An artist’s duty is to reflect the times -NINA SIMONE
CC
EDITOR’S NOTE Coronaverses Collective presents to you a catalogue of poetry and illustrations born from the pandemic. The coronavirus pandemic is having a huge impact on our mental health and is putting incredible strain on the charities which we rely upon for aid. We believe it fitting for all this work to be raised for the cause of mental wellness. By insight into each other’s experiences, we can begin to wind our way through the intensity of emotions such a crisis can give rise to. Dually, with the same ferocity in which the virus had spread throughout the world, so did a revolutionary return to the unique creativity within all of us. We aim for the creative response from these hardened times to be documented in a lasting zine. We would like to thank all of our contributors and those who have supported us in making this project come to life. We hope you take us much pleasure reading this zine, as we took in creating it. Thank you! All profit made from Coronaverses Collective zine is donated to MindUK.
courtney page
@courtneypageart 4
@courtneypageart 5
@courtneypageart 6
MASKED SMILES Natalie Moores
We have to smile with our eyes now Grin into gaps left by masks so our eyes can reveal how we feel underneath Bare teeth into blank canvas elastic-looped around ears to tell supermarket strangers we might be scared but we’re still here the lights are on we’re at home more often but we can still light up together in the long life milk aisle I’ll never stop smiling at bus drivers so easily lost so hard to claw back when everyone stops Just like we didn’t notice how all the sky was empty of planes for a time until a single white line reminded us there are other places to go than the end of our roads You don’t notice a lack of planes until you see one we can’t let anyone notice a lack of smiles because they see none We all have to smile with our eyes now. @macandmoore
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Maddue Cottan Allan
@maddiecottamallan 8
HOME
Holly Nibbs Home means my childhood bedroom with a little twenties twist. Home is the place where all the different me’s exist. The good, the bad and the ugly too all the funny little bits that come with you. Home is safety, home is love, but home can also make you curse to the heavens above. Home had to become whatever we wanted it to be. The pub, the club, the place you go out for grub. The fours walls, windows and doors all around you your safety blanket against this so called “little flu” But although it seems ungrateful, I must say, safety sometimes feels suffocating on a bad day. We do what we can to breathe easy again, our new daily routines how we choose to spend, our lockdown days, weeks, months, maybe even years. But have faith in time, good days will come and then home will just become home again. For home is not a restraint, a chain to be broken, home is the place where you let your heart open. It can be anywhere in the world, with your family or on your own - It’s familiar safe haven amidst the unknown.
@hollynibbs
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JUNE 2020 Jessica Clark
There is a light in me which grows, and a love which overflows: a fire and beauty that is born in nights where my soul is tired and worn. I’m building energy like summer blooming on the heath and scraping back dust to find jewels beneath. Through murk, their gleam’s already showing with my back tree-trunk strong and my heart-space glowing… The aches and the tears are really surface-deep: a dress donned by a beaming, timeless soul, shaking herself now from sleep.
@J_ruby_cl
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SUNDAY MORNING THOUGHTS Jessica Clark
Standing staring at the sky drinking my coffee and thinking about the world which unfurled like a rosebud sometime after the Flood and grew life forms out of sea and mud. Staring at the clouds and thinking about history uncurling its paths and routes like bulbs throwing out slender green shoots into Spring, something vast and tender that only the sky computes. Staring up towards morning sunlight and thinking about everything, letting the majesty of great contemplation ring out as if Time had started to sing. But allowing the full force of history to melt to a subtle tingling energy, there is just this morning moment, with mystery yet to bring.
@J_ruby_cl
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lily o’farrell
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@vulgadrawings 12
@vulgadrawings 13
Ben Wallace
@vvallaceillustration 14
FREE THE NEW WORLD Denero Richards
Sorrow in my heart as I look at the world today. We need to be free as a nation and take it back to the motherland today. Coronavirus is both a plague and a delay snatching life and loved ones away. Separating us away from our family base. Our minds are clouded with images the media portrays. Let me take you back in time before anyone know how to talk online. Living my younger life jus fine had friends had money the world was mine. Fast forward to the present time I realised that life was jus a lie coronavirus is now the future and the past not only that is our free will being denied? Is coronavirus our test in time? Contaminating our food with poisonous supplies the fluoride in the water is killing our insides is our only choice to be injected with animal virus while selling us lies.
