COVID Art and Poetry

Lisa Rawlinson

COVID Poetry And Art

Untitled 2020 | Watercolor on paper | 8" x 8"

October 11, 2020

Way back in April, which seems like at least three lifetimes ago, I started a project combining poetry and art that was intended to be a part of the annual 100 Day Project that I have participated in twice in the past with my 100 Days of Science in Art and 100 Days of Visual Meditations. I made it partially through 6 of them when I realized I had metaphorically painted myself into a corner, or that I was about to, and so I hit the brakes. The idea was that I would flop the relationship between how art and poetry interact in my Visual Meditations, in which a tarot card reading flows into a channeled, loose and abstract painting that then flows into channeled poetry (those three forms merge to act as a reading for myself and also for others). While I always have written both poetry and prose, poetry was not one of those things I'd given myself permission to fully explore without self-censoring (funny how that works). I'd been writing poetry more and more often and really wanted to delve into that world, understanding it is its own method of discovery through creativity, and then flow into visuals. On top of that I wanted to start honing my skills with sharing content through videos and was recording myself reading and discussing the poems then posting them onto YouTube. Or that was the idea. What happened was that I spent way too much time battling the technical issues presented by my aging laptop and the fact that I am holed up in this quarantine with my parents and had little control over my environment, which turned out to be filled with construction noises and many, many interruptions (long story that I'll get around to eventually, but not today). The videos were a great learning process for me that I'll be able to add to my tool belt later, but they were absolutely interfering with the creative flow and not up to the technical quality I wanted (and expected of myself, as someone with decades of publishing experience). They were also not the ideal format for delivering that content, and the form of the poem I had started with—beginning it like dated journal entry and ending with COVID statistics— also quickly became a constraining factor in the writing process. And, with everything that was going on in the U.S. in late Spring and early summer with the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd (two names among many), and the subsequent demonstration of unchecked police brutality that played out against civilian protesters of all stripes, it also was absolutely not the right time (these are still pressing, unresolved matters, of course).

All this was screaming at me to quietly bring it to a halt and alter the direction.

I viewed the project before I even started it as a process that would create itself and unfold into something I couldn't yet predict... and it quickly did. Even with all of these constraining factors, after writing 6 poems and creating their sidekick paintings, they were already evolving beyond what I had imagined. Pivoting was the right decision, because it created the time and space for me to just write (uncensored) and to envision how I do want to eventually share this content, when it's ready, and how the visual aspects will integrate into that, each becoming an equally important and balanced part of the project. And that's exactly what has been happening behind the scenes. While it may appear from social media that all I have been doing lately is painting postcards, there has still been a lot of creative activity going on with this project, among others.

For all its challenges and sad endings, one of the absolute positives of this pandemic is that it has removed that illusion of the appearance of productivity as the thing that gives artists, writers, and everyone else their value. That is, and honestly always was a fucked-up, broken aspect of our culture. My background creative activity has been interspersed with periods of pause, reflection, and doing absolutely nothing or doing something else. And it is those things that fuel the activity, which is more effective and free-flowing because of them (it's always been this way, but it does feel good that the pandemic has removed much of the external pressure otherwise). So, I wanted to provide an update to this project that I just publicly left hanging like a big, glaring loose end, and also to tease it out. There is some cool stuff coming from all of this. I am excited about it. I don't have a timeline to share because it's iterative and it will be ready when it is ready and when the timing is right. But stay tuned, my friends.

In the meantime, here is one of the original 6 poems in written form, as a record of what was and a taster of what will be:

Today was Wednesday, April 22, 2020

From my window

I can see

The twisting

Overlapping

Oaks

Cedar Elms

Junipers

And the tangle

Of brambled undergrowth

And prickly pear

Left untouched

Still wild

For now

Two days ago

I walked

Through those woods

The kind of thing

I’ve done

Since I was five

A country kid

From one county over

This is my thing

And yet

The trees were uneasy

Unwelcoming

The anticipation

Of their potential demise

A harsher reality

For them

Than for me

Though it wore heavy

On my soul

They did not differentiate

Between humans

Something felt off

A bad vibe

As they say

And my walk was short

Later

It was dark out

And I heard a dog

A little ways off

Agitated

Barking

At something unseen

I was worried

There was a coyote

I stepped into the hallway

At the same time

As my daughter

Did you hear that dog?

