Covid-19

Stick that needle in my arm

And get me safe and vaccinated

Hush the waves of false alarm

Stick that needle in my arm

Protect the herd from virus harm

Stay cool and keep refrigerated

Stick that needle in my arm

And get me safe and vaccinated

It looks as though the lockdown

is going to end in tiers

For while we count the clock down

it looks as though the lockdown

is ending with a knockdown

of haircuts, meals and beers

It looks as though the lockdown

is going to end in tears

Letter published in Solidarity 567:

The editorial of Solidarity 566 rightly called for a big expansion of public-sector jobs to tackle the Covid-related economic crisis, through both the creation of new jobs in existing public services and through nationalizing corporations that threaten job cuts.

Five Leaves Bookshop hosts Janine reading her poem, Stay the Fuck Home, which features in the anthology, Coronaverses: poems from the pandemic.

Published in Solidarity 562:

A TUC report, Dying on the job: racism and risk at work, has revealed the deep-seated racism that underlies the higher impact of Covid-19 on black and minority ethnic (BME) people, but its proposals fall well short of what is needed.

In the early days of the pandemic, it became clear that BME people were dying at a significantly greater rate. Compared with white people, black people are more than four times as likely to die from Covid-19, Bangladeshi and Pakistani people more than one-and-a-half times as likely.

Earn

Learn

Wed

Be dead

Compete

(if you're elite)

Britain needs pickers
We have a picking drought
Particularly since we’ve kicked our usual pickers out

So pick yourself up
and dust yourself down
Pick up a lift heading out of your town

Here’s your harvest
basket – fill it!
Harnessing the wartime spirit!

Dig for Britain
saw us through
Let’s pick to fight off Covid too!

Let's keep this briefing brief

We don't want the grief

I'll shuffle my sheaf

Turn over a leaf

and pass that question to the medical chief

Janine's video contribution to We Shall Overcome's Isolation Festival, held online on 11 April 2020, featuring the poems:

• Disaffected Middle-Aged Women
• Clap for Carers
• Wherefore Art Thou, Capitalism?
• Unskilled
• Thoughts and Prayers