Judith Wilson
2021
Beginning
A poem about us, the great volunteers
We’ve been coming together for so many years
Welcome to all, both returning and new
No volunteer party, so you’ll have to make do
Two very long years since the last time we met
Two years that not one of us will ever forget
An out of depth politician with stage managed hair
A protective ring round the care homes, which just wasn’t there
Next slide please, with charts of numbers galore
If they’d really tried hard, they could have done so much more
Two metres and masks and test and trace apps
The nurses need money, not Thursday night claps
But Manchester’s the place which helped us to thrive
With Rashford and Burnham helping many survive
We’ve been waving to relatives as they sat in their rooms
And putting photos as backgrounds in comical zooms
We volunteered to shop and help people go out
And the vaccinators deserve a massive shout out
Some of you helped in vaccination queues
It’s not going to hurt, just feels like a bruise
We weren’t sure MIF would happen this year
What a relief the festival is ready right here
And now it’s all planned and the volunteers are set
It’ll be a festival of wonder, one hard to forget
We’ve already watched the fantastical Dream
And The Long Goodbye was finally seen
Festivals in houses and Factory Consultation
Traineeships and help with Online conversation
We’ve been shouting in public about political books
Big Ben lying down will get plenty of looks
Labelling bags in the shop for Eart in Shude Hill
Avoiding any awkward white powder spill
A Sea Change down Deansgate will be a great start
An organism of dancers, a gathering of art
Captions and Postcards and the Patience of Trees
Arcadia and Love Letters and some Notes on Grief
There’s Cillian and Pattie and then Arlo Parks
And Lemn and Hans with poetry and art
Portraits and Homecoming and Studies of Clouds
And Damon Albarn again, to bring in the crowds
Cathedral Gardens is the new Festival Square
With DJs and music, with lots of us there
Honest Crust and Heathcote, Stellar and more
With family events and interesting tours
Phil Cat’s on the team, strangely not underground
Lee and Esther in the office and everywhere can be found
The t-shirts are turquoise or some might say teal
It doesn’t really matter because they make it all real
We’ll follow the rules on Volunteer hub
About masks and distance and giving hands a scrub
And lateral flow tests have become the new trend
To make sure of safe shifts so we can attend
We Dwell in Possibility of what this year will bring
The festival as usual will make our hearts sing
We’ll all do our jobs under safe Covid rules
And the memories we make we will treasure like jewels
2021
End
The festival has finished but wasn’t it great
All the volunteers now are the best of mates,
Forget all the shows, we just needed to talk
To real people, not zooms, and have a good walk
Volunteers worked so hard as many had before
But this time disguised with the masks we all wore
The T-shirts were lovely, but they caused a to-do
I waved at some turquoise, but got Deliveroo
Transforming Wahaca, was a new Netflix hit
Removing the dust and a year of old grit.
Flying higher than the Arndale was the MIF flag
But that might just have been a Phil Catling brag
They all worked so hard, Lee, Phil and Esther
And all we did was annoyingly pester
Every day with questions and visits for tea,
But great meeting up and a fun place to be
Hub heroes were many with tickets and shirts
And answering questions ‘bout new shift alerts
The test and trace app and lateral flow tests
A ping or a positive and the week was depressed
Sea Change dancers, both professional and not
Powder on Deansgate in eight coloured blots,
After a few hundred yards they could take it no more
And spent most of the time lying down on the floor
Poet Slash Artist with so much to say
A variety of writing and art on display,
It’s a crime to live with someone you don’t love
But is it a crime, with someone you Don’t don’t love?
Big Ben Lying Down with Political Books
People shouting outside, with quizzical looks,
It was Mancunians who chose and that was the thing
Many feminist books and mostly left wing
On Wednesday and Sunday in Festival Square
England played football so no-one was there,
Manchester players made up most of the team
Each one of them loved, in their England dream
The Queen passed nearby but forgot to check in,
But Shanahan was there with selfies and grins,
There were DJs and bands and new musical acts
A place to eat pizza and calmly relax
Pattie Smith couldn’t come ‘cos of travel bans
But she’ll be here again to the delight of her fans
Arlo Parks and Damon Albarn filled up the slots
But volunteering for them was like drawing lots
Manchester Central was a venue to love
Music and lights from the stage and above
Patience of Trees with the Natural World power
Violins and percussion for an immersive hour
If I don’t talk about it, it cannot be true
Notes on Grief told us what we already knew
Not seeing relatives for months at a time
And some didn’t survive, which seems like a crime
Portrait of Black Britain in the Arndale displayed
People’s lives, all different, in photos portrayed.
Homecoming championed African creativity
And collaboration with MIF and future festivity
Cillian Murphy was sorry for so many things
With pylons and trains and fluttering wings
It was fun to find out where exactly he walked
He tramped through east London and just talked and talked
I Love You Too with cut hands and Alsatians
The views of life from a different nation,
We tried to entice people in off the square
But skate boarders and buskers didn’t really care
At the Jewish Museum some women reminisced
And talked about things that they all now missed,
Dancing in clouds with pigeons as heads
Textiles and embroidery and sewing with threads
City Captions were checked, walking long in the heat
Or you could drive to the marina, if you wanted to cheat
And the plane flew above in the Manchester sky
And some of us watched the caption fly by
The Eart shop was stunning in black and in white
With pastel pale boxes for a minimalist sight,
Plain labels stuck on, again and again
But the resulting non-brands were wonderfully Zen
Arcadia arising in the new Factory site
Poems and voices, with tents glowing bright
The natural world in the heart of the city
That natural world where the rain wasn’t pretty
The festival was full of such variety and choices
Diversity and inclusion and many new voices
Let’s hope the next one will be socially near
And I can read the poem, with all of you here
In Twenty Twenty-Three we’ll have a new open world
Where Covid is subdued, and new politics unfurled
Marcus Rashford will be king and Andy Burnham PM
And we’ll all wake from the nightmare of Tory mayhem