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COVID Creativity: Paintings and Poem by Pamela New

COVID Creativity is a new Source arts feature highlighting the work of our creative readers as they respond to a time of global pandemic. All visual artists and creative writers are encouraged to share with us new works that have been created as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Poetry and creative prose submissions are limited to 1,500 words and should include a brief bio of the writer.

Visual art submissions should include at least one high quality image or video and a very brief bio along with an artist’s statement that speaks to the inspiration of the work. The statement should include the title if there is one, the medium used and what the work means to you.

Please send submissions and questions to visourceart@gmail.com.

Painting by Pamela New. 2020
Painting by Pamela New. 2020.

“The painting is as always for me, on a repurposed canvas. I love how the previous artist’s brush strokes inform my work, as nothing is planned when I begin a piece. My muse is often a woman with a large head wrap symbolizing knowledge, genetic memory, warp and weft of cultures. Wise women, traditionally the keepers of memories, the birther and burier of us all, the carrier of pain and joy.”

– Pamela New

Flat Earth Fears

Pamela New
Flat earth fears
abound with riddle me this
because, I, the ‘great adventurer’,
the breaker of form
over substance barriers,
now find myself almost supine
in obedience, obsequious in
the hoop jumping hoopla
of 20 second soap and scrub,
and gangster masked
as I gingerly provision,
stepping away from
dearest friends,
car park air hugs and
Nitrile glove waves
before retreating to
our near monastic hermitic
pandemic-proof
Sanctuary of chosen few.
My car battery dead.
A stay at home real world
metaphor for frontier woman
circle the wagons and
bottle the vittles.
Trying to balance my children’s
existential fear, and my spouse’s
determined or delusional (?)
optimism of a future
recognizable or reasonable.

Pamela New, a 25 year USVI resident, is the Eco-Schools USVI Coordinator and a poetry and painting dabbler. She practiced drama therapy in the UK before finding a new home on St Thomas, and worked for the NHS in the disability and challenging-needs field. There she became convinced that creativity is an innate ability in each one of us, and we just have to trust in our own imaginations. She has found both writing and painting to be a wonderful outlet for pent-up COVID-19 anxieties and what ifs.

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