HISTORY shows that catastrophes, conflicts, traumas and protests provoke poets to write, and that the most insightful poems survive because they contain a universal truth connected to the human condition.

So how are poets dealing with disease, death and often contradictory political rhetoric in a world that has suddenly and unexpectedly locked down our lives, a place where we’re clearly not “all in this together?”

Liberty on hold, fears for the future escalating and access to online technology like never before provides a unique space for socially committed poets to write something ground breaking.

However, as the virus spreads there are multiple windows opening, especially related to online technology. But poets are used to connecting things in their heads, pinning down what Coleridge describes as a poem being “the best words in the best order.”

They are well practised in staying focused to search out and unravel the truth — there are poets taking purposeful walks to scrutinise nearby cemeteries, researching past flu epidemics, noticing signs in newly barricaded shops and empty public spaces.

Poets are asking what matters most to friends and families, what “isolation” means and what Covid-19 is doing to the poor and BAME communities, imagining alternatives and what happens next for humanity as a whole.

As riots spread across the US, and marches across other capital cities take off, it shows that while the proletariat can be contained by a life-threatening virus for the common good, they can’t be by the horrific murder of a black man by a policeman on the side of a road in Minnesota, witnessed on screens in homes around the world.

Poets are always on the lookout to connect narrative threads. As storytellers, they are alert to “plot holes” and can capture injustice in a few words.

It’s why Jeremy Corbyn used poems to great effect, reading Wilfred Owen’s Futility on Remembrance Day in 2015 and often quoting Shelley’s The Masque of Anarchy to drive home a political message — for us to “rise like lions.”

Poet Laureates Simon Armitage and Carol Anne Duffy are also showing showing that poetry is not about privilege or elitism.

We stand united on a precipice. Unlike any other time, capitalism is exploiting but not providing for the many.

There are new voices and imaginations needing to be heard and brave new poetry editors who are poised to publish challenging writing.

Spiteful, confusing tweets and blogs may come and go but meaningful poems that reflect the strengths and vulnerabilities of the human condition have the potential to drive positive change and endure.

Websites and publishers like Culture Matters can get key messages across quickly and effectively, just as a virus spreads.

Poets’ imaginations will be fired up as more stories emerge out of this pandemic and political falsehoods will link in creative minds.

We will be watching to see if the homeless are back on to the streets this time next year, if health and social care workers receive a pay rise and whether the newly unemployed desperately chasing poorly paid and precarious jobs remain indebted to private landlords.

While politicians and the press turn blind eyes, poets will continue to write and scrutinise the “new normal” in a quest for the truth.

It seems few of us will see out this virus unscathed, but it’s the workers, especially those struggling and less well-off, who need to be remembered and supported most by progressive politics and progressive political poetry.

Over a decade ago, in her poem Indoors, the late Eavan Boland writes, as if forecasting Covid 19: 

“So it was above our neighbourhood, the world straightening
under wings, the noise of discord  
clearly audible, the hinterland reaching to the sea,
its skin a map of wounds, its history a treatise of infections.”

In a “second wave” of Covid flooding the planet, poets will be peeling back that skin to see what lies beneath, to show, among other things, how politicians have handled this crisis — or washed their hands of it.

As poet and activist June Jordan said: “Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.”

A body of politically driven and socially relevant poetry will surely grow out of this pandemic.

It will continue to reach out in protest, anger, sadness and compassion and touch even the hardest of rich and powerful capitalist hearts, so we can all move towards a greener, kinder, safer and more equal, truthful future.

Sally Flint lectures in creative writing and co-edits Riptide Journal at the University of Exeter and is a tutor with The Poetry School. She has a special interest in socially committed poetry and is an associate editor of Culture Matters. This is the latest in the series of articles on culture after Covid-19, jointly published by the Morning Star and Culture Matters, culturematters.org.uk.