Lisa offers to ease your virus anxiety with a verse or two

IRISH actor Lisa Dwan is reading poetry to soothe the nerves of the public during the Covid-19 outbreak. Lisa, pictured, put out a message on Twitter earlier this week saying: ‘If anyone is poorly and/or in isolation or just too fearstricken to sleep and you might like to be read to from your favourite book or poem,’ and inviting them to message her directly.

Suggestions for poems to be read included Traumnovelle by Arthur Schnitzler or The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, with one fan saying: ‘I think your voice would suit that hefty tome as the prose is nice.’

Dwan, who is from Coosan,

Athlone, Co. Westmeath, but is currently based in London, later posted a video of herself reading the poem When You Are Old by WB Yeats.

It begins: ‘When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

‘And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

‘And slowly read, and dream of the soft look,

‘Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.’

The actress, writer and director also shared another message related to the coronavirus this week after coming across the scene of a suicide on Hampstead Heath in London while out for a jog.

She wrote: ‘Even the strongest among us is going to find this time challenging.

‘Now more than ever we need to be kind. Reach out to loved ones and old friends, to neighbours and to strangers…

‘Start where you are, use what you’ve got, share what you can. Every ounce of kindness counts… we may find it’s the only real currency we have.’