A-OK Care/full/less

Care in its old English sense is to wail, to lament. It is an existential state of underlying sorrow.

To be full of care, in this way, manifests a hidden grief as well as welling from compassion and gentle stewardship.

This is not the care cushioning us from our world. It’s an inner awareness of the evil ‘out there’. (It doesn’t take much to see this as an awareness of one’s own internal darkness.)

Have we outsourced our risk-taking to those we don’t know because of our being full of care -to those we pay by the hour whilst we nurse our debilitating grief?

The word care, with its meaning embedded in the history of language, is here deftly considered by contemporary wordsmiths - poets. Care sparks deep contemplation about the elderly and the environment, of words themselves and of heritage.

Here are a series of works and words by fearless poets and writers who couldn’t care less.

Alison Kennedy