Songs of Love in Lockdown

A collection of poems written during the Spring lockdown of the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic that hopefully reflect the shifting emotions, moods and thoughts we all were experiencing and feeling during those first few weird, discombobulating and unprecedented weeks. Inspired by the daily practice of American poet William Stafford I wrote a poem every day during this period and these are the selected highlights.

Media:

Article in South London Press: https://londonnewsonline.co.uk/greenpeace-director-writes-lockdown-inspired-poems-from-his-flat/

Reviews:

"There's something chewy and playful about these poems of Ed's. They cheered me up. He faces a big cultural moment with both wit and grief, and an unrepentant affection for living. Crows and Angels assist the NHS and a pink moon looms overhead: suddenly the world is bright and weird and not quite done with us." Martin Shaw, author of Wolferland

"Ed writes his way lightly through dark passages, the images rolling off his early morning pen like dreams that overstayed the night, blinking hopefully at us from the fresh page." Dougald Hine

"I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Ed's collection of poetic responses to his experience of living through the first few months of the pandemic. He does not shy away from confronting the big, thorny questions that this time has caused to rise up within us. Questions about Life, Death and Why Am I Here Taking Up Valuable Space On A Hard Pressed Planet? But he does so with such grace, humour and lightness of touch that the situation never seems overwhelming. His obvious delight in the mundane details of everyday life alerts us to the magic that surrounds us in the world, if only we remember to pause and look. It is this insistent focus on the extraordinary nature of our ordinary lives that makes this book such an uplifting and joyous gem." Andy Jukes - poet, writer, author

I chose to call the collection ‘Songs of Love in Lockdown’ in partial homage to William Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience’ but also because despite the death, fear and horror that stalked, and in many ways continue to stalk us, during that time, through it all ran a golden thread of appreciation, gratitude and love that brought some sinewy sparkle to the Stygian gloom.

It was those paradoxical contrasts that really inspired me, the expansiveness within the claustrophobia, the sense of being ‘gathered and scattered’, the presence, attention and grounding that came from enforced domesticity and immobility, the firm truths that spoke across the soft uncertainty.

This is a beautifully designed book printed by Calverts one of the UK's finest printers and a workers co-operative.