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In the time of coronavirus

A collection of stories submitted by the public on their experience of living through the time of the Coronavirus pandemic.
We are now safely through the first phase of response to coronavirus in New Zealand and people are reflecting on what this major and previously unimaginable global catastrophe has meant for us, as individuals, in the 21st century. Globally the losses and the scale of human suffering have been very great. This forum offers a space to reflect upon the experience and to consider questions such as: What are we learning from the pandemic? What might we need to remember and preserve? Through the alert levels our prime minister said repeatedly, ‘Stay safe, be kind.’ What was your experience, what did you observe, what mattered and how might we re-imagine a better direction going forward? If you would like to contribute to the re-collective effort please send me your reflections, observations, journal entries, stories to my contact page... just a page of A4 writing, with a title and a brief bio and they will be added to the repository of important writings flowering in this space.

The search for knowledge is.. an exercise in reminiscence, that is, an effort to recall and recollect that which we once knew.

Ahsivai Margalit quoted in Richard Horton, “The Ethics of Memory,” The Lancet, 6 June 2020

Remembering Covid-19 Lockdown Anxieties by Trevor M Landers

30/7/2020

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​Trevor M Landers, MA, MPM, MEd, is, currently based in New Plymouth. He has published six volumes of poetry, the last Heart of Joyful Fortune (2019) exploring his Buddhist praxis, in New Zealand and internationally. His next collection, Happy Birthday Suit, is due for release in early 2021.  He has been university lecturer, a senior public servant, a hospital orderly and a strawberry picker in Central Finland. He begins training as a psychotherapist in 2021. Ko Ngāti Airani rāua ko Ngāruahine tōna iwi hoki.
 
If you mistakenly think
       the shift to Level 2, renders you safe & immune
             read some COVID literature; this virus is a reproductive specialist
& emerging evidence,
                  + Professor Michael Baker,
                              apply to jittering amygdalas
           As influenza season approaches, brushfires can be bushfires in an instant
Look across to Japan, Singapore and then to Taiwan.
                 The first two allowed complacency and low infection rates,
                   did what we are doing ushered in public complacency,
                          the familiar upward curve,
                              the repellent sign of stacks of unadorned coffins.
 
In Taiwan mass-masking and all-island traceability
                vested a crown for the least per capita infections and death in the world
to wit, to be fully insured,
             we should be masked up outside,
              and be tracing much more rigorously
              than  the past three days,
               we have encountered ‘she’ll be right” and “the worst is over”.
 
  Naturelment, we hope to be spectacularly wrong,
                that our stringency is well-intentioned, misplaced, because if we are right
                                 21 dead will seem like a faraway Christmas present.
                                  So, stay safe, little Aotearoa,
            let caution and circumspection over-rule our complacent urge
                   to return to an unreachable past, the way we were.
              Let’s not stuff it up now.
Indeed, let’s do it a damn sight better,
       elaborate a vision so the next national emergency
                is not bequeathed to our mokopuna
         where the water dries up, when the mantle of the earth sizzles
        & their admonishing hands curse our reckless inaction.[1]
 


[1] This poem was originally called: ‘CoVID19: An admonition on opening up from Lockdown L3 and a strong hope that our stringency desires are overzealous (WIP), May 17, 2020’.
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Copyright © 2017 Deborah Shepard
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Writing Life >
      • Reviews & Interviews
    • Giving Yourself to Life
    • Her Life's Work
    • Translucence
    • Between The Lives
    • Reframing Women
    • Tributes
    • Personal Writings >
      • Lockdown Journal
      • Travel Journal
      • Elegy for a friend
      • Christchurch - Post Quakes
      • On a residency
      • Deborah’s Love Letter to the Women’s Bookshop
      • Deborah's Q & A With Unity Books
  • Writing Memoir
    • Defining Memoir
    • The Participatory Model
    • Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
    • The Value of a Writing Class
    • From writing course to book publication
    • Your Writing Space
    • Writing on a Theme >
      • Window
      • Surviving a Crisis
    • Reviews of Memoir
  • Writers' stories
    • Covid-19 Stories
    • Writing Guidelines
  • Events
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • Media
  • What People Say
  • Contact