A Kenilworth poet has had two poems featured in a book all about people's experiences of lockdown during 2020.

53 year-old Michala Gyetvai's poems 'Solitude is an Attitude' and 'A Robin Flew into my Garden' have both featured in 'Yesterday's Diary – An Anthology of Coventry in Lockdown.'

Yesterday's Diary is a community book featuring the work of 117 people inspired to share their stories of life in lockdown.

It's a collaboration between bestselling children's author Cathy Cassidy, the Facebook community creative group 'Sitting Rooms of Culture,' and the people of Coventry and the surrounding area.

The book arose out of the 'Coventry Couch Potato Challenge.' The challenge was launched in the summer by Sitting Rooms of Culture and Cathy Cassidy. 

People were invited to produce a poem or short story inspired by the experience of lockdown and there were hundreds of responses. Cathy collected and collated the contributions in this selection, which also includes brief biographies from all the contributors.

Michala, who has been writing and sharing her poetry for nearly eight years, said to Nub News: "I contributed to Sitting Rooms of Culture because I felt like I needed to give, because of everything that was so traumatic about the news, you wanted to feel as if you had given something.

"There was a callout for artists to share those projects, so I sent in some of my poems.

"It was fantastic because so many people who wrote during lockdown had their poems included."

Michala's contributions both extrapolate her emotions and experiences of lockdown onto nature.

"My poems are always about nature, its emotional landscape, I project my feelings onto landscape.

"The poems are about coping during the pandemic, looking at nature, looking at how you feel, talking about how we are all cut from a cord, how we need people. It is about isolation and how you deal with that isolation."

A Robin Flew into my Garden and Solitude is an Attitude both explore the isolation and disconnection that have been experienced during lockdown, but also that whilst we may be physically set apart, people remain connected.

The latter includes the stansa - "Isolation has become our relation / Hidden behind walls / That have grown out of all proportions"- encapsulating the seclusion that somehow connects and separates us during lockdown.

Yesterday's Diary was published towards the end of 2020, after £3,000 was raised in via CrowdFunding to bring the book to print. All 117 contributors were then given a copy, as were a number of local libraries, and nursing and residential homes.

If you would like to purchase a copy, you can do so by following this link.

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