As the coronavirus pandemic continues, Kingston, Ont.,’s poet laureate Jason Heroux has recently completed his poem called ‘All People.’ He says the poem was inspired by his learning about the word pandemic itself. “It comes from ancient Greek, ‘pan’ meaning all and ‘demos’ meaning people, and you see ‘demos’ in democracy and things like that so ‘all people’ is a literal translation of pandemic.” ‘All People’ is intended to be a reflection of peoples’ experience during COVID-19, says Heroux. “It was tricky, I did not want the poem to be too grim or too positive at the same time.
I felt it was important for the poem to have more questions than answers.” Heroux refers to the poem as a buffet of emotions, positive and negative. [ Sign up for