Context

Simon Armitage wrote this poem in 2020. He wrote it in a British town named Eyam, where he lived and was quarantined with his family during the lockdown. In that year, the coronavirus pandemic became a global public health crisis, with huge economic, social, political and cultural impacts. Coronavirus is a disease that can be transmitted through small liquid particles when people cough, sneeze, speak and breathe (World Health Organization n.d.). It can also lead to various symptoms, such as headache, breathing difficulties, fever, and lack of strength. It features high infection and quickly spread, and its sequels can be minor or serious, from no symptoms to death. Until 4:48 pm CET, 10 December 2021, 267,865,289 cumulative cases and 5,285,888 cumulative deaths are confirmed globally (World Health Organization n.d.). 

Most cities and nations were called into lockdown to deal with the pandemic. At that time, most of the world's people were in quarantine since the lockdown, also the poet himself. Lockdown separates people and breaks off their face-to-face interactions. Even though it is a useful method to prevent the spread of disease from an epidemiological perspective, the Lockdown itself still poses problems for individuals and their communities. Simon Armitage aims to console people under this crisis and suggests to them with the patience of the process and considerate awareness of each other and the world to recover (Flood 2020). Its intended audience is everyone in the world since all of us are involved in this pandemic. As Žižek says, "we're we're all in the same boat now (2020, 7)." 

The technology involved in this poem's creation is the internet. This poem was published as a pdf file online on his official website. Today's internet enables writers to post their works without writing letters and sending their original script to the publisher with a long examination, editing, and revision process. They can just post their works online on their preferred platforms, such as personal websites, quora, Facebook, and Twitter. That's how Armitage published some of his poems, including Lockdown. 

Even though the poem discusses the current pandemic, it also connects it with the outbreak of bubonic plague in Eyam in the 17 century, especially the boundary stone functions as the boundaries of Eyam during the plague. Nor Eyam's inhabitants or visitors from other places can walk across that stone, the early form of lockdown. To communicate with the outside world and trade for provisions, people can put coins into the holes on that boundary stone, and outside people would collect those coins and put provisions beside the stone (Flood 2020). It shows that people could always deal with challenges wisely and adapt ways of communication to the need for isolation. By referring to this story, Simon illustrates that we need to trust people's wisdom in solving problems and be patient with the process we must take. Today's pandemic was not something unprecedented but something that humanity faced before and dealt with well.