Former Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University have brought together poets from around the world to write new poems about the recent days past and the weeks ahead. The poets were invited to write directly about the Coronavirus pandemic or about the personal situation they find themselves in right now. As Duffy claims :"We need the voice of poetry in times of change and world-grief. A poem only seeks to add to the world and now seems the time to give". Contributors include PBS Selector Andrew McMillan, Imtiaz Dharker, Roger McGough and Ian McMillan. Write Where We Are Now aims to “provide an opportunity for reflection and inspiration in these challenging times, as well as creating a living record of what is happening as seen through our poets’ eyes and ears, in their gardens or garrets”. Duffy’s own poem, 'Hands' was written on 26 March reflecting on how every Thursday, “we clap at the darkness”, and on how she can see the hands of her absent daughter “when I put my head in my own”. In Andrew McMillan’s poem Garden, he writes of how at first the dead “were few / enough to name them / but soon they grew too many / the vast fields of them”.
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