@chynia1
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@cukiecon
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Elisha Mhay PeĂąana
THE LIE
Bethan Rose Jenkins Small funerals, Without goodbyes. No hugs allowed! Sit Alone To Cry. They say, We’reAllInThisTogether It’s a storm we can weather. But people are missing And they’ll be Forever
gone
@bethanrosee
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@cukiecon 18
BIRDSONG Sam Butler
Paper swallows flit above your cot, ever wired to their flight’s thin span, as we sing the night in. Your eyes hush, newmooning through cotbars, my rough finger caught in your curled bud, thumb swiping through bluelit news. Here in the radiator hum of your dawning sleep, a dream falls. Walk still streets, silent feet peel pith of dying puddles. Peace heaves, halves itself and multiplies. Birdsong steels for a murmuration of remembering. The sluice of a coldshouldered bus, the dampened hammer of the flatbound, tanked below skies unclouded. Beneath, the city levelled, broken by the night-shrike of a lone siren. Another, further off, yaps and more, still more, lap, shriek the empty streets. Breath rasps Respiratory tract Respiratory tract Somewhere over the rainbow a violin warbles, in the next street each Thursday, the chiff-chaff of chapped hands clapping all those silent doctors tending silent deaths, gasping deaths of lone submariners drowning, choking on land, away from the warm sea of sound, lungs longing for song.
@samgoundrybutler
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@cukiecon 20
THE UNMARKED GRAVE Hannah May Baldwin
Connection, disconnection Attention slipping mind Retention of the feelings I left behind Walk away, Looking back Unmarked grave, unmarked time No beginning and no end To loss or life Or starting again To supporting pain And I watch again Kneeling surrender to the game Of chance, or fate? How can it be? destiny? For someone so young to be taken from me? Connection, disconnection Winking in the trees Of life, loss, resurrection And all that’s in-between Marked are the living by those that pass But the unmarked grave Marks the time snatched
@hannahmaybaldwin
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Sebastian Arnold
@sebarnolddesign 22
SPREAD Alex Boast
Isn’t it time For humanity’s lost faith To stage a comeback? Spreading More deadly than disease The Cult of The Angry Opinion waxes And never wanes But if you’ve only just seen the wagon It’s far too late Relevance is the tonic To our oppressed gin You needn’t shout Just to fit in The lost are no longer in their heads They’ve found voice in keyboard; media; groupspeak; screen Why couldn’t we spread love instead? Rather than screams
@theghoststorywriter
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Nygilia McClain
@nygi_designs_ 24
DISTANT
Aidan O’Reilly I only see your eyes they tell more than you have ever. You’ve been wearing a mask longer than most. I can’t see your smile but when’s the last time that you did? I’ve got a feeling that you don’t even know. now we can’t touch but have you felt anything in ages? You were distant before it was enforced. how can we clutch to a relationship and save it? When distance causes love to run its course.
@aidan_oreilly
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@nygi_designs_ 26
@nygi_designs_ 27
@famidaz
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Famida Begum
@famidaz 29
jamie muck
@jamie.muck 30
THE GROCERY STORE Lizzie Bourne
The hours before When coffee stirs Lips to wakefullness Clouds mute the sun And food moves hand by hand From here to there to trash The hours during The entrances and exits Using explanations, assistance, To bridge distance We donate our eye-smiles over masks But we are curling up behind ourselves in the break room The days are long. The hours after Sweeping floors Scrubbing the slate clean Lingering in colleagues’ conversation. Something sweet To carry home with us under dim streetlights.
@inyour_ownwords
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@jamie.muck 32
DON’T BREATHE Celina Wilde
The collective breath is taken, held. Without knowing when, or how, fresh oxygen will be traded for stale. Maybe we will never let go? Some never will. Perhaps this stasis is all, forever? Masked, muzzled, inside. Final breath taken. Eternally disconnected, from fresh air on bare skin. A still life paralysed in amber, the pining for release against the ache of holding. Bracing, as air dwindles within. Dreading crushed lungs. Suffocating, waiting humanity. Not breathing. Collectively holding
@celina.m.wilde
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ana marta huffstot
@amhuffstotstudio 34
WRITTEN FOR SUMMER, IN AN UNCERTAIN SPRING Lizzie Bourne
I’ll have squeezed myself open to the sun, behind curtains. Pottered barefoot: cool wood, hot coffee. Then I will be called out, to feel…tarmac spit, skin unfurl, forehead burn. And yellow grass. To feel, behind sunglasses, with headphones dulling my remaining sense; to feel relief enter through my pores, to retreat to shade, safety, sangria. Summer will be in my head and in the sky; in the shouts of children I’ll both hear and imagine; in glasses that will clink and laughter that will beam into my pores. Splashes and tan lines. Slip ups and sweat beading my upper lip. Sat turning pages in the shadows, just behind the night - the dusk when, other summers, I’ve been full with sensation, buoyant, rinsed out, touched. Will I still feel this, the gentle rushing blood, this restless leg? The sun, the ice, the perspiration: will it have brought relief? Or will I still be living just behind myself? With tulips catching raindrops outside my window, I put my hand on the warmth of my coffee cup. I only know that when summer calls me out, I’ll go, barefoot.
