One Hundred Lockdown Sonnets E-Book

Jacqueline Saphra

• Herausgeber: Nine Arches Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 74

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

One Hundred Lockdown Sonnets by Jacqueline Saphra is a poetic journal that chronicles the personal and political upheavals and tragedies of the Coronavirus pandemic. This sequence of sonnets charts the dislocated, frightening and at times uplifting experience of one hundred days of lockdown. Written as a daily sonnet throughout the first lockdown, from 23rd March 2020, Saphra's candid and revealing sequence is a unique record of strange and unparalleled days. Cover art work by Sophie Herxheimer.

Leseprobe

One Hundred Lockdown Sonnets

Jacqueline Saphra

ISBN: 978-1-913437-31-2

eISBN: 978-1-913437-32-9

Copyright © Jacqueline Saphra, 2021.

Cover artwork and page illustrations © Sophie Herxheimer, 2021.

www.sophieherxheimer.com

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Jacqueline Saphra has asserted her right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published January 2021 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed in the United Kingdom by Imprint Digital.

Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

Jacqueline Saphra’sThe Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions (flipped eye, 2011) was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing but Naked Women (The Emma Press, 2014) won the Saboteur Award for Best Collaborative Work. All My Mad Mothers (Nine Arches Press, 2017) was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize. Two of her sonnet sequences A Bargain with the Light: Poems after Lee Miller (2017) and Veritas: Poems After Artemisia (2020) are published by Hercules Editions. Her third collection, Dad, Remember You Are Dead was published by Nine Arches Press in 2019. She is a founder member of Poets for the Planet, lives in London and teaches at The Poetry School.

Contents

Foreword

I

I’m standing at the starting line

II

Are you fearful you might see

III

Alas there is no plan

IV

the strange part of this wild new world

V

What can a poem do?

VI

The first week is nearly gone

VII

I’ve had a bad review

VIII

And suddenly it’s love

IX

This could be hell or heaven

X

The days are falling down

XI

He enters through your mouth

XII

The lockdown’s tight

XIII

Today, in search of hope

XIV

This evening her majesty

XV

I’m overcome by beauty

XVI

We love the NHS

XVII

A mist has settled on the Thames

XVIII

We gather round the plate

XIX

Here’s bread, here’s wine

XX

The men are digging trenches

XXI

Men are boxing

XXII

And back to rage again

XXIII

London’s gone psychedelic

XXIV

Big news

XXV

The men with masks and mallets

XXVI

It seems that we forgot

XXVII

My day begins with green

XXVIII

The Moon’s a virgin body

XXIX

aaagh you may be sick

XXX

Out of the cataclysm

XXXI

Rukshana

XXXII

The whole of London’s going

XXXIII

The president has shamed you

XXXIV

The brokers love a long-stemmed rose

XXXV

Of course the strategy’s a scam

XXXVI

Here at the entrance

XXXVII

Near-biped wanderer

XXXVIII

Any farm would welcome him

XXXIX

Come on

XL

Podcasts!

XLI

And suddenly it’s fear

XLII

The Oracle of Omaha

XLIII

Today’s revelation

XLIV

So dead is a real word

XLV

It’s clickbait

XLVI

How can we change our lives

XLVII

I'd seen the bunting

XLVIII

Our home is its own universe

XLIX

My honourable friends

L

Death takes centre stage

LI

I often try to write

LII

I have learned

LIII

After a normal day of woe

LIV

Perception flips

LV

Who sends their children of to school?

LVI

I’m lost

LVII

This is a space

LVIII

The city green is colonised

LIX

Remember Brick Lane Sundays?

LX

Where did they find these

LXI

Should we or should we not?

