Plague Poems

Reflections on the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, through a re-reading of Albert Camus' great novel La Peste (1947).

Just before midnight on 25 March 2020 the country entered its first Covid lockdown, and for seven weeks in the great stillness of the deserted town the pandemic was everyone's business. On the first morning, Brian Flaherty pulled Albert Camus' La Peste from the bookshelf and started a daily routine: to read five pages, sample and shape into a poem that echoed our situation, and emailed to a friend.