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Alec Finlay

lock-down back-garden: a coronavirus journal

Alec Finlay has had Covid19 since just before the UK went into full lockdown in March 2020. Finlay is part of a high-risk group and the virus has had a significant impact on his body, leaving him unable to walk more than 150m. During lockdown, no matter how ill, he wrote one short poem every morning. The following are some of the entries from his daily poem-journal, presented in chronological order.

lock-down back-garden: a coronavirus journal

16.III.20 – 31.VII.20

a dove on the door

of those about to die

*

the sag in the quilt

must be my knees fault

*

will you allow me

in your bubble?

are our two house-

holds one home?

*

I say I feel

like an old Polo

swopped

for a Trabant

he says Trabants

run for ever

*

you can meet one

parent in the morning

one in the afternoon

and both apart

*

I understand you

very well, better than you

understand yourself

*

now it’s kid’s rules:

everyone (except some)

*

nicola’s manifesto

if your life

is normal

something’s wrong

*

the odd walker on the path

with an aura of danger

*

I’ll call it my grianan

this futon I drag

around the room

in a fold of sunbeams

grianan, Scottish Gaelic: a topographical term meaning sunny spot

*

she says every

catastrophe

carries col-

lateral beauty

*

i.m. John Conway

in his game

each cell with

one or even

no neighbours

died of loneliness

*

take your water

with a pinch

of ascorbic

do as the tea

says: breathe

deep

*

at the zoo the talk is of

feeding animals to animals

*

he says he hopes

I am as healthy

as a cucumber

so I sit a little longer

in the window sun

*

at 60 you have 6

problems they say

at 70 you have 7

and 54 at 54

*

her cold-water cure works for

pain as well as melancholy

*

after Mandelstham

the first apple

speaks as it ripens

the second apple

listens as it falls

the third apple under-

stands as its eaten

*

if you can walk

a half mile

places connect

if you can walk

100 yards

then that’s it

*

life with lock-

down (37): more

notebooks, brassier

birds, less breath

*

OVER-

a friend’s

death

LAYS

the term

of a birth

*

eachy peachy

one side says

no better

pear plum

one side says

no worse

*

days in the week:

scant good in

a slew of bad

*

for this first-waver

long chain replication

pushes the pain

through day 60

*

flipping the journal recto to face

recto to pass into spikes of pain

*

my wee world will stay wee

but what of my hurt heart?

*

she dreams we

held hands

in the undersett

of a tartan rug

*

she says he’s

not the battle

he’s the battle-

field

*

everyone’s out

strimming

with their hair

too long

*

my body speaks

does yours hear?

*

here is your Google

Location History

data for May: a red

dot without a line

*

these morning poems

they don’t write

themselves you know

*

the thing about an anchor is

at a gentle angle it can be lifted

*

the drawing gone wrong

becomes the loveliest

paper for lists

*

counting the days

‘til the back

channel meds

pop through

my letterbox

*

I can see the sea but it’s so long

since I could walk to the harbour

*

here’s to love,

pure breath, and

a bolt of sun

up your arse

*

raise the arms

over the head

palm-to-palm finger

tips holding a beam

let the body open

*

the postures we make

the postures we take

the postures we keep

*

the tiger in the tank

(the thorn in the paw)

*

snuck behind

the cause

is the cause

of the cause

*

filling out my PIP

form in pencil

there’s no tick-box

for ‘in the sun’

*

they’re already div-

iding the old

fatigue from the

new fatigue

*

a tick

for the walk

to the post box

with my PIP form

*

day 6 of the off-

label trial:

less sore, more tired

and my muse

is depleted

*

3 days recycling in the hall

by the door is my jenga

*

the sunset turns

pink for next-

doors long drawn-

out orgasm

*

spread

the economy

open up

the virus

share

the pain

*

100 days on

the level with

the birds

in my window

*

she feels the pain

of ageing and not

remembering nouns

*

my friends who are ill

find my essay comforting

those who are well

find it worrying

*

some days what you most want

is just to know your own username

*

a wedding air –

prophetic and tender:

Niel Gow’s ‘Lament

for the death

of his second wife

*

before summer’s out

clear the path

I’ve an e-scooter to go

where my legs can’t

*

shame is

shame is

shame is

no use

*

people with phones walking dogs

people with dogs walking phones

*

this machine

could have been

made for me –

it has no

battery

*

herbs to thin

the blood

shrooms to un-

flame the brain

*

laying their maps

miles on his

tiny loop walks

scale strips the glories

*

the child knows injuries –

what this the owl needs

is a bucket of worms

to treat its release

for Poppy

*

Alec Finlay

16.III.20 – 31.VII.20

All images © Alec Finlay 2020

...

Alec Finlay (Scotland, 1966) is an internationally-recognised artist and poet whose work crosses over a range of media and forms. Much of Finlay's work considers how we as a culture, or cultures, relate to landscape and ecology. Through permanent and temporary interventions, integrative web-based projects, and publications, Finlay weaves together generous experiential works, often collaborative, sometimes mapped directly onto the landscape, embedded socially or accessed online. Recently Finlay's work has focussed on place-awareness and ecopoetics.

Early in the pandemic, Finlay produced a Creative Tool Kit, a collaborative post with creative ideas to make a prolonged period of isolation easier to bear. Later during lockdown, Finlay wrote an essay ‘On Not Walking’ which reflects on how the virus affected his walking, and details his personal journey of pain cycles, recovery and relapse, both in relation to his original illness, M.E., and while suffering from long-term coronavirus. He also wrote the essay I’m protecting myself but I don’t feel protected published by Disability Arts Online ­and who describe it as ‘a timely reflection on the coronavirus crisis, the invisibility of disabled people and the absence of our voices in the face of what society could learn from our experience if there was less of a drive from the mainstream media to bury its heads in the sand.’ For other writings on disability, access, landscape and Covid-19 please see https://www.dayofaccess.co.uk/

Alec Finlay was selected for a 2020 Cholmondeley Award.


Selected works are available from Edgework

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