"The Heeding" is an excellent collection of thirty-five poems by Rob Cowen, written during and inspired by the pandemic of 2020 and hauntingly Illustrated by Nick Hayes with drawings which sometimes lean towards "folk horror". although the poems themselves don't fall into this category.
After an incredibly well-written and moving introduction, the visceral opening poem, “Duel”, tells of a battle between a hawk and a rat -
“Then it bends to rip out a strip
of glistening purple gut
and swallows the lot”
This poem is a statement of intent for what we can expect from the poetry going forward. Nature is raw and brutal, and its power and indifference is exposed in these verses, and some form of bird or creature or element of the natural world is always present in each poem. However, isolation also leads to a renewed appreciation of nature. Capturing the seemingly hopeless days of lockdown perfectly- the boredom of isolation, the separation from loved ones, the constant barrage of demoralizing news. The reference to discarded face masks littering the streets resonated strongly.
There are some very affecting lines - “Hell of a thing to be afraid of air.", and on the whole these are emotional verses, but there is humour too, in particular in “Lovers”, which tells of two young people caught in the act late at night -
"Now, reasons for being outside are concrete-set:
A form of exercise? Well, you might argue that.
He was certainly burning calories down there,
Pants round his ankles, backside bare.”
Elsewhere, we get tales of first love and lost love, but the realities of the pandemic are ever-present shadows -
“Passing her on the street, a couple
automatically swerve six feet.”
The shocking “Black Ant”, in which the author tries, but fails, to help a trapped ant, rams home the inevitability, and in some ways, the futility, of life, but the final poem, "Duel Part II", brings us full circle and gives us hope that we should keep trying -
"Death? Inevitable, yes, but not yet.
Or not today, at least."
"Lockdown poetry" will no doubt become a new genre in its own right, a kind of alternative written history of the pandemic, and "The Heeding" is one of the best examples I've read this year. There is death in these poems, but they also implore us to take heed of the natural world, each other and our relationship to it, and to hope for better times to come.
