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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Rather than being secured with a hard cover, the book is contained in its own box.

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January 2021

Word cloud

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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