The Poetry Programme, Poems in a Pandemic. Listen back.
Poems in a Pandemic: a Poetry Programme Special, presented by Olivia O’Leary, on RTÉ’s The Poetry Programme brings us a selection of poems responding to the Covid 19 crisis.
Jessica Traynor reads her new poem Banana Bread. Steve Denehan reads Into the Third Week, and his eight-year-old daughter, Robin, her poem The World is Empty Now. Keith Payne’s poem is Lucy’s work took her as far…
In Thomas F Walsh’s poem, Just a Passing Thing, his experience of cocooning brings to mind a childhood memory, while in Jailbreak Trish Bennett describes her mother’s urge to rebel against cocooning.
Kerry Hardie’s poem, News from Ireland, 1348, The Black Death, evokes a pandemic from centuries ago, while Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin describes a more recent outbreak of disease in her poem The Polio Epidemic, from her 2009 collection The Sun-fish, published by The Gallery Press.
Adam Wyeth’s poem, First Weeks of Lockdown, is a diary of recent events. In his poem, More Than Ever, Mark Roper looks to the changes in nature in spring, while Paddy Bushe spots an unusual work of art on the beach in Corona Sculpture.
Owodunni Mustapha’s poem, My Happy Place, reflects the comfort we find with our loved ones, while Jane Clarke in First Earlies and Enda Wyley in Through the Window remember some of those we have lost.
The programme ends with On a Quiet Day in the Future by Peter Sirr.
A number of the poems in the programme are available on the www.pendemic.ie website or are part of the Write Where We Are Now project: https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/write/
