Deborah Shepard Books
  • 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

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

Zooming into Journal Writing by Elizabeth McRae

20/5/2020

1 Comment

 
​Elizabeth is an actor and a poet and finds the two not dissimilar.  A blank page is like a first rehearsal.
 
- dedicated to the “women in squares”
 
I want my journal to be personal but have the usual fears that it might be too trivial and boring. Who am I writing it for, anyway?   But then I do want to document the period of covid19, the lockdown in this weird and extraordinary time.   I want to thank my daughters, their partners and two of the granddaughters.  I have been living with them for two months.  I’m hugely grateful for the care, the meals and the loving atmosphere.  I anticipate living alone again with some trepidation.
 
On the other hand I do need my own things around me.
 
I have attempted keeping a journal before — during the celebrations for the centenary of women’s suffrage, documenting a rehearsal process for a play, surviving my first year in a new soap opera (this became too libellous to continue) and holidaying with a group of friends at Mimiwhangata.  I admit to finding these sorties into journal writing quite diverting and at times sobering to read through.
 
I would also like to document this process of growing old.  How is being eighty-three different from being sixty-three or twenty-three?  I have no answer to this.  It’s reassuring that when I write about the past memories rush into my head and it’s quite a job to marshall them into coherence.

When I go back home and other events crowd into my life, will I keep up with this journal?  I have enjoyed the weekly zoom and the company of the women on the course.  I treasure their personal disclosures and the laughs we’ve had together.   My heartfelt thanks to Deborah for guiding and shaping a coherent and interesting programme.
 
View from my Writing Table
 
this morning the sky was golden
“shepherds warning,” they say
my delight to see such light
over snow topped Kaikouras
and tiny island in the bay
bright foam on waves
breaking on sea-weeded rocks
wind shivers the cabbage tree
long grasses bend and wave
I breathe in the air
so clear in the crystal light
 
Elizabeth McRae April 2020
1 Comment
Fredrika van Elburg
26/5/2020 01:35:43 pm

HI Elizabeth,

your comparison between a blank page and a first rehearsal reminds me of a line by the American poet Ron Silliman. He wrote: 'I get vertigo at the top of a blank page'.
One of those lines that stick in your mind.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    WRITING GUIDELINES

    Archives

    January 2021
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020

    Authors

    All
    Anissa Ljanta
    Anita Arlov
    Anna Fomison
    Brian Sorrell
    Cath Koa Dunsford
    Cynthia Smith
    David Arrowsmith
    David Hill
    Delis Pitt
    Diane Brown
    Elizabeth McRae
    Estelle Mendelsohn
    Eva De Jong
    Faith Cleverley
    Fiona Kidman
    Fredrika Van Elburg
    Gregory O'Brien
    Jane Bissell
    Janet De Witt
    Jeanette De Heer
    Keith Woodley
    Leigh Burrell
    Liz March
    Liz Wilson
    Margo Knightbridge
    Marilyn Eales
    Mary Elsmore-Neilson
    Michelanne Forster
    Pamela Gordon
    Philip Temple
    Robyn Welsh
    Roger Horrocks
    Ruth Bonita
    Ruth Busch
    Siobhan Harvey
    Sue Berman
    Tessa Duder
    Trevor M Landers
    Yvonne Van Dongen

    RSS Feed

Writing Memoir
Defining Memoir
The Participatory Model
Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
​From Writing Course to Book Publication
Your Writing Space
​Writing on a Theme
Reviews of Memoir
Writers Stories
​
Events
​About
Testimonials
What People Say

Media
​Contact
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