SILVER LININGS
Gathering In anthology releases
In the early days of COVID19 quarantine, many were trying to use whatever tools they had at hand to help others during a time of great need and distress.
Hubbards-based publisher Patricia Thomas used the power of the pen and the printed page as inspiration to provide comfort for readers with the help of creators from across Nova Scotia.
Windywood Publishing’s anthology Gathering In — COVID-19 Silver Linings brings together a group of writers, artists and musicians (with their requisite Youtube links) who had all been working in isolation, but with a single purpose: to let others know that despite all that had happened, they were not truly alone.
BOOSTING SPIRITS
For Thomas, it was a project that would prove to raise her own spirits as well as those of readers, and went she sent out a call for submissions through the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia and other communities on April 1, she was a bit overwhelmed by the response.
“It came from the fact we were all really afraid, and so concerned to go outside, and everything looked kind of bleak,” says Thomas of her inspiration for Gathering In. “As an editor — I was editing a series of books on suicide — it was dark, if you know what I mean.
“I tried to think of a project that would be uplifting, and I noticed that what affected me when friends called or things appeared on television, were the ordinary things that people did that seemed heroic or touched my heart. I think you’re more sentimental when you can’t experience the world the way you used to.”
MIX OF EXPERIENCES
Every chapter is a new experience, whether it’s a personal essay about finding ways to cope with isolation, images of Jennie Mcguire’s Portal paintings or the outreaching figures of Beverly Mcinnes’s Rustworks sculptures, or Barbara Menzies’ ode to Earth Day 2020, when lockdown gave the planet a chance to hit refresh.
One name appearing frequently through the pages of Gathering In is Bridgetown writer and chef Alnoor Rajan Talwar, whose five poems are a declaration for love and unity at a time when so many feel isolated and alone.
Currently coping with multiple sclerosis and a compromised immune system, Talwar hasn’t been able to leave his home since March, so his themes of solitude and meditation come from a very deep, personal place. But work like his poem Is This What It Takes? (also on YouTube as a spoken word piece) reaches out to the world with a great deal of compassion, written in a style that speaks with clarity and empathy.
“I’m a great activist for inclusivity of all people, and accepting our differences and recognizing that we are different people, and yet we’re all the same,” says Talwar.
“I put all that together into one, and that’s how Is This What It Takes? came out. Because then the whole world came together to fight COVID, and yet, if we didn’t have COVID, we’d be fighting each other.”
SAVED BY THE BIRDS
Lunenburg writer Barbara Washington found a different kind of connection during the early days of COVID-19 lockdown, to other members of the natural world. In her piece How a Flock of Pigeons Got Me Through, she describes how she came across a cluster of birds on one of her solitary walks.
Living in an alley behind a restaurant, the birds had been deprived of their main source of food since the restaurant was closed due to the pandemic, and they were starving to death.
“What really struck me, is how dependent they are on us,” recalls Washington, who began bringing a bag of bird feed with her on her daily walks. “They live in the city, they get fed by us, or eat food found in back of restaurants and so on. So when we started to go down, they started to go down.
“I realized at that point that everything is connected in this pandemic, it affected everything right down to the pigeons, probably right down to the insects, and I just recognized this incredible interconnectedness that we have with nature and everything around us.”
As a poet, Talwar also uses natural metaphors to describe how people have been facing up to the challenges presented by COVID-19 over the past year, while expressing his hope that the words from himself and his fellow Gathering In contributors provide some sense of serenity and encouragement.
“We live our lives as if they’re rivers,” he says. “With challenges, rivers don’t stop when they come to obstacles, they go around them or over them.
“Human beings are actually very, very resilient, if we only give ourselves that chance.”