Grief in Times of Corona (Envoi)

Written in isolation in the West of Ireland during the autumn of the first wave, Cathy Fowley’s autoethnographic poem, “Grief in Times of Corona (Envoi),” explores grieving during lockdown and the fragmentation of time and space. Fowley uses the metaphor of bubbles to represent the structure of time, both in confinement and grief. These bubbles divide her life into digestible pieces, restricting movement and mediating her relationship with a terminally ill cancer patient through time and technology. Inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of chronotopes, Fowley segments the grieving process into successive bubbles, fragmenting time and space further. Lockdown separates her from daily life and the future, leaving her in an unmoored state. One inspiration is instant messaging with a friend which becomes a building block for the poetry. In an excerpt from the poem, Fowley connects pandemic statistics with her bond, conveying the isolation and rigidity of her pain within its numerical bubble: “Bubble two—numbers: 25,489 cases in Ireland, 1,738 deaths, 112 days since I saw her, 47 days since I heard her voice” (772).