Rehomed, Renamed

As part of the 2024 Summer School, Newcastle University's Writing Poetry MA students were poets-in-residence at the Great North Museum Hancock. Around the museum you can find poems written by the students during the Summer School.

The professional writing residency with the GNM:H encouraged new ways to engage with the museum’s collections, history, and modern cultural presence. It allowed the students to explore new perspectives to the way they approach writing.

Further information about the Writing Poetry MA can be found on the Newcastle University website.
Writing Poetry MA | Postgraduate | Newcastle University (ncl.ac.uk)

I Remain

I kiss lips.
          I have kohl-lined eyes.

My fingers dab
        musky scents

to pulse-points
         on my beating neck.

Inside my breast,
         my heart is full of blood

and grief and love.
           I listen to my heart

more than my mind.
          Sometimes.

Sometimes my mind 
          knows best; it brims 

with richness and yeses 
           and refusals.

My body is covered 
          in sweat,

is caressed, is dressed
          in colours that make

brown skin glow.
         My tongue tastes

fruit, my teeth 
         chew bread,

my stomach is soft 
         with butterflies,

my bare feet 
         dance in storms. 

My lips are kissed.
         I speak.

The priests
        mummify me

and replace my eyes
         with false eyes.

I ask, if you look,
         to recognise my life.

Georgia Conlon

Irtyru

Egyptian Human Mummy, discovered 1789, Irt-irw dates to the early 22nd Dynasty (900BC), Purchased 1825 by J.B. Wright, Unwrapped 1830 Newcastle, Displayed in the Hancock Museum, Newcastle

March 1830
I became the center
Of a public “unwrapping”
The violation, I wear it well

Rehomed, renamed
But I shall have the last laugh
For you may steal my sacred amulets
Mispronounce papyri

But you will never know me
Each night, I pace cold dark halls
In this house of dusty relics
Dry bones plundered from Osiris

Flesh imprisoned by shellac
The bolt through my cranium
Has left its mark, like the industrial staple
That nails my spine to this coffin

That isn’t mine
Pinned like an exotic butterfly
Whose death wings
Have been clipped for eternity

I pity you, your morbid fascination
These northern plains, soil sealed
In molten tar that toughens the ground
Like the hide of my skin

How I ache for the red dust
We struggled to rub
From our eyes, our toes, our hair
How I long for the occasional

Wind that carries soft rust cells
Of distant Sahara sands
From my home, my people
My land

I gaze at night skies
Permanently illuminated 
With the fake glamour
Of false prophets

Whose graveyards dig
Shallow plots for shallow souls
Whose indeterminate dust mingle
In the crypts of Crematoriums

By day, I lie amongst 
Feral fauna, stuffed
Preserved far better than I
Yet for all your lofty claims of progress

I realise you have learned nothing
Your soul rots whilst I wander still
Ka calling for kin, for unlike you
The stars still mourn my passing

Katherine Cleave

Isis Breastfeeding Horus

“I know you, I know your names” – Coffin Texts, Spell 407

My name is Queen of the Throne. I nest
in the majesty of motherhood, breasts
bare, nursing my baby. There’s no ill
I cannot cure with words. Kill 
my husband, scatter him, and I will find 
his shredded flesh, mend it, bind
him whole, conceive our child. Harm my son
with scorpions, and I’ll turn into one.

Men call me many names, but I own theirs.
I stole them from my father Ra, dared
to make a snake from spit to sting him,
said I’d need his secret names to heal him.
Now I’m replete. Abundant as the vine,
I give you life, but all your names are mine.

Suzanna Fitzpatrick

Leg Riddles: whose legs?

Still, under loose cloth,
I would never have lain down
here among strangers.

Louise Ordish