April is national poetry month in America. Later in the year on 1 October we will see national poetry day take place here in the UK. Hopefully by then, the world will have emerged from lockdown and we will be renewing ourselves and our societies in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic. In the meantime, so many wonderful initiatives have sprung up online whereby people connect with each other through reading and writing and sharing poetry. I wanted to highlight this one from Liv Torc, BBC Local Poet 2019 for BBC Radio Somerset, who set a haiku challenge on her facebook thread asking people to tell her ‘how they are doing’ in the 5,7,5 syllable haiku form – she christened these #haiflu and has been making wonderful weekly movies of those she has received. You can see some of the results here or here.

A beautiful example of how the right words at the right moment have the power to help us get through difficult times.