In his debut poetry collection, award-winning writer and musician Brendan McLeod tracks the Covid-19 pandemic. What began as a personal project quickly blossomed into an ambitious record of society’s new rules, moral predicaments, and emotional upheavals. First published by Write Bloody North online, where it immediately sparked conversations around the social inequalities the pandemic exploited, select poems appear here in refined form that add another level of meaning to the visceral reactions of the originals. Funny, harrowing, and compassionate,  Friends Without Bodies  mines the irony at the heart of the pandemic – that the greatest tool we have to protect ourselves, and others, is our own loneliness.