Pandemica

By P.J. Reed

Pandemica collection of vibrant, emotive poems written to chronicle and celebrate the lives of ordinary people living through the Covid-19 pandemic. Often it is the little things that see people through such times which are then forgotten. It is a memory of the nationwide Thursday night clap for the NHS on your doorstep and

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lost Tower Publications
• Release date: Nov 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781803523460

P.J. Reed

P.J. Reed is a writer and poet from England. She holds a BAEd from Canterbury Christ Church University, an MA from Bradford University and has dabbled in psychology with the OU. She lives in Devon with two daughters and Rupert, the big ginger rescue dog. She is an outrageously eclectic writer. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of online and print magazines, anthologies and collections. In 2015, she was shortlisted for the National Poetry Anthology award. While in 2018, P.J. won the Forward Press Poetry 'Circle of Life' competition for her poem 'The Empty Chair.' In 2024, P.J. had the honour of being asked to write a poem as part of the UNESCO cities of Literature, 'Illustrating The World' literary exhibition.

Book preview

Pandemica

also by P.J. Reed

poetry

FLICKER

HAIKU NATION

HAIKU ICE

HAIKU YELLOW

HAIKU SUMMER

HAIKU GOLD

Pandemica

Poetry of the COVID-19 pandemic by P.J. REED

Lost Tower Publications

published in 2021

by Lost Tower Publications

P.J. Reed asserts her copyright over this collection of her work.

P.J. Reed is hereby identified as the author of this work in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form or cover than that in which it is published.

ISBN-13: 9798485371913

Pandemica

Preface

Generation COVID

Sometime in spring 2019 normal life changed. For years the World Health Organisation had been ringing alarm bells, the ‘once in a century’ pandemic was late. In the past, this was true, the Spanish Influenza Outbreak of 1918 and the Great Plague of the Middle Ages ravaged unchecked around the world, killing millions of people. However, with the technological advances of the twenty-first century, a pandemic seemed impossible. After all, international medical efforts had contained the West African Ebola virus epidemic and the SARS outbreak (Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and kept deaths from these epidemics to the thousands. The international medical response to these disease events showed how well-equipped governments and health agencies were to respond to evolving diseases.

However, nature is an organic entity.

She changes and evolves.

It was as if these earlier disease outbreaks were testing our medical defences, searching for the ways in modern life which made us vulnerable to modern disease. After years of exploring, nature found our weakness – we had the