By Josiah Mortimer
I found it incredibly hard to write during lockdown, frustratingly, so having the Poetry Month as a prompt was really useful. I’d just pick up my pen at night and get all the weird experiences of enforced isolation down on the page. I really like the tanka form as it helps neatly encapsulate a feeling or theme, often on nature. As a songwriter it’s a comfortable form – tanka means ‘short song’ (being quite a lyrical form, it’s particularly useful for a poetry amateur like me!). I hope some of the poems resonate – poetry is such a powerful way of processing experiences, and sharing in them collectively. Lockdown was absolutely one of those shared experiences, so I’m really pleased to be part of this project.
Thank you. I enjoyed these… The On Thursdays one particularly