@inyour_ownwords
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@silvia.draws
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Silvia Paola Alba cortes
KENOPSIA Sam Butler
I want to find myself lost in crowds with you once more, feel our fingertips fern curl, neat as new maps, unfurl down platforms, clasped in the tube’s hot crush, slip streets’ silver riot, bodies, shouts spilling like warm beer, summer doorways slopping cheers, or flurry, as snowflakes flock chill huddles, humming, bus-lit, and us stopping in the Tate’s cool halls, to see McQueen’s Year 3, motes floating, the photos stacked, class on class of kids, a uniformed sweep, sublime and sad as graves, still and racked to vanishing. The ranked mass in your eyes teared to tangled truth. “All those little lives.”
@samgoundrybutler
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@mqqqks
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Maks Graur
THESE DAYS Robyn Ellis
These Days I’m noticing different things How loud the birds can sing Now that there’s no planes above How slow people are walking Now there’s no need to rush These days I woke up with the sun, shining upon my face Wind chimes filling the space Of the sound that the wind makes Dancing in effortless grace These days In light of previous hate People are catching smiles from a covered face From eyes above a mask That so tentatively display Fleeting warmth, behind that gaze These days I am tasked with patience, for in these testing times Not all hear singing birds Nor the ringing of the chimes These days I hope are showing us An error in our values An error in our behaviour Expose our crass misuse Of selfish endeavours These days It is still on going No eye in the future No way of knowing Suspending in motion Yet still ebbing and flowing There’s no such thing as a passive wait Thousands of souls working away Being the difference Helping the change
@isolationinspirations
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Yifan Hu
@bum.dharma 40
HUMBLE PIE Jack Fittes
Will we wince at a plastic pint pot, for the sake of an outdoor laugh? Will a sub-par sandwich selection taint your meal deal craft? Will the removal of the tactful bag in it’s tram-seat throne, shatter the transient tale of small joys? Will we stare and scroll and soak up the façade? Will we give it a miss for a night in the yard? Will we battle the day for the 5 minute snooze, the next lane and a search for meaning...as the 5 year plan take a tail tucking beating.
‘Cos the thing is it’s fleeting. Isn’t it.
@jjfittes
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NERO MY HERO Jessica Clark
Starbucks is dark inside; even its chairs and tables hide and employees have cleared the floor, machines at whir and grind no more. Costa next door’s also gone but keeps its amber lights still on, a few tired staff behind the bar, their merry days in memory far… But, carry on a few doors down to the hope-filled haven of blue and brown: Nero, my hero, your till still serves the masses. Those who will not stay at home fill your seats with rebellious asses and sip your beany brew in paper cups, not glasses, while we sigh and vie together in wait, praying that Covid passes. There’s a spark of hope in an oat-milk flat white – We’re Brits – we’re tough – we’ll be alright – There’s stress around now, folks not sleeping and panic into actions creeping, high streets keeping shrinking but as long as pubs are open, we’ll still be out drinking (It’s our only known response to cultural trauma). But hey, on the upside, days get warmer, It’s equinox and Spring is just ‘round the corner but unless you were born a certain level of wealth, or past there’s a curtain of fear now cast over more than just health. Our jobs and our world all are starting to change; I’ve never known a time so strange. As chaos erodes the structures that hold us and we cling to whatever the news last told us, as if it were gospel ordained from above, I hope that to love, we’ll see a goldrush – to charity, community,
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that’s where our focus needs to be. From love there’s no immunity and to deny that truth would be lunacy. The rugs below our systems have been pulled from underneath but there are still people walking on Hampstead Heath between the mud and trees, as beauty comes to bloom, in nature – our universal living room. It’s dark unfolding doom and gloom but energies have the power to change their tune. The shifting of tides is hard to ride like earthquakes that Earth creates when shrugging and rubbing her tectonic plates indifferently, beyond the human lives that she shakes, not caring whether or not we came prepared. It happens easily, yet it makes me scared. For now, I am glad that this café is still here open and coping in the face of fear. I’ll miss if we’re enclosed the bright fresh air of day and glow of silver moon, so Nero, my hero, if you can hear me, please don’t shut too soon.
