A poetic journey (for an I’m-over-iso lecturer)
A day in isolation becomes a lifetime. There is a birth, an awakening where there is nothing but possibility and growth. Filled with fresh air, screeching birds (the birds in Australia don’t sing, they scream), bitter coffee and hope.
This is compromised immediately by the dissatisfaction that comes from checking in on the news and wading through the half-hearted half-measures of a group of men who’ve never understood what it means to live an everyday existence. The malaise comes on quickly, a heaviness born of months of bad news.
We’ve just survived six months of brutal bushfires, the loss of a billion animals, thousands of homes and too many lives. Before the smoke (that blanketed our cities) could clear, there were floods and then this plague. We’re tired. It isn’t as if Australians don’t expect this conflict with our land—most of us are invaders—but this year it feels particularly relentless. We can’t even wash it off in our oceans—the beaches are closed.
The middle-age of the day is a slow slog of work; of forcing words that would usually flow naturally between people into a digital space. Phone calls and emails and online chat. I make lists to remind myself to be human—breathe/stretch/read/drink water. It seems both manic and eternal.
By evening I’m old; exhausted by ennui. The morning’s youth feels distant. To find my way through this, I force myself to sit and write. I start a Facebook group in response to the National Poetry Month challenge “a poem a day for April.” It’s called “Love in the Time of Corona”. Initially, it’s just myself and a few students from my Creative Writing: The Art of Poetry and Short Story class, but along the way we add other lecturers, students, alumni, friends and family. By the end of the month, we have 18 members.
Alumna and high school teacher Bianka Costigan describes the poetry challenge as “such a blessing. I’m well at the beginning of a writer’s journey and it’s been delicious to read what everyone else shares.” Lecturer Kerry Derbidge realised it was “a sort of self-care process, where I mentally break away from work (which expands to fill ALL the time available!) and engage my creative brain in something that refreshes me.”
Some people post a poem every day, some post now and then and some just read and encourage. Each morning, I post a prompt—a word or phrase, an image or a style of poetry to attempt. By the end of the day, we upload whatever we’ve created. We’re made expansive as we write and our time has more form. Some days our poems are simple, rudimentary things, rhythmless and rambling. Other days there’s beauty, passion, truth and even genius. Always there is humanity.
The Dream
it is the dream
the silence bubbling gently on the stove,
the bookshelf sighing in relief
darkness scratching at the door
it is the daydream
the candle humming Nina Simone
and tracing a gentle line around
the room with a hot, sharp finger
it is the vagary
the ideas stutter, embarrassed
by the spotlight, and cover a cough
loneliness strikes 4 pm, carefully tearing the day in half
it is the nightmare
the dregs and scalded genius stain
the bottom of a chipped cup
fool’s gold
Lynnette Lounsbury
Share
About the Author
