Open AccessPoetics in the Time of Pandemic. There is Always Going to be a Before and an After
Author(s) -
Liliana Edith Correa
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
portal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.125
H-Index - 2
ISSN - 1449-2490
DOI - 10.5130/pjmis.v17i1-2.7505
Subject(s) - poetics , humanity , pandemic , space (punctuation) , creativity , media studies , aesthetics , sense of place , covid-19 , sociology , natural (archaeology) , history , political science , social science , literature , art , law , poetry , linguistics , medicine , philosophy , disease , archaeology , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty)
Poetics in times of pandemic: There is always going to be a ‘before’ and ‘after’
This paper briefly explores a number of different themes affecting us as creatives living in lockdown in Sydney. Sharing our personal story of how we imagined our lives would be before COVID 19 and the changes we observed after entering in Pandemic mode. Intertwining images taken with a mobile phone and text, we offer our observations on the evolving new language that appears around us, in supermarkets, on walls and on the footpath. Signs determining social interactions and affecting behaviour day by day. We also touch on the idea of how writing can bring us home and make us feel closer to our languages and countries of origin. We mention the importance of the survival of theatre to tell stories from the time of the pandemic. Governments have been found wanting, due to lack of care of the most vulnerable people, in particular First Nations. We reflect on the need for reinvention accepting change and reassessing our human values bringing awareness about our links to the natural world. As the pandemic takes us from one stage to the next, for us there is one possible space of relief and hope. This is within the space of creativity, from here we can make sense of our new reality while contributing to a collective sense of humanity.