LXII

The green is calling

LXIII

Downing Street does its best

LXIV

I'm nearly feeling sorry

LXV

Hydroxychloroquine

LXVI

suppose the flowers

LXVII

The nurse unfolds

LXVIII

George Floyd

LXIX

Now, strike a pose

LXX

Everyone is sacred

LXXI

The dress doesn’t fit

LXXII

Imagine that the evil walks

LXXIII

It was early March

LXXIV

Yesterday was hope

LXXV

The Sad is feeling it today

LXXVI

Maddie’s hit the headlines

LXVII

Johnson plays with thunder

LXVIII

It’s like living underwater

LXIX

Today I tuned out

LXXX

I want my old life back

LXXXI

Slipped under the radar

LXXXII

In flux and disarray

LXXXIII

When all the grief is over

LXXXIV

The toss and heat

LXXXV

Runners create their own slipstream

LXXXVI

This year someone papped

LXXXVII

There are certain things

LXXXVIII

The anthropologists

LXXXIX

And suddenly it’s tears

XC

The day was perfect

XCI

I dreamed all night of sonnets

XCII

It’s Monday and the news is in

XCIII

Our papers tell us things

XCIV

My love

XCV

I can satirise it all I like

XCVI

Come on Spotify, not him again

XCVII

Today a not-so-cool surprise

XCVIII

Everyone cheats a little

XCVIX

Well, it’s a job

C

My loves, this is my last

Acknowledgements and Thanks

About the author and this book

Foreword

At the start of the first Lockdown, I started writing a journal, thinking that the discipline might be useful as a way of keeping a record of life at the time. It was one of the most tedious writing tasks I've ever undertaken and I knew instantly that I had to find another way: a poet’s way. A daily sonnet seemed a challenge I might be able to meet and I knew from past experience that the technical aspects would give me structure and focus. This maddening process of giving shape to the unshapeable paradoxically kept me sane, giving me a boundaried form to chart my own internal journey as well as external events.

There was no projected end to this venture, but I had never imagined I'd be able or willing to keep going for one hundred days of many challenges, mostly not poetic ones. But alleluia, the sonnet saved me! ‘Eternal glory to the inventor of the sonnet’, declared Paul Valéry, to which I can only say ‘Amen’.

Jacqueline Saphra,

10th January 2021, London, Lockdown 3

Sonnet I       23rd March 2020

‘PM “Stay at home. This is a national emergency”’ – The Guardian

I’m standing at the starting line. Am I allowed

to share my shadows if I disinfect?

How do I dodge the shedders in the crowd,

the howls of strangers? Watch me attempt

the daily joy of blossoms, pink of hope

before they fall, ditch the questions, wait,

inhale the spring, ascend the hopeful slope

to summer; then wander home to isolate.

O small, unwholesome sofa, keep me safe,

don’t make me scroll again for risk and grief.

Instead I’ll do the work, try to be brave,

return to what I love; pen-scratch of faith.

I’ll let the sonnet school me like a child

learning the language, open and purified.

Sonnet II       24th March 2020

‘1.3bn population of India are placed on lockdown’ – BBC News

Are you fearful you might see a lot

of corpses in the Thames? my uncle says

on FaceTime from New Jersey. No I’m not,

I answer, get a grip. It’s early days.

But he’s off, a doctor pessimist

who’s seen his share of death and knows the ropes:

Remember Spanish flu, Ebola, plague pits?

The data speaks; don’t be a slave to hope,

think of Iran: the waiting graves so vast

they’ve caught the images on satellite.

The signal’s faint, the water flows too fast,

the tide is turning, do I hear him right?

My old life slips its knot, sails into the sun,

rounds the riverbend and poof! it’s gone.

Sonnet III       25th March 2020

‘Trump says the US is beginning to see

“the light at the end of the tunnel”’ – BBC News

Alas there is no plan, there are no eggs,

no bread, compassion’s nearly out of stock,

but we can walk together in the park

keeping our distance. Spring is here; she bends

her spine towards the light and takes her place

amid the joy of things. She will not stop

her rhymes of blossoms reaching out and up

towards the sun, she will not slow her pace

towards full-frontal ecstasy, she knows

only one way to hold this world. Our pain

is not her pain. We must move on, stay close

without touching, share the climbing light of day,

build our wall of faith against the flood