Do you still remember the first lockdown? How it felt quite different to this one? Back then we were moving into spring, then summer. There were a whole lot of strange new feelings to inspire us. So much of that is encapsulated in Write Out Loud’s Beyond the Storm competition anthology, which I was re-reading just recently. I wonder if the same number of startling poems that emerged back then will be triggered by this new lockdown time, which seems greyer and grimmer, somehow. Partly due to the weather, of course.

There are still copies available of our anthology, for those who would like to remind themselves of the first phase of the first lockdown, when everything was new and different, and it felt as if we were all in it together.   

You can order a copy here 

Background: Our document of an uncertain, unsettling, painful, frightening, uplifting time

Background: 2020 - a year like no other