Greenpeace director writes lockdown inspired poems from his flat

Environmentalist and author Ed Gillespie has released a collection of poems written in and inspired by the first lockdown.

Confined to his flat on Brixton Hill with more time on his hands than usual, Mr Gillespie, 48, started writing a five-minute poem each day.

A number of these poems have been released in a book called Songs of Love in Lockdown – a nod to William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience.

Mr Gillespie, who is a director at Greenpeace UK, said: “Like many people during lockdown I found I’d got more time, so I started a morning practice.

“Every morning I would get up, I would make my coffee, I would read a poem by way of inspiration and then I’d write a poem of my own depending on what was stirring.”

Mr Gillespie found that the poems reflected the strange nature of the times.

He said: “They were pouring on to the page from my dawn pen, but because I was doing them every day, they became this sort of slightly weird chronology.

“In those first two months it was a very strange, unfolding of uncertainty, fear – and it was springtime – so the poems followed the trajectory through the weirdness that we were all experiencing.”

There are several themes that recur throughout the collection, such as life in his flat, the NHS and the coming of spring.

He said: “I’d lived in that flat for 20 years but I’d never been truly present in it, so one of the extraordinary things was just reconnecting with the nature around my flat in Brixton Hill.

“I’m right on the main road, usually I’ve got the rumble of the A23 right outside my door and instead I had windows on both sides of the flat open and all I could hear was birdsong.

“So you realise all of that stuff was going on masked by our noise and hubbub.”

Many people who had similar experiences at the time have found that the poems resonate.

Mr Gillespie, who co-presents a podcast with comedian Jon Richardson, said: “People who have read it really love it because it transports them back.

“We’re such adaptable people, we’re adaptable as a species. It’s very easy to forget how we were feeling at the time, because we move on and we try and make the best of what we’ve got.”