In March 2020, it felt clear that my duty was first and foremost to patients and colleagues on the frontline. With a heavy heart for all the reasons, I posted in a poetry group that mandates regular participation, that I had to go quiet for a while and didn’t know when I would be back.
As a healthcare practitioner who writes on the side, it’s generally accepted that I’m normally in and out of writing groups anyway. There are many teachers and group leaders who have been so kind about this down the years, gifting me the space to continue pursuing these dual drives of being a healthcare worker and a writer.
At first, there was no outside indication that I had stopped writing. There were a few lucky acceptances between January and March 2020, since the submissions process takes time anyway. These became almost final, fleeting touchstones to celebrate, to prove to oneself and the world that you are indeed a writer, including even an occasional, precious curveball, such as a first acceptance for a US publication.
My first essay was already written and published later in 2020, for Culture Matters. This was another touchstone moment in what felt like progress as a writer, that I might be able to write more than poetry.
Then what happened was that I couldn’t write anyway. Or at least I couldn’t write in any way that resembled how I would normally write. As for everyone, it felt like the world was collapsing and the one thing I normally do to process that, I’d had to put away, in service to this new order.
Loss is a strong word in this case, but it felt threefold. The feeling of having to give up writing in any substantial sense. Walking away, just when things were heading in new directions that I hardly even knew I’d wanted, or ever expected, felt like an obligatory reduction. Then there was not being able to write anyway.
The wellbeing of other humans over and above my own progression is a no-brainer. Progress has to be both collective and individual. The losses that so many have endured due to Covid-19 are permanently altering. I can pick up my writing again. The difficulty was that, in putting it aside, I felt incomplete, like a piece of myself was missing.
Instead I went back to keeping my diary, something I’ve kept on and off since thirteen. The blank diary page in particular, is generous in the space it affords you to fill with your words, no matter what you yourself might think of them.
The strange thing was that I found myself going back to drawing and singing, two activities I hadn’t practiced since before my teens. Singing became a way to manage difficult days, a temporary, comforting window into a place where Covid-19 did not exist and a way to hold hope.
Drawing in this case, was sketch-noting for a work project, as I wanted to tell the story of the project visually. I surprised myself with this – I had loved drawing as a child, my choice of subject often birds. I had laboured willingly over the biology illustrations that were required in school, loving their orderly detail and function.
In the intervening two years, I’ve managed to draft three poems and have one or two essays in development. Output wise, this feels low. Previously, there had been enough to submit at least one poem per month somewhere.
I managed a couple of poetry workshops, but during the early, uncomfortable days of the Zoom meeting. I found the lack of in-person contact with the tutor and other attendees, particularly difficult when challenging subject matter was on the table. That said, one of those workshops was with the extraordinary Fran Lock, whose class I would love to be in again someday.
Writing as a specific creative medium has often been considered a bit subversive or simply ridiculed. Down the years, I’ve been in company with people who’ve been disdainful on hearing I have a primary occupation, instead of being a real writer, whatever that means. Or people who look at you strangely when you say you are a writer, as if somehow they will inevitably end up in a piece of work you produce.
Similar to Andy Dufresne’s line in “The Shawshank Redemption” about prison being unable to take away the beauty of music, diaries are just this. The art teacher can publically rubbish the drawing you spent all night on, but the book kept in a safe place is unlikely to be seen.
I am in awe of healthcare writers such as Rachel Clarke or Romalyn Ante, who have been able to write while working on the Covid-19 frontline. Then there are other brave poets who have willingly spent time on the frontline to bear witness, such as Martin Figura. Plus courageous souls such as Michael Rosen, who have documented their days with such beauty and candour.
There are the healthcare practitioners who are also photographers, whose work became another living document of life for patients and healthcare workers in the most difficult days they may ever face.
To be able to apply ones creative mind to such endeavours is so necessary for artist, subject and witness. There were moments when it felt like I was neglecting my other duty, to document what I was seeing – the frailties, the bravery and the bonds that are forged and broken between humans in such times.
What are writing and creative expressions for after all, if not to teach us about the world and open windows into the human experience?
Barbara O'Donnell 