The pandemic coerced everyone to put their lives on hiatus. Time stopped as everyone are forced to undergo house arrest, also known as stay-at-home protocol. However, many engaged with writing their daily experiences in their homes whilst trying to adapt to the current situation.
National Artist for Literature Virgilio S. Almario wrote one poem per day during the whole duration of the strict community quarantine last year. It serves as his protest and a way to narrate how the pandemic strikes the lives of people regardless of socio- economic status.
Personally, during this pandemic, I tried to engage more in reading books, especially poems and short stories. It, somehow, become my stress reliever due to the depression brought by the new changes because of the pandemic, such as the abrupt shift of learning modality.
As a writer myself, through reading books, I still feel the physical sense of reality despite being stuck in a virtual environment. Aside from the escape from the ruthless reality of the pandemic, reading also motivated me to do better in my studies and in helping other people in need.
During the pandemic, I tried to follow Almario’s footsteps. I also wrote poems and tried submitting them to international publishers. Luckily, I published a poetry collection in Canada and some of my poems are considered to be published in an Indian literary journal. I hope that these poems created by a Filipino poet about the Filipino experience of COVID-19 might not only entertain and engage readers but also advocate for change.
Literature in pandemic saved me from myself and also saved other people. I got anxious with all the daily and alarming incidents pandemic-related, but with literature, I somehow find a way to be at ease. Overall, I hope literature on the pandemic may provide collective voices to aid people, like me, who are looking for a temporary rendezvous before facing again the current situation of our lives.
Author: Christian Loid Valenzuela
