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)
Great North Museum Ghazal
The kids need their history veg: 5-a-day behind glass.
They play toga tag, I check my phone’s display behind glass.
I photograph the last piece of coal mined in Newcastle,
a vanishing fragment of my DNA behind glass.
Hieroglyphs enchant shabtis to toil in the Field of Reeds.
They should unionise, call strikes over pay behind glass.
Poets protest beside Irtyru's remains. Eight minutes
of silence, centuries of sobs ricochet behind glass.
Regina, the freed slave, rocks her throne. How has Hollywood
not adapted this for the screen? #girlsthatslaybehindglass
Fossils show plants got tougher when Earth warmed, so dinosaurs
ate more rocks. Lessons for the world of today behind glass.
Ah, dodo. The Anthropocene's headline act. These days we’re
at the after-party. Can’t hear a mayday behind glass.
Stoned in the planetarium, bug-eyed teens realise
they're just specks, reflections in the Milky Way behind glass.
Middlesbrough Meteorite, it's not too late to purchase
a return fare. You won't be safe from doomsday behind glass.
My grave will bear this epitaph: Here lies Laura, poet,
whose words were spoken and heard, not locked away behind glass.
Laura Webb
