Jan Fran’s ‘Warm Enough’ explores the tension of motherhood and global turmoil

Journalist and poet Jan Fran has released a new poem titled ‘Warm Enough’ as part of the weekly commissioned series for Australian Poetry Month. The work, featured in The Guardian Culture, offers an intimate look at the experience of raising a child during a period of significant global uncertainty.

Fran describes the poem as an attempt to capture the feeling of living in two parallel universes. It balances the immediate, tactile innocence of motherhood with the heavy weight of world events, specifically referencing the conflict in Gaza. The piece explores the dissonance of holding the big and the small simultaneously, seeing pure innocence up close while witnessing it threatened elsewhere.

In her commentary, Fran notes that the poem was inspired by the common therapeutic advice to ‘write it down’ as a mechanism for distress to leave the body. She reflects on the ‘tremendous helplessness’ and loss of faith in humanity felt while watching the conflict unfold in real time for almost three years.

The poem itself centres on the recurring question of what temperature her son is, a mundane maternal concern that contrasts sharply with the ‘darkened skies’ and ‘storm’ of the wider world. Fran uses this domestic focus to illustrate how the only thing that matters in moments of global turbulence can be the immediate well-being of one’s child.

Australian Poetry Month runs throughout August, featuring festivals, events, workshops, and a commissioned poem of the day. The weekly series, which invites poets to walk readers through their works, is brought to the public by Red Room Poetry.