Closed For Now — the impact of a global pandemic
Edition Details
Closed For Now — A Pandemic Experience
Author: Frank Prem
Publisher: Wild Arancini Press (Independent)
Publication Year: 2026
Format: EPUB (Digital Edition)
ISBN (EPUB): 978—1—923166—35—6
File Size: 4.2 MB
This EPUB is a formally published edition.
What was the global pandemic — and why interpret it through poetry?
In early 2020, the Covid‑19 pandemic brought daily life to a sudden stop. Lockdowns, border closures, and emergency restrictions emerged almost overnight and reshaped how people worked, moved, and connected. Homes became offices, classrooms, and places of formalised isolation. Many experienced profound loneliness and disengagement from their usual worlds, while others had to cope with the strain of remote communication, disrupted routines, and the uncertainty of a world in crisis. Years later, we are still living with the aftermath and after‑shocks of those pandemic times.
Closed For Now was written as a personal account of life inside seven Victorian lockdowns. The poems document the shock of the early pandemic — the fear, anger, and disconnection — as well as the quieter moments of reflection that surfaced in the pause. The second section, The Facility, follows the story of an elderly man in residential care, capturing the emotional toll of separation and the difficulty, for him and his family, of saying goodbye at a distance.
A New Voice in Natural Disaster Poetry
With poems shaped by life in lockdown and close observation of the world during repeated periods of restriction, Prem reflects on the challenges to personal wellbeing and survival in a protracted form of natural disaster — the Covid‑19 pandemic. This is personal, observational, experiential poetry written from inside the event itself, by a skilled interpreter of life in these trenches.
Closed For Now: A Pandemic Experience joins Frank Prem’s body of free‑verse and natural‑disaster poetry, including Small Town Kid, The New Asylum — a memoir of psychiatry, Devil In The Wind, SMALL Change, and of drought and fire.
Look Inside
fourteen years (out of picture)
there is a weeping
on the tv tonight
a man
closing down
his life
of the last fourteen years
a business
built from scratch
he can’t
hold it together
on camera
as he tells his anguish
at having to
let go
his staff
his wonderful staff
and swearing
a vow
to start over again
when this virus . . .
this
this
disaster
is gone
day one
of year one
of
another fourteen
I’m sorry
he apologises to viewers
I’m sorry
turns away
to weep
into his hands
and out
of picture
Poetry that responds to the monumental impact of large‑scale events on our lives.
Closed For Now captures the emotional terrain of living through a pandemic — not a statistical accounting, but poems grounded in human response, local experience, and the quiet despair that accompanied prolonged uncertainty. It brings the scientific into the personal, inviting reflection, recognition, and a deeper understanding of what it meant to endure those times.
You Might Also Like…
Devil In The Wind
Eyewitness voices in poetic form. Stories from the devastating Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, 2009.
SMALL Change
A poetic translation of technical and scientific themes into a language of feeling, story, and lived experience.
Of Drought and Fire
The lived experience of two different natural disasters.
| Format | |
|---|---|
| Style | |
| Series/Genre |
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.