Some of the other contributions were read at a Zoom session in Ledbury’s online Festival in July 2020. This poem was later made into a short film that is now on YouTube Thank you to everyone for their contribution.

I have found these poems extremely resonant, and I hope you will too. Other ways of thinking about, or seeing, what is happening in this present time. Nonetheless, in reading these poems, I find reflections on, and insight into, my own experiences. I am aware, as many people are, that for people and places in the world, the challenges are huge and sometimes extremely harrowing, compared to my own. Though of course everyone’s individual experience of this situation is unique. These poems were written during Lockdown and the Coronavirus pandemic, at a time when it seemed the whole country, and in fact the whole world was going through the same crisis.

They read alongside poets who submitted to Ledbury Poetry Festival’s online call out. The event featured a fascinating selection of Lockdown inspired poems, including poets commissioned by LPF, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sarala Estruch, Suzannah Evans, Elaine Beckett and Kim Moore. On Sunday 5 July 2020 there was a Poetry of the Lockdown event as part of Ledbury Poetry Festival Online. She made her solo debut in July 2014 with the darkly empowering EP Come Alive.Thank you to everyone who has submitted Lockdown poems. With her compelling story and powerful new songs, the label agreed to take her on as a solo artist. She wrote and recorded a set of demos in between her medical treatments and reached out to He Is We's second label Republic Records.

When Kelly enlisted a different singer to replace Taylor on tour, she decided to press on as a solo artist in spite of her health issues and animosity toward her former bandmate. Following the release of their 2011 EP Skip to the Good Part, Taylor was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease called Ankylosing Spondylitis and was forced to leave the band to undergo chemotherapy. With Taylor's sweet vocals and the band's hooky, charming indie pop melodies, the album hit number six on Billboard's Heatseekers chart upon its release. Building a large homegrown following through various social media outlets, their self-released demos soon attracted major-label attention and He Is We signed with Universal Motown to release their first album, My Forever, in 2010. While working at a local music store in 2008, she met fellow musician Trevor Kelly and the two began writing songs together. Singer/songwriter Rachel Taylor first made her name as one half of the Tacoma, Washington-based indie pop duo He Is We.

Realm Walker's Rising by Rachel Taylor