Focus on poetry – Poetry as public art

Every year, when I was growing up, we used to visit the same holiday cottage in Wales. And there, every year, I would rediscover two poetry landmarks, remembers Janet Phillips. One was a poem carved into a large, smooth slab of slate that served as a table in the garden of a semi-derelict house set high up on the hill over the village. Another was a lampshade inside the cottage, on which had been painted excerpts from well-known poems, accompanied by delicate illustrations. This was my first experience of poems outside the covers of a book and they both fascinated me.
Poetry in book form, however, is often the subject of gloomy statistical reports. Most recently, a Bookseller article analysing Nielsen BookScan data found that poetry?s share of the general retail market was shrinking, and that sales were down by value when comparing 2003 to 2004. The figures are open to interpretation, but what they don?t tell us is how many people are reading poetry, whether or not they are actually buying it.

In fact, it?s possible to read poems in all kinds of places. The Poetry Society?s Poetry Landmarks of Britain website (http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/landmark), launched for National Poetry Day 2003, is, in part, an attempt to provide a directory of places throughout the UK where you might come across a poem. This is an interactive website in which website users can both add to and search for poetry landmarks. It?s not yet comprehensive by any means, but it indicates that poetry crops up all over the place ? in museums, theatres and galleries, as well as parks and memorials. Judging by some contributors? comments, landmark poetry is a real incentive for people to visit a particular place.

One landmark that grew out of the Poetry Society?s Poetry Places project (1998?2000) is Mowbray Park in Sunderland. Here, Linda France?s poems are carved into stone, bronze and wood, and submerged under water. It is estimated that Mowbray Park receives at least half a million visitors per year. Linda France has worked extensively on public art projects, including the ?Writing on the Wall? project at Hadrian?s Wall, run by Steve Chettle at Arts UK.

The concept of poetry as public art is the subject of ?Opening spaces?, a booklet by poet and critic Sue Hubbard ? who was the Poetry Society?s Public Art poet in residence for the duration of the Poetry Places project. One of her commissions was a poem for the underpass linking Waterloo Station with the Imax Cinema on London?s South Bank. Years after the poem ?Eurydice? was installed there, we are still getting calls at the Poetry Society from commuters who want their own copy of it, or to read more of her work.

These initiatives will continue for National Poetry Day 2004 on Thursday 7 October. The Poetry Landmarks website will be relaunched with a new category to tie in with this year?s theme of ?food?. And, just as you can have poems in unexpected places, you can also invite poets into unaccustomed environments. Residencies to celebrate National Poetry Day are being cooked up in farmers? markets, top-notch restaurants and gastro pubs. In the Poetry Café in Covent Garden there will even be a series of dinners cooked by poets!

Janet Phillips is Publications Manager of the Poetry Society. t: 020 7420 9891;
e: [email protected];
w: http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk