jackie scutt writing
write-now
Poems are, for me, words on a page. Although sound and voice are important elements, it is the shape of the words and lines, their relationship to each other on the surface, caught by the eye, that play a more vital role in my own writing.
At the turn of the year, I found myself forming a list poem, citing the words and phrases that have clouded our horizons during 2020, and continue to hover over us.


In the first online workshop of my Artists' Books and Bookbinding course, I learnt a new technique for binding pages and subsequently used it to create a book for my Word Cloud poem.
Each line was inscribed on heavy artists' paper with old fashioned pen and ink. When the pages were collated and pasted, the book sprang open to form a circle - a surprising and apt way of positioning the words on the page for this particular poem.
Rather than being secured with a hard cover, the book is contained in its own box.
January 2021
Word cloud
unprecedented
pandemic
panic
priority groups
personal
protective
space
hands and face
stay safe
clap
socially-distance
self-isolate
anti-bacterial
shield
key dates
transmission rates
follow the science
test and trace
lockdown in tiers
hopes and fears
a perfect storm
a second wave
a spike
a curve
a U-turn
out-perform
NHS
excess death