Sion Mills - Group of Rural Older Writers
Title of Work: The Lockdown Scribblers
Facilitating Artist: Frank Galligan
Poems and reflections of life during Covid created using words/poems from this group of older people in Sion Mills - I contacted about a dozen people in Fermanagh and Tyrone - who have written over the years - with a view to establishing how Lockdown was affecting them. Many felt that Covid was too immediate to write about but some had dealt with grief and others used the time to reflect on old memories etc.
A typical response read thus..."Hi Frank, work away and thanks for thinking of me, no Lockdown poems.. it’s just too depressing...times are tough...but the breed of the mountainy men never died of a winter yet."
That being said, mountainy men and women furnished me with some tremendous poems, some reflecting on a Covid Christmas or the loss of a loved one...many without access to good Wi-Fi or unable to master What’s App and Zoom etc., using the time just to think and put pen to paper. In one instance, I interviewed a writer about her extraordinary tragic story and her subsequent redemption through the written word.
After the project's end, I may receive more pieces, as the vaccine gives people hope.
(From one writer... but could be any of them..."Hi Frank, Thanks for thinking of me, no Lockdown poems... it's just too depressing...if you need anything else just let me know what poem you liked...times are tough...but the breed of the mountainy men never died of a winter yet!")
Sion Mills - Group of Rural Older Writers
Download the poems below: