Lockdown turns actuary Nicolla Eagar into poet

Nicolla Eagar with her children and newly released poetry book Taking It to the Next Level - Poetry In Lockdown. Photo / Rosalie Willis

Dealing with numbers for her day job, Nicolla Eagar found herself entrenched with the opposite during lockdown.

During the Covid-19 lockdown Nicolla found herself writing poetry, completing poems reflecting her observations around what was happening each day.

She has since curated them into a book of 100 poems with profit from the sales going to the Mental Health Foundation and Pukerua Bay School.

Working in an actuarial team, dealing with insurance and maths for her day job, Nicolla never expected to have rhymes and poems coming to her at all times of the day during levels 3 and 4.

"I don't know why I wrote these poems," Nicolla said.

"I did a maths degree, I normally work with numbers.

"Covid-19 did some weird things to all of us, and for me this is what happened.

"It was such a challenging time and you needed a way to process it - for me this helped, getting my thoughts on to paper.

"Don't ask me why it came out in poems, but it did.

"It was one, sometimes two, sometimes three poems per day.

"I would go for a run but would have to stop because I had all these poems coming into my head and I had to write them down on my phone.

"Either that or I would be doing the dishes and have to stop because they kept coming to me."

The poems reflected the logistics of working parents at home with young children, toilet paper shortage, the daily updates and the escapades of our politicians.

"A lot of the stories relate to our family and what was going on which I think is probably reflective of a whole lot of families.

"We have three kids and two working parents.

"The poems came from the joys of juggling all that and trying to find stuff for the kids to do."

Other stories include the grocery hoarding at the start, the money and wage subsidy from the government and people's feelings about it.

Posting them on to Facebook for the community to enjoy, people started suggesting to Nicolla that she create a book with them all together.

But she wanted to take it one step further so she included pictures that added meaning to the poems and the involvement of the whole community.

"The pictures were not about works of art, but about adding greater depth to the poems."

It was about getting the community involved and continuing with the strong community feel that the Covid-19 lockdown created.

"It wasn't about it being a work of art but about relating to the poem."

Keen to share the poems with others, Nicolla has curated them into a book called Taking It to the Next Level - Poetry in Lockdown.

"I think my books will serve both as a reminder of lockdown, resonating with people and also with Christmas looming, hopefully they will be quite appealing to people.

"I feel like even though I've written them relating to my family, a lot of these poems will relate to most New Zealanders."

The books are on sale at Paper Plus Coastlands or from Nicolla at poetryinlockdown@gmail.com, $25 each or $45 for two, with profits going to the Mental Health Foundation and Pukerua Bay School.