Abstract: Beginning in March 2020, people around the world dealt with COVID-19 and its devastating aftermath. In Spain alone, over 115,000 died from the virus, according to the World Health Organization. The lockdown at the onset of the pandemic led to a variety of responses, including writing poetry. Versos en una pandemia; (llantos y risas) Verses in a Pandemic: (Tears and Laughter) by Ángel Martín-Blas Sánchez and Servicio de lavandería Laundry Service by Begoña M. Rueda, winner of the XXXVI Premio de Poesía Hiperión Hiperión Prize for Poetry, both published in 2021, represent two very different reactions to the unprecedented situation in Spain. While Martín-Blas Sánchez, an older male, found himself separated from family and friends in his small provincial town in Toledo, Rueda, a single female, was on the front lines, working in the laundry room of a large hospital in Algeciras. Although both works reflect their authors' efforts to deal with the pandemic through writing poetry and share similar emotions, such as loss and loneliness, Martín-Blas Sánchez explores traditional poetic themes such as death and nature through traditional poetic forms and devices, while Rueda incorporates her daily experiences into her poetic production using free verse and very few poetic figures. Ultimately though, both come to gratitude for life itself.
Frieda Blackwell (Sun,) studied this question.