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How To Write a Poem About Covid-19
Because you probably feel you want to write something, but what?
Whether you’re writing what you want to be writing or not, there’s probably a lot of stuff going on inside you right now. Frustration, fear, anger, grief, perhaps gratitude, loneliness. Those are the obvious ones. They tend to churn inside while you present a patient, nice face to the world. But getting them out can be really helpful.
Write about this virus? There are two schools of thought about this. One is that it’s impossible to write about a terrible, overwhelming event when you’re right in the middle of it, because you haven’t got enough of a long-range perspective on it. You’ll be too melodramatic, or raw and personal, or factual.
The other school of thought says, what better time? You’re right in the middle of it, enduring lockdown, isolation, the world in turmoil, your emotions in turmoil, your experiences unlike at any other time in your life. Why wouldn’t you try to capture that?
They’re both right. You can do both. Those two pieces of writing will probably be totally unlike each other, and why would they be similar? They will come from two entirely different places. If you like, you could say one will come from the heart (now) and one will come from your brain (looking back).
