Creativity in Lockdown by Dauda Ladejobi At first it was a break A breath of fresh air so to speak Even with protective barriers muffling our speech Then this constant lack of understanding Made for miscommunication as we missed communication The message just weren't getting through As this confusion seeped into my writing Sentences became disjointed Pieces once long were now short, then few Then no more With so much going on, I ran out of things to say Then we saw it That microscopic hope So we zoomed in to connect Human persistence at its best Even when we couldn't touch we felt Words and actions Gestures of appreciation The world became a stage and the heroes were applauded Yet nothing had changed and the wretched remain rewarded This harsh breeze of reality fanned our flame We saw systems that needed to be burned down again and again and again So on we march And write And act With ions of positivity That a change will come Even if its our outlets We may have been down but we ain't out yet Cause creative or not our best assets is that most human of tacts It's not how we live, but how we adapt Swells 2021 In This Year by Sophie Dumont In this year I am copywriter, I am poet. I am full time for someone else and full time for myself. In this year I moved house in a heatwave. I moved for a garden but the garden is paved. I seek water as if a cloud is a dictionary. Desperate to catch and keep the rain I pushed cereal bowls under honeysuckle, plunged thirsty lupins into stew pots. I pressed poet into paint bucket, thumbed copywriter into upturned dustbin lid. I angled myself towards clouds and wait. In this year the days slid down the wall. The flies spoke back. The bins overflowed and the seagulls watched our undoing from the safety of scaffolding. A silhouette of a woman on the crest of the hill emptied her pockets for crows. In this year copywriter slid down the wall. The poet spoke back. To give the day an end I bundle myself into the bath like bad fruit. I give my Sundays to the patch of wall to the left of my computer. I bundle copywriter into the bath like bad poet. In this year I talk in circles. My mouth has forgotten the shape of no. My skin is too close to my body. I pray for rain as though I could hide things in the dull mirrors of it. In the tight view from a city window, a silhouette of a copywriter on the crest of the hill empties her poet for crows. Swells 2021 Butterflies in the Living Room by Stephen Lightbown Leo Sayer wants my attention. Purple t-shirt, white braces, eager as a new tennis ball. He warms his vocals in the spare room. My wife’s Friday night disco class will soon cover the fading light in sequins and Leo will thunder walk through the fibres of the wall. Again. It’s not another bowl of tuna pasta I desire but silence. There are hundreds of folding chairs with me in the living room. An audience behind the laptop. There is dust on the blinds. It ticks sands of a broken egg timer from the last time I did this. Somewhere on my desk is an identity. I worry I loaded it into the dishwasher. Again. The first arrives, eating something I can’t make out off a beanbag tray. They can’t see the yellow trainers I wear, the ones I put on to perform. There’s more dust on the laces. I wait for black clouds to fill Leo’s heart. Candles, letter box flowers, orphaned mic stand adjustments. More faces arrive and I throw a smile in their direction. I make a note during the introduction to do more. I sit in my wheelchair, the support out of view, ask myself if they are here because this is now the new acceptable face of my headline act. Swells 2021 The Facilitator by Joanna Nissel I find the words on the undersides of coastline pebbles the pre-dawn sky iris and milk The words follow me home spill as if from an over-filled cup I find them pooling under my toes carving water-marks into my calf muscles When the sea recedes in the window sometimes the words go too The currents that connect one idea to the next still eddy against my ankles I stay until my feet numb The beach is the only real thing there is anymore and these tides which pull at that inside space as it travels to a place I am often too tired to reach The first blood of sunrise offers its reprieve warm intrusion to this land of blue and saline When I walk the pebbles again they shine with paintings of people all waiting for the sea I turn their faces to the sun coax the smile in each one as they begin to gleam Swells 2021 The Drought by C A Pacey Sick slumber hangs in the outside air, levitating in trees, hitchhiking on global winds to permeate borders and you watch through windows in choked perplexity. Stop for a minute; hear the fruitless silence which echoes in cavernous refectories like reverb from birds on estranged streets while seats grasp at dust to feel a purpose. Paintings peacock to absent voyeurs, scrap-heaped talking points paling with the dead months beside suspended exhibitions: lasting relics of a life extinct. Stilled speakers mourn the missing hedonists they used to engulf, those warehouses of jellied crowds – now invisible and in the dress circles phantom applause cascades, deafening shadows which yawn over Art’s temples city by city town by town Virtual realms takeover the physical, but I ask you: is it enough? Crowd synergy has wilted to lonely claps in living rooms as people become pixels, tangible space unformed between strangers like held breaths. Taste this artless world and you’ll see it’s the bitterness of an eccie on tongue, yet no euphoria comes. Don’t chew. Spit it out into mask-strewn puddles and open your parched mouths for the next monsoon - invention will topple from re-opened doors, we will rejoice never to feel this thirst again. Ideas bobbing, like messages in bottles, on the first waves of normality. Swells 2021
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