Haikus for a Pandemic

Leo Boix is a bilingual poet, translator and journalist born in Argentina who lives and works in the UK. Boix has published two poetry collections in Spanish, Un lugar propio (2015) and Mar de noche (2017), and has been included in many anthologies, including Ten: Poets of the New Generation (Bloodaxe), The Best New British, Irish Poets Anthology 2019 (Eyewear Publishing) and Un Nuevo Sol: British Latinx Writers (flipped eye). Boix is a fellow of The Complete Works Program and co-director of Invisible Presence, an Arts Council England national scheme to nurture new voices of Latinx writers in the UK. Boix is the recipient of the Keats-Shelley Prize 2019. His debut English collection will be out in 2021 with Chatto & Windus.

by Leo Boix

Wednesday afternoon.

Was it last week this whole thing

began? We’ve lost count.

Where is home now? Here

by the sea we cannot touch?

or there? I don’t know.

III

Rain. Gales. Hail. The lot

in one day. Freezing Sunday.

The sea yellow, churned.

Which day is today?

How long were we in locked down?

Outside: Early spring.

None came yesterday,

or the day before. Just us

behind these old doors.

And skies opened up,

and we went out, breathed pure air

like in an old dream.

Leo reads Haikus for a Pandemic as part of Fuerza London - a film commemorating the Latin American community's experience during COVID, through music, dance, poetry and real life stories. see full film below