As part of 'Museum Week' I will issue one poem every day inspired by my recent trip to London. During this trip I visited a number of museums and art galleries, certain objects or images really prompting me to write, then and there. These poems are the result.
Even the streets themselves seem like museums to me, a single extended human hand to take my ticket.
This first poem 'Tapestry of Tablets' was written whilst observing the exhibition
Cradle to Grave by Pharmacopoeia in The British Museum. in two lengths of outstretched fabric are knitted over 14,000 drugs - the average prescribed to a British person during their lifetime.
Tapestry of tablets
Watch now as this exhibition
Unravels us
These travelling capsules
These blind inhabitants
We convince ourselves are safe,
Worth having.
Is this the future
Or the stage
For the past masked? Is this a table
For ritual eating
Or embalming
Of days, days, days
Dragging
For too long I have been mourning
For another language
Why
Do these coloured fragments
Convince then
Of something to
manage?
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A close-up of the piece |
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