Futurelearn Assignment 3: Playing with Poetry: Creative Writing and Poetics:  The University of Newcastle Australia

TASK: Go to press

Go to a local news page like mine, or something bigger like The Sydney Morning Herald or The New York Times (no need to subscribe to any of them) and pick out phrases or words that catch your eye and paste them into a word document (or straight into the submission field below, if you’re feeling confident). Start moving the phrases around until you discover an unexpected connection. Repeat the process until you have something that looks like a short poem.

The reviewers will be asked to give you feedback on the following aspects of your assignment, so you should consider these when writing:

• The poem reflects topics or language from the news
• The words and phrases have been connected in a creative way
• The finished result resembles the structure of a short poem

My rather random choice: By Rob Davies ‘UK workers feel pressure to hide mental health concerns, survey finds’ In The Guardian Wed 4 Aug 2021 06.00 BST Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/aug/04/uk-workers-feel-pressure-to-hide-mental-health-concerns-survey-finds

Article:

Workers feel under pressure to disguise their mental health struggles from colleagues despite feeling less able to cope than they did before the pandemic, according to research released as the government advocates a return to the workplace.

About half (51%) of respondents to a survey said they felt under pressure to put on a brave face at work, while four in 10 said they felt less resilient since the Covid crisis struck.

Fewer than one in six (16%) said they felt their mental health was very well supported at work, despite 81% wanting their employers to give them help with their mental wellbeing.

The findings, from a survey of more than 2,000 people commissioned by Lime Insurance, emerged just as ministers start to ramp up pressure on the British workforce to reduce the amount they work from home.

This week the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, suggested that a return to office working was particularly important for young people.

“I doubt I would have had those strong relationships if I was doing my summer internship or my first bit of my career over Teams and Zoom,” he told LinkedIn News.

“That’s why I think for young people in particular, being able to physically be in an office is valuable.”

The government has said that people should gradually start returning to offices and other workplaces in England, since restrictions were eased on 19 July. By contrast, the Scottish government is encouraging working from home until at least 9 August, where possible.

The latest survey results suggest many workers are anxious about having to be around other people again while they are struggling with their mental health.

Almost one in five surveyed said they were concerned about their stress being visible to others, while 26% said they did not think they were coping.

Over a third felt the same way about everyday life and 40% said they felt less resilient now than they did before the pandemic.

Young people are bearing the brunt of these challenges, with the research suggesting 43% of women aged 16-24 and 49% of men aged 16-24 feel less resilient now than they did before the pandemic.

Women also feel they are under more pressure than male colleagues to hide any mental health issues, with younger women feeling the pressure the most, Lime said.

Workers said that employers should help them by paying more attention to workload and work/life balance, allowing greater flexibility in working hours and time out to deal with personal commitments, as well as offering mental health days off work.

My poem:

Return to the workplace, says Government

I, being one in five, hide the text sent,

Coveting resilience, feign it hard

 Lest my stress feels as visible as charred

Skin, where fast fear of slow death made it split

And burned out my hope like it did my wit.

They say I’m like a woman, feeling most

Those pressures embodied minds often host.

They say the ‘Teams’ and ‘Zooms’ just lend brave faces;

Facile facades that face down little traces

Of the effect indifferent liaisons

Have on our taste for hard crusts of bygones.

Note: This started just with phrases from the article but the links sort of took over and insisted on building a character. Most would say it’s a characterless character but there is a key to its neurosis. Definite sign of a death wish here, as if Covid-19 ended too soon or left the man long baffled in its clutches. Not sure what that person now wants or how to convince them that for some people life feels a bit authentic, if not a lot.