Giving Sorrow Words – and Sound

Since the onset of the Covid pandemic, nearly everyone has had to deal with grief of one variety or another, and if not theirs, then the grief of others. That the pandemic follows on the heels of other ongoing meltdowns, from economic to environment, has only made bearing these sorrows more difficult. Personal and collective losses have been multiplying: loss of habitat for so many of our fellow beings with whom we share our planet earth, loss of freedom to travel to meet friends and family, fires everywhere, ice melting, oceans rising, plants and animals and insects endangered or becoming extinct. We need to grieve.

In this special podcast, poets Larry Butler and former Edinburgh Makar Valerie Gillies read poems written during three short online writing sessions which they led last November. These workshops were run by Lapidus Scotland in association with the Scottish Poetry Library. Larry and Valerie read a number of the poems and there are recordings of poems by workshop participants. Larry is the first voice you hear on the recording.