Essential Worker
(Link to Vimeo)

​Excerpts from "Diary of a Non-Essential Worker" by Omar Sakr
Song: Husha My Baby, adapted by K. Guilmartin, Sung by Lynnette Li
Actors: Amy Miller Martin and Luli Gomez Teruel
Directed by Erica Vannon

My dear friend Kari Barclay started a project called Poetry in Times of Pandemic in which he kindly reads us a poem every day since we started quarantine. He has a wonderfully soothing voice and he always shares a bit about his day or what struck him about the poem he chose. Today is Day 39 of his project.

On Day 22, he shared a poem by Omar Sakr that made me ugly cry big, fat, salty tears. Later that evening my sweet friend Lynnette Li sang the internet a lullaby and I felt comforted.

I know we all have very emphatic opinions about zoom these days. What it does and doesn't do for us as it attempts to virtually replace a world in which simple pleasurable actions like hugging or high-fives or simply being near someone were so recently taken for granted.
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In response to a creative prompt, I was asked to use zoom to make something creative and think about framing. Inspired by Kari, Lynnette, and in collaboration with the creative talents of Amy Miller Martin and Luli Gomez Teruel, we created a short poetry piece on zoom.

I have few iMovie skills (but what I do know how to do, I owe to Dan Fine at Iowa!) and zoom can be a glitchy mess, but I don't really mind because in all of the glitches, something of this very long moment in time is captured.









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