Yes

We went

Onto the front porch

Standing

Listening

And

From just around the fence line

The dog cried out

A fearful defensive lament

Pained

Captured

Perhaps

Its sounds

Snuffed out

Mid-wail

Swallowed

By those haunted woods

I whistled

And called out

Here doggie

Making kissy sounds

But nothing

But silence

And stillness

We did not investigate

In case

It was a coyote

Or ghosts

Angry about their land

Ravaged

By cookie-cutter homes

Later

Sitting in bed

The darkness

And blinds

Obscuring the trees

I heard a scratching

From somewhere

I could not place

Just outside

This bedroom

This bubble

Of my current reality

I checked the garage

I checked the front yard

I checked the hallway

I checked the bathroom

I checked my daughter’s room

And I stood there

Between two twin beds

Where my daughter

And my mother

Are temporarily sleeping

My daughter, awake

Heard it too

The two of us

Once again

Still

Listening

On alert

Our adrenaline

Instinctively increasing

As it does

When one is faced

With anticipation

Of potential demise

From wild animals

Bitter ghosts

Or woods with bad juju

What is that?

My daughter asked

And my mother

Waking

From that half-sleep state

Answered

Some nonsense answer

I can’t even remember

Because

When I responded

No that’s not it

From one foot away

She let out

A scream

More tortured

Than the dog

Than any horror movie

Canned sound effect

And had I not

Also peed

When I checked the bathroom

I’d surely have wet my pants

My daughter whimpered

The same adrenaline

Spike

Ravaging her body

As mine

As the cookie-cutter homes

To the woods next door

Indifferent

Merciless

I walked over and held her

As much for myself

While we all three

Laughed crazed

Tsunami

Laughter

Later

The next morning

My dad

Called out to my mother

From outside

Had the tree branches

Reached out

And grasped him

Pulling his body

Into their trunks?

My mother went out

To see

And looked

Into the depths

At two black eyes

Momentarily connected

Souls

As my father

Tipped over the trash bin

And a raccoon fled

Meanwhile

Viveca Morris

A researcher

At Yale Law School

Executive Director

Of Law

Ethics and animals

Laid it bare

In a Los Angeles Times Op-ed

Opening statement:

2/3 of infectious diseases

In humans

Including

COVID-19

MERS

Ebola

HIV

Zika

H1N1

Cholera

And almost

All recent epidemics

Came from wildlife

70%

Due

To an increase

In human-animal

Interactions

Resulting from

The wildlife trade

Deforestation

Land conversion

Industrial animal farming

And burning

Of fossil fuels

[end quote]

Meanwhile

Wild animals

Are strolling through cities

A kangaroo hopping

In downtown Adelaide

Javalinas exploring

An Arizona shopping mall

The NASA data

Morphing

From red to orange

To yellow

To green

To blue skies

Unheard of

In the cities

So clear

People younger

Than a certain age

Woke up to see

The Himalayan range

From their town

In India

For the first time

Nature resetting itself

They say

As turtles

Endangered

And undeterred

By coastal light pollution

Nest in record numbers

On the beaches

Of the world

And monkeys

Reliant on tourists

For snacks

Invade towns

Helping themselves

To the contents

Of refrigerators

And elephants

In Thailand

Threatened by starvation

The humans

Who have profited

From them

Now unable

To buy food

Not as lucky

As Botswana elephants

The tables turned

Where banned entry

From high-risk countries

The U.S. topping the list

And European trophy hunters

Not far behind

Now only threatened

By poachers

Who don’t care

About quarantine

Life

An elephant’s

Other humans

And possibly

Their own

Meanwhile

Muddy coyote tracks

Greeted us on moving day

A raccoon was chased

By a dog

Who got too close

Before the raccoon

Fell into a trash bin

And a distressed spider

Frantically tried to escape

The plastic container

Once filled

With Spinach-Artichoke dip

Now used

For leftovers

Or catching spiders

To remove them

To the outdoors

And everything

Is exaggerated

The ghosts of our past

Present

And future

Quiet

For now

Today was Wednesday

April 22

2020

Earth Day

Total global confirmed cases: 2,628,527

Total global deaths: 183,440

Total U.S. confirmed cases: 842,376

Total U.S. deaths: 46,784

. . .