This book is emerging in the UK at the very beginning of April 2020.
Coronavirus has already killed over two thousand people in this country and many thousands more around the world.
We are under orders to stay at home unless it is essential to go out.
If we are key workers, we go out to work. If we are not, we show our solidarity to those who do and work from home if we can.
We demand that our and others' incomes are maintained and our health protected. We volunteer with the local mutual aid groups that have filled the gaps left by a stripped-down welfare state and
a slow reaction to the pandemic from the government.
And we write poems.
Sad poems, funny poems, angry poems, touching poems.
Formal poems, rhyming poems, free verse and rants.
On 18 March, poet Janine Booth set up the Facebook group CoronaVerses: poems from the pandemic,
hoping to provide a forum to address the many issues and experiences that people were facing, but not expecting it to attract the volume of verse that it did.
All the poems in this book were posted in the group within its first week. So were hundreds more. We put together this anthology as an act of solidarity and a contribution to the fight against the virus.
Contributing poets:
Attila the Stockbroker
Steve White
Ian Winter
Sez Thomasin
Mark Connors
Gill Lambert
Margaret Corvid
Fay Roberts
Merryn Williams
Hilary Walker
Rhoda Thomas
Leo Capella
Sophie Gresswell
Bridie Breen
Barry Fentiman Hall
Joseph Redford
Laura Taylor
Pete Ramskill
Janine Booth
Gail Something-Else
Mark Marusic
Paul Blackburn
Megan Peel
Emma Dalmayne
Owen Collins
Rebecca Mallowan
Katie Greenbrown
Merry Cross
Tricia Elliott
Martin Hayes
Cathy Smith
James Denny
Gordon Zola
Cardinal Cox
Paul Dovey
Paul Waring
Ushiku Crisafulli
Melanie Branton
Lucy Joanne
Jan McCarthy
Herbie Herbs
Nick Toczek
Callum Brazzo
Alexandra Forshaw
Pete Yeandle
Elizabeth Faitarone
Randall L. Horton
Mary Kerr
Jason Travis
Ian Whiteley
Ron Graves
Patrick Kealey
and a composite poem convened by Jimmy Andrew
