Judy: Living through this
pandemic has been a shared
experience but also a deeply
personal one.
It is a paradox highlighted in a
newly published collection of
poetry from people around the
world.
Jeffrey brown reports from Texas
for our arts and culture series
campus.
>> Dear vaccine.
>> Isolation.
>> Let me close the distance.
Let me hold my grandmother's
hands
and kiss the wrinkles on her
knuckles
>> Ofwonder.
>> You break the skin to heal
the body, killing illness to
save the world
you are a contradiction
and the solution.
>> Of gratitude.
>> I watched the nurse and
thanked her and thanked her and
thanked her once more.
>> Poems from a new book titled
"Dear vaccine, global voices
speak to the pandemic," part of
a collaboration of Kent state
university and the university of
Arizona poetry center.
Helping shape the project --
>> This will be a course of
community forces -- a chorus of
voices welcoming the next vase.
Everyone was wistful and lonely
for many voices mixed together.
>> Save us, ear vaccine -- dear
vaccine.
Tak us seriously.
We had plans.
We were going places.
>> They created a template with
their own poem.
>> We liked our lives.
Maybe we did not thank them
enough, being able to cross
streets with people we did not
know
>> The editor of more than 30
books of poetry, she is the
young people's poet
laureate.
Her work as teacher and advocate
for poetry has taken her around
the world, bringing poetry into
all kinds of settings.
We met recently at the Catherine
porter literary center in Texas.
She teaches classes for Texas
state university.
This was the longtime home of
porter, a writer who capture the
1919 pandemic in her novel "Pale
horse, pale rider."
She knew the vaccine project
would resonate today.
>> I wasn't surprised by the
response because I've been
working in community for my
entire adult life.
>> Which means, as a poet.
>> As a poet working with lots
of people who aren't identifying
as poets.
This hunger for poetry,
everywhere I've ever gone, and
by the way I have never been to
a place where did not happen.
Not one place.
Andd that has always struck me
as a miracle.
>> People responded, 2300 homes
and counting.
Some writing as or just after
they waited at vaccination
centers.
>> I just received my booster
shot.
>> Scenting their poems to
additional gallery.
>> >> I'm Dorothy from British
Columbia, Canada.
I am honored to be part of this
global poetry project.
The virus has separated us but
this project is bringing us
together.
>> It has been a very depressing
pandemic.
>> A number like this Kent Ohio
high school sophomore recording
their thoughts and words on
video.
>> Dear vaccine, restore us to
each other, rescue us from a sea
in which we are drowning.
>> Isaiah wrote of his close
knit and separated family.
>> From my grandma who used to
laugh over a but if a bill from
my little cousin always asking
when the next family
get-together would be.
From my mom afraid she might
pass out in the kitchen in the
wake -- and awaken a hospital.
I stod in a line waiting for
your pension my arm.
>> She used her native LAN
guage.
[Speaking native-language]
>> We meet you and shake your
hand in greeting.
>> She wrote from Saudi Arabia.
>> Dear vaccine, we gather
ourselves by precious fragile
cargo, don't touch.
We had to wrecked berries and
become invisible.
Mask our faces, lose our smiles.
>> What struck you about the
themes that people wrote about?
>> I think the theme of detail,
hunger for detail, how people
wanted to acknowledge the little
tiny things that they had felt a
longing for.
That touched me a lot as a poet,
because I love detail.
>> Some addressed to the
divisions the pandemic including
the vaccine had brought.
>> Some people are afraid of
you.
Cannot bring themselves to trust
you.
>> Or made a plea for more than
physical health.
>> Vaccine, please while you're
at it, immunize us from our
inclination to hurt each other.
>> It is the yearbook of our
time.
Dear vaccine is a book which
acknowledges what we have been
through and also expresses
profound gratitude.
>> 100 years ago Catherine
porter was one of the few
writers to address the pandemic
directly and the trauma faded in
cultural memory.
The creators of dear vaccine
hope this chorus lives on.
>> I think we live in a time now
where people feel, I hope that
sometimes to remember things is
an important act of humanity.
Of and hopefully it would guide
our behaviors.
>> With the book now published,
people around the world continue
to set their poetic responses to
the pandemic to be posted to the
website.
I'm Jeffrey brown in Texas.