Arrival at Elsewhere is a book-length long-poem response to the coronavirus outbreak of 2020, curated by one poet, Carl Griffin, but written by many (97 to be precise!). Sales are in aid of NHS Charities Together and you can buy it here.
Excerpt from Arrival at Elsewhere –
The darkness in the room crackles with static,
the greater mind in regular telecom
to maximise survival capabilities.
The muscles of the dank air flex
and the room’s dimensions strain and shift.
I can hear it like the wind in the trees,
the susurrus filling the lungs
of birch and ash, thin and laboured
like an after gasp, the smoker’s wheeze
that yet persists after thirteen years.
The introvert is so remote in the interior
there is a risk he will mislay himself
and never get his bearings back.
It is a day so still I hear, too, the creeping
of the moss. Beauty hurts, as much as pain:
both ride a long-drawn breath.
A child has carved a heart in a stone.
It sits at the roadside, tree-lit, not beating.
Lines 1-13 by Julian Turner, lines 14-16 by Kathryn Bevis, lines 17-18 by Rob Hindle
Against the Grain Poetry Press 
Reblogged this on Karen Dennison.
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