The Covid Pandemic Essays Book Reviews And Poems

This book contains several critical essays, book reviews, and poems that address the current pandemic to mark a sad but hopeful first anniversary of COVID. Similar to many academic journals, the Journal of Medical Humanities, in which these contributions were first published, has received a number of submissions during the first year of the pandemic relating directly to it. In the early months, the journal saw an unprecedented number of poetry submissions from physicians who seemed to be turning to verse as a way to memorialize what was happening, to find ways of healing from the devastating number of dying patients, and to capture the exhaustion and anxiety of caring for others day after day without respite. By publishing this selection, the volume editors honor and thank all those who have been caring for patients, teaching and mentoring students, and as such have been contributing to our understanding and awareness of this crisis. Previously published in Journal of Medical Humanities, Volume 42, issue 1, March 2021 Chapters “COVID-19, Contagion, and Vaccine Optimism”, “Virile Infertile Men, and Other Representations of In/Fertile Hegemonic Masculinity in Fiction Television Series”, “Movement as Method: Some Existential and Epistemological Reflections on Dance in the Health Humanities” and “The Ethic of Responsibility: Max Weber’s Verstehen and Shared Decision-Making in Patient-Centred Care” are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Dark as Last Night confirms, once again, that Tony Birch is a master of the short story. These exceptional stories capture the importance of human connection at pivotal moments in our lives, whether those occur because of the loss of a loved one or the uncertainties of childhood. In this collection we witness a young girl struggling to protect her mother from her father's violence, two teenagers clumsily getting to know one another by way of a shared love of music, and a man mourning the death of his younger brother, while beset by memories and regrets from their past. Throughout this powerful collection, Birch's concern for the humanity of those who are often marginalised or overlooked shines bright.

This suite of pandemic essays exist within those first one hundred days of original lockdown, marking time through moments, anxieties and the elasticity of time itself. What are days, weeks, months? In this stunning collection of deeply personal essays, Ottawa writer rob mclennan wanders through literature, parenting, family, the constant barrage of cable news and the slow loss of his widower father across the swirling, simultaneous anxieties and uncertainties of an increasing sense of isolation.

The Vault is a quiet and vulnerable sequence of ethereal fragments, letters, and poems that trace a narrative of love and healing in the afterlife of a parent’s death. Seasons turn and a life is built despite the ruin. Each poem is a music box of prayer, of the decisions made and yet to be made.

Poets have always had the capability to travel inward – to create something out of the chaos of their inner world. It is why poetry is said to be cathartic, for through it, the poet eases himself of his burdens. But beyond that, poetry is also a tool for reflection. Oh, poetry cannot be stuffed into a single purpose for it is the expression of human emotions in line and verse, in styles and forms, rhymes and metres. And so, it acts has a way for the poet to transmit what he sees, thinks and feels in his inner world, those abstractions, into something tangible. Stuck at home in the loud silence inflicted by a lockdown, where does the poet turn to? What does he turn to? His inner world? Tolu’ Akinyemi’s Born in Lockdown is a collection of poetry birthed in such a traverse. The poems explore the pandemic and lockdown, and the myriad feelings, effects and reactions it birthed. The collection begins with a declaration of the poet’s utter despair: There is a pandemic in my head, raging like boiling water. There is a war in my mind, tugging at the deepest part of my soul. There is a thunderstorm in my heart, wreaking havoc like it is doomsday. At each flip of the page, you come across poems that are either personal or reflective, or poems that are querying in tone. On how the pandemic disrupts intimacy, Tolu’ wrote: Your love in my heart was innocent and untainted until COVID crept in and the veil of deceit was lifted. What’s appealing about this collection is the simplicity of Tolu’s style and the softness of his metaphors. His similes and imagery are like the vivid strokes of an artist on canvas; they’re not ambiguous. You read lines like: The silence in this house is eating me up like termites ravaging wood. This is poetry – minimalist, yet pronounced in what the poet was able to use simple words to achieve. In this collection, Tolu’ has proven himself a master of language, using words to weave moods and emotions. You oscillate between the heaviness of loneliness to the grief of a wrecked relationship to the hope of vaccines that will save the world. This collection promises you a titillating experience.

This poetic diary recounts one mother's struggle to contend with the pandemic's losses and accept its gifts. When the coronavirus threatened to take away everything, Amy Suardi began to record a life that suddenly felt more precious. Amidst the distress of lockdown and the trials of finding herself running a school with her five children, it was often the ordinary domestic moments that were the most poignant. Suardi's journal-keeping, in the form of micro-memoirs, poems, and short essays, turned into a discovery of hidden beauty and how even the smallest things can be openings into deeper, larger worlds. Originally published on her webpage Painting with Words, these pieces bring together the first seven months of the pandemic and include Suardi's experience of marching for racial justice, witnessing high school end for her daughter without prom, graduation, or even hugs, and dropping her off at a hollowed-out Covid-era college campus. Sometimes light-hearted, sometimes meditative, Suardi's writing has been noted for its "gentleness intertwined with intensity of emotion" and its "keen perception of the moment observed." Whether the works are read individually or together, this genre-defying collection creates a pointillist portrait of one woman's experience of what was lost in the pandemic, and perhaps most of all, what was found.

In March 2020, as a pandemic began to ravage our world, writer and professor B. J. Hollars started a collaborative writing project to bridge the emotional challenges created by our physical distancing. Drawing upon Emily Dickinson’s famous poem “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” Hollars called on Wisconsinites to reflect on their own glimpses of hope in the era of COVID-19. The call resulted in an avalanche of submissions, each reflecting on hope’s ability to persist and flourish, even in the darkest times. As the one hundred essays and poems gathered here demonstrate, hope comes in many forms: a dad dance, a birth plan, an unblemished banana, a visit from a neighborhood dog, the revival of an old tradition, empathy. The contributors are racially, geographically, and culturally diverse, representing a rough cross section of Wisconsin voices, from truck driver to poet laureate, from middle school student to octogenarian, from small business owner to seasoned writer. The result is a book-length exploration of the depth and range of hope experienced in times of crisis, as well as an important record of what Wisconsinites were facing and feeling through these historic times.

Since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic in March 2020, people in every part of the world encountered many troubling events. We were in and out of lockdowns. We experienced personal difficulties related to health, finances, and the stresses of working from home, on the frontlines in the community, or for not having work at all. We witnessed the necessity of social interaction for our own mental health and for that of our children who spent months without the company of their schoolmates. Communities struggled with deep political and societal issues, but also displayed resilience and strength. Some found the focus, energy, and inspiration to write, to make art, and to express their creativity in other ways during this difficult, disruptive period. This book began as a blog for a group of Northumberland writers in Ontario; a place where they could share their work and stay connected. Writing and reading these stories and poems helped to get us through. Our Pandemic Times provides a record of what we did, what we wrote, what we felt, and how we rose to the challenges of this uncertain year.