Have you written your poem for the Farnham Lockdown Poetry Festival? Entries should be in by the end of tomorrow.

Send your poems about being in lockdown – whatever you feel, whatever your experience – to Lesley Crawley either by email or to her at The Rectory, 25 Upper Hale Road, Farnham GU9 0NX.

Adults and children alike are welcome to send in their poems on the theme of lockdown. The Mayor has offered a prize for the best adult and best child one but don’t worry if you don’t think you are the world’s greatest poet – just give it a go!

If you want some ideas, listen to this lockdown poem by Harry Baker:

Or this poem by Jim Carruth

the long bench

For the times ahead
when we will be

as if at either end
of the long bench

where distance kept
is love’s measure

and death dances
the space between

when words alone
are not enough

and queued memories
reach out to touch

let longing be a store
of nut and seed

that grows each day
in strange hibernation

readying for its end –
the sharing of the feast.

Picture by Ksenia Makagonov on Unsplash