rose Lucas touches on how daily life was laced with unease as the virus – our constant yet invisible enemy – seemed to lie in wait:

listen…….something terrible is swirling
under our closed windows ..it’s sticking

to grocery bags….. our unwashed hands
an array of patterned masks wait on the kitchen bench

When reading ‘Borders’ by Anthony Mills, I was reminded of the shear panic that often took hold, and indeed the deep despair, which the poet describes with such vulnerability:

Sealed in our houses, netted by knotted
strands of panic, confusion cracks voices,
our faithless prayers run in dead whispers.

But our essential workers in the community had to keep venturing outside despite their anxieties. Anne Elvey recalls this reality in ‘The world you thought you knew’, evoking the eeriness of the empty roads on which they travelled:

…………………………Night sounds are

conducted across suburban streets –
a freight of track’s slight give

over sleepers, ghost passage for
those who must work away from

home.

The poems of missing and losing loved ones are both painful and moving. Michael Leach’s ‘December Remembrances’ conveys a haunting longing and fragility through its spacious form:

the pier
……………………cing
………………………………………………loss
…………of my dear
……………………………………..young
…………………………………………………………………………..mother
…..at the ………….I .,..C ..,.U……………………
……………………………………………on the 6th day
…………………………………………………..……….of winter
……….,,..…………2 0 2 0
the bitterly cold
……………………absence
………………………………of her
……………………presence

Other poems speak of small moments of beauty in lockdown, particularly when venturing out of the house on walks. Simone King and Dominique Hecq both begin their poems with tense domestic descriptions but then offer refreshing glimpses of the natural world:

we cross……. a threshold into

anaemic light
…..at Edgars creek we step into
…..…..bubbling over rock
…..……..…..lorikeet song
…..…..…..…….…..…..honey eucalyptus
…..……..…..blooms of early wattle.

 – Simone King, ‘Lockdown diary – day 66’

You cut across the wetlands. Survey
the plants: tussock grass, paper
daisies, spear-grass, everlastings,
orchids, lilies, periwinkles, maidenhair.

Your heart leaps up at the sight of scarlet
runner

 – Dominique Hecq, ‘Interlude’

In these poems, I was struck by the beautiful detail, the naming of specific flora and fauna, as though our shrunken worlds encouraged us to look at things more closely.

The collection also contains little gems of humour within the darkness. I couldn’t help but smile reading ‘Cake in the time of Covid’, in which Gaylene Carbis dispenses of all line breaks and spaces to craft an aptly claustrophobic poem about the irritation we sometimes felt for our nearest and dearest after being in daily close proximity:

A friend brought me the highest hugest chocolate cake I’d ever seen on a plate that he left in a red bag on my doorstep … My brother ate more than half of it. Next time I’m going to cut the cake or else, I might have to kill my brother. It was my cake and he was lucky to even get any.

Ultimately, Lockdown Poetry: The Covid Long Haul captures a point in history when we were forced to stand still. And in that stillness, many of us reconsidered the way we live our lives. In ‘Hallway’, Julia Prendergast describes a house in the midst of being decluttered and asks:

Who is to say what is useful now and what’s not? Or what means
something? Or whether meaning is altogether necessary?

Prendergast’s poignant lines transcend mere household clutter. They remind us of how the pandemic threw everything we knew into flux, forcing us to look at our lives anew, and sometimes to shed parts of ourselves we had long held on to.
At the end of this anthology, rather than feeling weighed down, I felt a soft release. In times of collective suffering throughout human history, poets are the ones who are able to name what seems unnameable. In doing so, something magical happens: a space is opened in which we can begin to heal.

– Dr Belinda Calderone

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Dr Belinda Calderone is a Melbourne-based emerging poet. With a background in academia, she holds a doctorate in Literary Studies from Monash University, has published scholarly works and spoken at conferences about the origins of the fairy tale genre, and has taught literature at several universities. Today, she’s focused on making a positive community impact: as a philanthropic proposal writer at Monash University, Belinda works with academics with socially impactful projects and helps them to craft the story of their research in ways that inspire support from passionate philanthropists.

Lockdown Poetry: The Covid Long Haul is available from https://liquidamberpress.com.au/product/lockdown-poetry-the-covid-long-haul/

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