JAMES WALSH recommends an exceptional documentary about the experience of Western doctors in Gaza
Latest editorial
The Plague by Arthur Richardson
KEVIN DONNELLY suggests that the task of transforming cultural spaces is far from over and that photography still has a key role to play
RITA DI SANTO talks to Scottish-Irish filmmaker MARK COUSINS about his new panorama of world cinema The Story of Documentary Film
ALAN MORRISON welcomes a new collection from the most imaginative and committed ecopoet of our time
CAL McBRIDE relishes the lyrical truth of an unstable identity in an over-tidy and conventional social realist treatment
New releases from Shearwater, Florry, and Navy Blue
CHRIS SEARLE welcomes a startling vision of contemporary Newport from a veteran photographer of the British working class
There’s a disease abroad. Our fortitude
is being tested daily on the streets.
The air is filled with loathing like a germ
that replicates itself in hidden ways,
attacking all the things we thought were true,
invading spaces we once knew as safe.
A virus spreads among us as we bear
witness to the horror it provokes.
We’re like the hosts floating on the seas
in hope of finding safer, kinder shores,
unsure of our direction but attacked
and beaten for the crime of being lost.
Perhaps, one day, we will find a cure
but know the only vaccine now is love.
Arthur Richardson has worked as a bus driver, railway worker and trade union officer. Now retired, he lives in Rochdale. 21st-century Poetry is edited by Andy Croft, email [email protected]
Similar stories
by Rosie Jackson
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
Fiery words from the Bard in Blackpool and Edinburgh, and Evidence Based Punk Rock from The Protest Family
ANDY CROFT rallies poets to the impossible task of speaking truth to a tin-eared politician