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)
Circling the Past
Pause before entering, or leaving.
Outside the museum
is an apparently undistinguished
boulder with vague indentations.
Look closer. Those marks
are remnants from Northumberland’s
deep past, carved into stone.
Cup marks with a surrounding ring.
We have no idea what they were.
Simple symbolic art,
hammering cups and grooves
into surfaces that had dominant
views or were close to springs.
How little we know, or can even
guess at. What if these people
were still alive, a lost tribe
among us, DNA cousins?
Think of stone circles, henges.
A history and meaning
that remains hidden, from
Northumbria’s Dreamtime.
Greg Freeman
This poem is about the strange cup and ring marks that can be found in abundance in Northumberland. I am captivated by the mystery surrounding these ancient markings, and suggest that we should celebrate our prehistoric forebears with the same awe and reverence with which Aboriginal culture in Australia is now recognised - at least, by some.
The Catch
Off to college then? No boats for you? Can’t say I blame you.
Little future in the fishing now. Like your Dad,
you’ve a good eye for weather. But see, you’re the clever one,
Take a deeky here. What can you make of this?
Ha. No idea. Looks like some kind of shoe
a boot, but fancy gear; these wee curls
where they might lace up. And see the underside?
A sole with grip like that, you’d not slip up,
but man, it weighs a ton. Like the foot
still in it. So bone, mebbe, that’s turned
to stone? Ee- a fossil Dr Marten!
And reeks like whelk shells. Am I right?
Not so bad, but let’s turn it other way about.
Not worn on feet, but found in mouth
not boot but tooth. Aye. That’s the truth
a mammoth’s tooth. Big as a size ten shoe,
this broken edge the root, not ankle bone.
The fancy bits? They’re hooks, to latch into the gum.
A molar not a boot sole, ridged to grind not grip,
your mammoth could eat trees, with teeth like these.
Our North Sea all dry land once. Mammoth safari park.
Now all that’s left is bones. A bonus now, to net
a catch like this. Good nick, will fetch a bob or two.
Aye lad. We must land the silver where we can.
P.A. Erskine
The poem was inspired by a mammoth’s tooth from the Museum handling collection shown to me by Kate Holden. Kate explained that while she wasn’t sure of the exact facts about the finding of this particular tooth – it had been bought for the museum from a dealer in fossils – this, like the others in the collection would have been trawled up from the North Sea. I started to imagine a conversation between an older trawlerman and a younger discussing the find – and the poem developed from there.
Pepe Erskine