@J_ruby_cl
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Tilly GW
@theconfusedbadger 44
THE STREETS ARE SLEEPING Randy Mankoto
The Streets are sleeping. There are no cars shooting through its arteries. Filling toxins in its lungs, leading towards it’s heart. Humans are being quarantined. Time is nothing but an illusion. But the streets sleep.
@randots
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Sayari Banerjee
@sayari.banerjee 46
BEDROOM BLUES Jessica Clark
Take a deep breath – relax – run around imaginary green-field tracks and download another mindfulness app to ease the sting of the slap of modern reality. I need the internet now, to tell me how to feel, and the air that I breathe is becoming less real and the things I believe are shifting sound-bytes only but buck up, sit back down, don’t let on that you’re lonely – we’re too tired to fight. All that glitters is not gold. Screens beaming light give me jitters and at night I feel cold so I reach for another soul through a dark square of metal and pixels, but they’ve also been developed in the same vice-like hold of disintegrated normality – all these human light-beams have also been sold and impelled to hop onto some sinister beast’s dreams so the succour they offer is proffered from a tainted cup. And none of us can get off it: the treadmill we’re born on of sex, death and profit. Well, beautiful photographs are formed in dark rooms, flowers grow inside us while dystopia looms and somewhere, dust falls around images muffled yet set to grow clear between shadowed walls – one of love, one of fear. Just don’t make the mistake of making me take another few months trapped on video-calls where the humans are fake… with soul-truth lodged nowhere – in the technological sphere.
@J_ruby_cl
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@nubiartuk
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Jael Umerah-Makelemi
@nubiartuk 49
Sophie Rawlingson
@sophie_rawlingson 50
SYMPHONY OF EVERYTHING Dila Toplusoy
Today, I heard The song of two birds A sparrow, and a robin The song was about being Here, and hearing The cat, waking up The flower, coming to life Today, I heard The gentle raindrops falling On the leaves, playing with the wind of spring They invited all the other beings To join and play and sing In this symphony Of everything Alive and breathing
@ pocketfulofmindfulness
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WRITERS Hannah May Baldwin @hannahmaybaldwin
ARTISTS
Alex Boast
Maddue Cottan Allan
Lizzie Bourne
Sebastian Arnold
Sam Butler @samgoundrybutler
Sayari Banerjee
Jessica Clark
Famida Begum
Robyn Ellis
Silvia Paola Alba Cortes
Jack Fittes
Tilly GW
Bethan Rose Jenkins
Maks Graur
@theghoststorywriter @inyour_ownwords
@J_ruby_cl
@isolationinspirations @jjfittes
@bethanrosee
Randy Mankoto @randots
Natalie Moores @macandmoore
Holly Nibbs @hollynibbs
Aidan O’Reilly @aidan_oreilly
Denero Richards @chynia1
Dila Toplusoy
@pocketfulofmindfulness
Celina Wilde
@celina.m.wilde
@maddiecottamallan @sebarnolddesign @sayari.banerje @famidaz
@silvia.draws
@theconfusedbadger @mqqqks
Yifan Hu
@bum.dharma
Ana Marta Huffstot @amhuffstotstudio
Nygilia McClain @nygi_designs_
Jamie Muck @jamie.muck
Lily O’Farrell
@vulgadrawings
Courtney Page
@courtneypageart
Elisha Mhay Peñana @cukiecon
Sophie Rawlingson @sophie_rawlingson
Jael Umerah-Makelemi
SPECIAL THANKS EDITOR Hannah Baldwin @hannahmaybaldwin
ASSISTANT EDITORS Alice Cross @alicefayc
Parker Kegel @NA GRAPHIC DESIGN/ ART DIRECTION Caroly Nisu @carolynisu_design
DIRECTOR Ciaran Grant @cg_creates_
ACTORS Megan Challinor @meg.chall
Lexia Tomlinson @lexialegend
Jozeph Demy @demyjozeph
Frederica Davies @frederica_wd
@coronaversescollective coronaversescollective.com