Life of/in a pandemic

Abstract

This contribution features a series of short poems which trace life during the pandemic as an academic on maternity leave with her first child and whose husband is a frontline worker. These poems traverse through this life of/in the pandemic in a chronological fashion that also cuts across the globe from the death of loved ones, their children unable to leave the US to attend their funerals in England to our baby’s eight-month development review in Scotland where certain questions could not be asked due to lack of interaction with other human beings; from the covid test performed on our then ten-month old in a park and ride carpark in another part of Scotland to the birth of my nephew in Northern Ireland where my sister was dropped at the hospital door by her husband, alone until the active stage of labour; from video calls with daddy in PPE to the lingering effects of my father’s own covid experience. Titles of these short poems therefore include, amongst others, ‘Death,’ ‘Development Review,’ ‘Covid Test,’ ‘Birth’ and ‘Long Covid.’ In many ways, these short poems come together to form one larger poem that maps the ebbs and flows of how covid-19, medicine and everyday life intertwine.