Adult Lockdown Written Word / Audio: Part Two

During the height of lockdown, we asked you and your kids to get creative in photography, arts & crafts, videography and written word/audio as part of our Forces Voices competition.

All written word/audio entries were judged by Amanda Prowse, a forces wife and International Bestselling author who has had twenty-four novels and six novellas published in dozens of languages around the world.

Here are some of the adult entries and the stories behind them. Click here for more creative masterpieces.

Cathy Sherlock: I Can't Quite Seem To

"I have been connected to the Armed Forces for 28 years - 15 years as a CDW for the AWS and currently the CDW for Culdrose with the Navy NSFPS.

"I have written thousands of poems and shared them over the years, connected to military life, parenthood, mental health.

"Many have been shared and related too.

"Many are funny and help with the coping strengths needed to survive in a relatable way. I am a mental health first aid trainer and know the importance of talking and sharing. I hope the poems I’ve written make a difference."

I Can’t Quite Seem To

I can’t quite seem to believe,

What this world is going through,

When we all seemed to exceed,

We’ve been knocked about black and blue.

No matter who we think we are

How successful, rich or poor,

This is a battle and a war

That has no preferences at all.

Mother Nature has surely gained,

Less pollution, less strain,

Fewer cars on every lane,

Relentless traffic, trains and plane.

Even people on the streets,

Aren’t leaving litter at their feet,

There is never really a need,

Less opportunity to heed.

Our rivers flow with cleaner beds,

The fish are increasing not being fed

By our ignorance of what they eat,

Discarded human debris,

Insects and birds are heard to make,

beautiful noises we rarely take,

Notice of, for heaven's sake,

Just stop and listen while awake.

Laughter and family fun,

Silly games have now begun,

To be a popular choice to run,

Competition, quiz, a new connection.

Effort to talk to those,

Whose faces and lives have chose,

To ensure we all know,

We are loved not exposed.

So sad as this may seem,

Painful for so many, it’s been,

Stressful and challenging I mean,

But a gift of 'time' unseen.

I will be thankful for the thought,

The time spent we’ve rarely got,

A COVID reset of a sort,

To take a moment.

Deborah Wanless: See You Soon

"My husband left for the Falklands just before the COVID-19 lockdown and I wanted a way to explain to my children so that they would understand the process and let them understand that he's not gone forever.

"So it's not goodbye, it's see you soon."

See You Soon by Deborah Wanless

I see him packing up his clothes,

His hat for his head and socks for his toes.

I clamber up onto the bed,

And put his hat upon my head,

He tickles my feet and tells me so,

About the far-off land he's about to go.

I'll fly there on an aeroplane,

Through snow, and sun and wind and rain.

I'll try my best to write you when,

I find out where they keep the pens.

It feels like a long time that I'm gone,

But when I'm home it'll feel like none.

You must look after your brother and mum,

Eat your dinner, eat every crumb.

It's hard not knowing a certain date,

When I'll walk back through the gate.

But rest assured when I come back,

The fun we have shall not lack.

We'll make rockets and zoom to the moon,

Eat cake and dance around the room.

We'll stay up late and watch the stars,

Then when we wake, we'll play with cars.

But until then I'll write and call,

I'll hear about those bumps and falls,

I'll love the arts and crafts you send,

And hear about your best friend.

I'll miss you to the moon and back,

But for now, I have to pack.

So tomorrow we'll hug at noon,

It's not good bye it's see you soon.

Hillary Briffa: A Conversation With Emily Dickinson

"Due to the pandemic, I haven't left the house in three months.

"Whilst adjusting to the struggles of lockdown, particularly the isolation and anxiety, I sought comfort in the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

"A recluse who never left home in the later stages of her life, she used the time for self-reflection, growth, and voyaging in the imagination.

"This poem imagines a conversation where I ask her for guidance, and she responds, bringing new hope and understanding of the possibilities that can be found in isolation."

A Conversation With Emily Dickinson

Emily, Emily, please tell me how

you managed such solitary days

of self-imposed exile, no soul you’d allow

to unveil your untold ways -

you only bared your soul to your perennial flowers,

as you composed poetry and mused on mortality,

and you savoured the quiet contemplation for hours

- oh lend me such wakeful tranquillity!

I have none of your violets or jasmine sweet,

only Permian ferns, dense and creeping wild

I cannot think, cannot write, so your help I entreat,

Emily, snakes are coiling in my mind…

My thoughts are consumed with morbidity,

strange nightmares, burdensome, oppressing

- teach me your secret to hermitic placidity,

how isolation can be a blessing!

I wrote of the solitude of space

as a haven where the mind wanders free,

unconstrained by person or place

to explore what the true self could be,

Only alone can we astonish and reflect

our truest self's confession,

only alone can we dissolve and detect

our most faithful heart's obsession

The cadence of our spirit must

both joy and grief endure,

abjuring one would be unjust,

only in darkness can light beam pure

In solace, sorrow need not obtrude

In the quiet, your passions unfold free,

So take heart and join me, despite solitude,

In the exuberant pursuit of infinity.

Joanna Brown: Out Of The Unexpected Blue: A Tale of Friendship

"My story began as a storyline that my son wrote a paragraph about at school.

"He shared his idea with me one evening at bedtime and I asked him if he would like me to join him in writing this as a whole story.

"We discussed his ideas together and I was really impressed with the meaning and values within his storyline.

"With the gift of more time than usual to pursue this idea, I enjoyed creating, from his imagination, a complete short story.

"When I read it to him, he was really pleased with it and very proud that his characters had come to life.

"I have always enjoyed writing and encouraging creative writing, in the children I teach currently at Hornbill School in Brunei.

"I feel refreshed excitement to continue to engage children in writing short stories having had the time and the opportunity to write one myself."

Here is an extract from the story. For the full piece please click here.

Out Of The Unexpected Blue: A Tale of Friendship

Once, thousands of moons ago, when knights wore shining armour and fair damsels needed rescuing, it might not surprise you to hear that there lived a dragon.

It was an emerald-green dragon with evenly-spaced, shiny scales covering the length of its muscular body. Inside a cave, the walls of which were covered in slimy strands of translucent dragon-saliva, it dwelt all alone.

Dragons, pre-extinction, could live for hundreds of years and, for that reason, loneliness was a very real problem. Imagine, hundreds of years of lacklustre loneliness! It was this heartbreakingly sorrowful seclusion that brought our dragon to the front of his deep, dark, comfortless cave where he lay with his bearded chin nestled mournfully on his front paws.

Pamela Collumb: The Silent Assassin

Small business closed for covid-19 lockdown

"I wrote my entry to put in a diary I have been keeping since lockdown.

"Hopefully in the future when someone reads it they will get a bit of an understanding about what was going on during the COVID-19 pandemic."

Here is an extract from the poem. For the full piece please click here.

The Silent Assassin by Pamela Collumb

2020 started off great,

Until a new disease started

To take over the world, and sent us into lockdown.

In our fears and anxieties, we started to drown!

Schools closed, parks closed, nowhere to go,

Staying inside looking through the window!

1 hour of exercise a day is allowed,

No way are you allowed to be in a crowd!

Peter Shepherd: Falkland's Lockdown

"My first deployment to the Falklands from November 19 to March 20 has taken an unexpected turn.

"During lockdown there is not much to stimulate one's brain.

"So I took it upon myself one morning to write my memories and experiences of the Falklands in my scrap book, so I thought I'd share them with you too.

"I hoped to make it light humour and inspire the imagination!"